This article showed me how to install fonts from a script, but now I'm faced with the problem of removing them. How can I do that ? Any language is ok, I'll convert the info to what I need later.
EDIT: Okay, so I now know how to uninstall fonts ( most of the part at least ). I'm issuing calls to RemoveFontResource. After that I use SendMessage with parameters: 0xffff,0x001D,0,0 ( HWND_BROACAST,WM_FONTCHANGE ... and I forgot what the other two parameters stand for ). The thing is, this deletes the font, but in the Control Panel's Fonts entry, the font still appears there ( even though if you try to delete it from there as well, it will say it cannot read from source file or disk.
So basically, I'm deleting a font in this order:
deleting physically from the C:\Windows\Fonts
calling RemoveFontResource
calling SendMessage
What's the proper way of uninstalling?
From all the documentation I've ever seen those three lines of code are the "proper" way to do it but as we well know it doesn't quite work - as expected.
RemoveFontResource(fontPath);
DeleteFile(fontPath);
::SendMessage(HWND_BROADCAST, WM_FONTCHANGE, 0, 0);
REBOOT
I executed the code above and duplicated your problem (control panel still shows the font, however the font file is gone). I then rebooted. Now the font is gone from the Fonts Control Panel applet.
Something else to note: even though control panel still showed the font as "there" applications no longer listed it in their font lists (I specifically tried Wordpad, before and after deleting webdings.ttf - without rebooting)
Yea i know - rebooting is a poor solution - especially if you need to update the Font since you can't reinstall it (via the control panel anyways - it claims the font is still installed) until you reboot after removing it (I tried).
However if all you want to do is remove the font - its not the worst solution - the font is essentially gone after you uninstall it (apps don't see it, its only visible in control panel fonts as far as i can tell) and you wouldn't need to force a reboot.
From the SDK help on RemoveFontResourceFont (which may indicate why the oddness is seen)
If there are outstanding references to
a font, the associated resource
remains loaded until no device context
is using it.
Once you find the actual filename as Havenard mentioned and using the article you mentioned you can do a
objFSO.DeleteFile(FontFilePath);
where FontFilePath is the file path of the file you want to delete.
More Info here:
technet article
A problem that you may run into, which I didn't think of until I saw your comment, is that a program may require that font for some particular item. All known system fonts are stored within the registry. If you remove a font, you should also remove the key from the registry. Registry paths are as follows
Windows 95
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Fonts]
Windows NT
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts]
The keys are as followed:
Key name = Full name of the font
Key type = REG_SZ
Key Value = name of font file
All your fonts can be found at C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\
Explorer will mask this folder to display the font names instead of the real file names, but its all there. You can edit and comment out the lines of C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\desktop.ini to disable this feature and reveal the font files (maybe you need to reopen the Explorer to take effect).
Related
I have an app that is trying to display U+23CE (⏎). This is a terminal app, so we are using "Consolas"/"Cascadia"/"Courier". As far as I can see, none of these fonts have this character. And yet, in Visual Studio, when I am debugging this app, it actually displays it correctly in the debugger. Also, when displayed by the new Windows Terminal, it displays correctly. But when I use the app I am working with (actually Putty), it displays the "I don't know this character" glyph.
Putty is a classic Win32 app using ExtTextOutW() to draw that text. I have checked that the correct font is bound to the HDC.
I am assuming that Visual Studio and Windows Terminal are using DirectWrite or other more modern text output logic, but ultimately they have to be getting these unknown glyphs from somewhere.
UPDATE:
I found a font with that character ("Segue UI Symbol"), and if I set Putty to use that font, it displays the missing character (woohoo). Sadly, this is a proportional font, so it looks terrible, and this is not the solution.
#dvix pointed me at a Microsoft page discussing this exact topic, but its not clear which things are done by Windows and which by an app developer. I tried linking "Courier New" (Putty's default) to "Segoe Symbol"", but it made no difference. Does the Putty code need to do all the work itself? Detect an unknown character, read the Registry, and substitute the font for that one char? That is certainly doable, but a pain.
Windows can be directed to "borrow" missing glyphs in a font from another font that carries them using font linking. This applies to both consoles and GUI apps that use GDI (DrawText, ExtTextOut) to render text in Windows 2000 and later.
For example, the following registry entry will link the Consolas font to Segoe UI Symbol (the following can be saved as a .reg file and merged into the registry, will take effect at the next logon).
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontLink\SystemLink]
"Consolas"=hex(7):53,45,47,55,49,53,59,4d,2e,54,54,46,2c,53,65,\
67,6f,65,20,55,49,20,53,79,6d,62,6f,6c,00,00
; "Consolas"=REG_MULTI_SZ:"SEGUISYM.TTF,Segoe UI Symbol"
One handy tool to explore coverage of the different fonts is BabelMap. For example this is the list of fonts that carry U+23CE (⏎) on a fairly clean Win10 system.
Another feature of BabelMap is the option to create temporary user-defined composite fonts on the fly, as opposed to the ones "statically" defined in the registry. This is presumably done using the MLang
IMLangFontLink interface, more about that in Raymond Chen's How to display a string without those ugly boxes and Michael Kaplan's Font substitution and linking #2.
I'm trying to make something that behaves very similarly to a font manager, but I simply can't find any documentation on how I can, for example, add an OpenType font to the list NSFontManager provides. I see even Font Book shows fonts activated through a font manager app, so I want to understand what's happening under the hood. What libraries are being called?
Thank you!
It took me quite some time, but here's the way to go.
CTFontManagerRegisterFontURLs does exactly what I was looking for on macOS. Also, session 227 from 2019's WWDC has more info on it, albeit focused on iOS.
Apple has an old archived article entitled Mac OS X: Font locations and their purposes which has a section on manually managing fonts:
[...] You may install fonts by double-clicking them and following the on screen prompts in the Font Book application, or by manually copying or dragging font files to any of the standard Fonts folders in Mac OS X.
The folder in which a font is located determines who can access and use the font. For example: If a user manually installs a new font at ~/Library/Fonts/, the font is available only to that user. If a root or admin user installs the same font at /Network/Library/Fonts/, all network users can use the fonts (assuming that the network administrator has set up computers for this type of sharing).
Changes to fonts take effect when an application is opened or a user logs in to the account or computer on which the changes occurred. Duplicate fonts are resolved based on the order of precedence defined for the standard Fonts folders and are described from highest to lowest priority below.
I tested this using an empty font I created (Awfulcode-Regular.otf) and TextEdit and found the changes to be instant. I therefor conjecture that any delay is actually introduced by specific apps rather than macOS itself.
Function
CTFontManagerRegisterFontURLs(::::)
Declaration *
func CTFontManagerRegisterFontURLs(_ fontURLs: CFArray,
_ scope: CTFontManagerScope,
_ enabled: Bool,
_ registrationHandler: ((CFArray, Bool) -> Bool)?)
I am attempting to update the Windows registry to add an icon for my custom file extension, and I have thus far been unsuccessful. My current version is closest to this stackoverflow question. Unfortunately, my file's icon is still one of the generic built-in Windows icons (see screenshot below).
At this point my best guess is perhaps there is something wrong with my .ICO file. I have shared it here on Dropbox
Here is the full registry update I'm making with regedit. As you can see, I am also associating my file extension with a .bat file for execution. That works great. Also the Type displayed in Windows Explorer is PartQuest Archive which is also great (see above screenshot). Alas, no dice with the last entry for the icon.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\pqunzip]
#="PartQuest Archive"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\pqunzip\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\pqunzip\shell\open]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\pqunzip\shell\open\command]
#="\"C:\\MentorGraphics\\PartQuestTools\\SDD_HOME\\common\\win32\\scripts\\pqunzip.bat\" \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pqz]
#="pqunzip"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pqz\DefaultIcon]
#="\"C:\\MentorGraphics\\PartQuestTools\\SDD_HOME\\common\\win32\\config\\decrypted.ico\""
I have also attempted adding a ,1 to the end of the file name since the .ICO file appears it may have two icons embedded in it. This is did not make a difference.
For good measure, I have been rebooting after each change. I'm not certain if this is necessary.
Any tips from the Windows experts around here will certainly be appreciated!
So I did a little reverse-engineering to figure out the issue based on 7Zip's file associations. It turns out that the DefaultIcon key entry should be a child of the application, not the file name. So in my case I need it associated with pqunzip rather than .pqz:
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\pqunzip\DefaultIcon]
#="\"C:\\MentorGraphics\\PartQuestTools\\SDD_HOME\\common\\win32\\config\\decrypted.ico\""
For maximal clarity, this is the entire contents of my .req file that works as expected:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\pqunzip]
#="PartQuest Archive"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\pqunzip\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\pqunzip\shell\open]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\pqunzip\shell\open\command]
#="\"C:\\MentorGraphics\\PartQuestTools\\SDD_HOME\\common\\win32\\scripts\\pqunzip.bat\" \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\pqunzip\DefaultIcon]
#="\"C:\\MentorGraphics\\PartQuestTools\\SDD_HOME\\common\\win32\\config\\decrypted.ico\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pqz]
#="pqunzip"
I have been trying to add context based right click in windows explorer for a file of extension L5X. I have tried HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\l5xfile\Shell\convert\command and set the (Default) key value to the program I want to have open the file. (I want it to say "Convert" on the context menu) My first issue seems to be that in .NET (even when running elevated) I cannot change the Default key's value. My other issue is changing that Default key value doesn't do anything to the context menu. I would really prefer a no reboot required solution.
Also, I really need this to work on WinXP all the way up to Win7 (including Server 2003, 2008 and 2008R2). If I need to detect OS and do things differently for different OSes, I will but I'm really stuck here.
PS, I tried the solution found here with no luck.
You need administrator rights to write to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT is a merged view of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes. If you want to install it for just the current user, write to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes
\l5xfile\Shell\convert\command might not be the correct path, when windows looks for context menu entries for a filetype, it first looks in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.EXT, then uses the default value it finds there: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\%defaultvaluefrom.EXT%\Shell\*
XP added a new key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations designed for non-primary actions where you don't care about the ProgId/Class (The l5xfile part)
MSDN documents all these registry paths and settings, see: File Types and Verbs and File Associations
One of my programs seems to be changing the Display Properties > Appearance > Effects > Show window contents while dragging setting to off every few hours.
I'm not sure exactly which program, or when it happens. I have a number of programs that seem like likely culprits - wallpaper rotators, software for multiple monitors, multiple virual desktops and switching, and a few others.
I am just thinking to create a little batch script to run periodically and set the setting back to on.
Does anyone know how to do this in windows? I'm using xp pro sp3.
Thanks!
The best option is to do this programmatically using the supported API. i haven't tested this, but it should do the trick:
SystemParametersInfo(SPI_SETDRAGFULLWINDOWS,
TRUE,
NULL,
SPIF_UPDATEINIFILE | SPIF_SENDCHANGE)
You can use SPI_GETDRAGFULLWINDOWS to see if the the bit has been flipped to avoid unnecessarily triggering a WM_SETTINGCHANGE.
You can use RegMon to find the program that keeps changing your settings. Maybe that's a better start than hacking around it.
There is a simple and effective solution to this problem. In Notepad type the following lines :
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] "DragFullWindows"="1"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects\DragFullWindows] "CheckedValue"=dword:00000001 "UncheckedValue"=dword:00000001
Save the file as "Show Window Contents.reg" Double clicking this file and restarting will cure the problem permanently. Post a message if you find this useful.
Aravind Banerjee
It seems the registry setting which controls that preference is HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\DragFullWindows. You can read more about it here. However, trying it on my own computer does not register the change right away, so a batch script won't do it. You'll probably have to write a program to manipulate it using SystemParametersInfo(). You can pass it the SPI_SETDRAGFULLWINDOWS parameter. Here's a page explaining it more. Here's a page showing how to call it, albeit not for the same parameter.
I suspect it's kept in the registry - maybe [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] - "DragFullWindows"?
It would be easy to flip the registry setting back to "1" every hour or so with a batch file.