Installing Fonts

[enjay]

I need to deploy some font files across our computers - under XP, I could do this with an MSI which copied the .ttf files into C:\Windows\Fonts, however that doesn't seem to work under Win7. Any ideas how I do this? FWIW, I'm trying to install the Nelson Handwriting fonts.

Thanks!

[dhicks]

Any ideas how I do this?

We install fonts via a post-imaging batch script:

echo Installing Sassoon fonts...
copy "\\ks-nas1\Software\Sassoon Primary Infant\sapi____.TTF" %systemroot%\fonts > nul 2>&1
regedit /s "\\ks-nas1\Software\Sassoon Primary Infant\Sassoon.reg"

Sassoon.reg contains:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts]
"SassoonPrimaryInfant Regular (TrueType)"="sapi____.TTF"

It certainly seems to work on Windows 7 - adjust paths and filenames accordingly for your own system, of course.

[sted]

ive used an msi created with winstallle to do this on win7 before worked no problems

[Arthur]

I could do this with an MSI which copied the .ttf files into C:\Windows\Fonts, however that doesn't seem to work under Win7.

Are you registering the fonts in the program you are using to create the MSI, rather than just copying them into the Fonts folder?



Another option would be to use FontReg.

[enjay]

Tried running the MSI I created in WinInstall, but that doesn't install the fonts. None of the MSI authoring programs I have contain any option to register a font.

I'll try the script which David suggests. FontReg looks promising too, can it be distributed though?

[Arthur]

FontReg looks promising too, can it be distributed though?

I'm pretty certain it can be. All of Kai Liu's programs are open source.

[Stuart_C]

Here's the lines I added to one of my start up scripts to copy a font onto the compuer

copy "\\<servername>\<Share>\font\drago__r.ttf" "c:\windows\fonts" /y
reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts" /v "Dragonwyck (True Type)" /t REG_SZ /d "drago__r.ttf" /f

You need to register the font on the PC in order for it to be seen. Just copying it on doens't work. This can be achieved by and admin login on to each PC and opening the fints folder.

This is obviously a pain in the bottom...

[Arthur]

Tried running the MSI I created in WinInstall, but that doesn't install the fonts. None of the MSI authoring programs I have contain any option to register a font.

If you edit your MSI in InstEd or Orca, you could add an entry to the Font table which registers each font.

[enjay]

Thanks Arthur, I'll give that a try, certainly better than an admin install on every PC!

[enjay]

Okay, I see my problem. The MSI was good, but the deployment process I use creates CAB files from MSIs and deploys those through Windows Update, and that evidently breaks the font registration. I've deployed the MSI the conventional way through Group Policy and it works fine.

[AngryTechnician]

None of the MSI authoring programs I have contain any option to register a font.

The free version of Advanced Installer will do it.