Fonts

[computerwizkid]

I am trying to make my Windows 98 look better and I need to make sure that everything that usually displays MS San Serif as Tahoma.I have already tried the font substitution way by editing Win.ini.

Reply!

[Tihiy]

Edit gdi.exe with Resource Workshop/ExeScope and change MS Sans Serif string with Tahoma. Set Tahoma everywhere in Display properties.

[computerwizkid]

Where can I download BRW?And how can I open Gdi.exe without going into read-only mode in Exescope?

[j7n]

I have already tried the font substitution way by editing Win.ini.

For substitution to have effect, the font you are trying to substitute should be deleted.

I have deleted the real MS Sans Serif. But substitution did not always work. Therefore I have created a copy of the Tahoma font with edited name to say "MS Sans Serif". However, now some dialogs are broken.

(1) In many cases authors have allowed no padding space in the width of their controls. If text using Tahoma font would render longer, the last word would be word-wrapped and invisible.

(2) In some cases non-Windows dialogs use font height 5 pt (IIRC). With MS Sans Serif this results in the normal height of 8 pt. Tahoma font however is being drawn in 5 points and is mostly illegible.

Case 1 can be solved by editing respective programs using Resource Hacker. If you edit carefully there is no harm in distributing the modified executables (usually).

For case 2 I have kept original bitmap font as "MS Sans Serix". I then open those broken programs with a hex editor and rename all occurences of "MS Sans Serif" to "MS Sans Serix". You must make sure not to distribute such badly modified programas as other users won't have MS Sans Serix on their systems.

Then create font substitutions also for "MS Dialog", "Helv", "MS Shell Dlg", "MS Shell Dlg 2", some common font names used in dialogs to be replaced with Tahoma. This will improve looks of some Win16 programs, which previously used "System" or bold "MS Sans Serif" font (both are similar, did not pay much attention to tell).

Would editing gdi.exe solve these two problems I encountered?

Edited March 13, 2008 by j7n

[computerwizkid]

Just did the GDI.exe way and IT WORKS!!!

Found new software.Copylock,a thing similar to Replacer but for Windows 9x.

SWEET!

[j7n]

So, only Windows built-in dialogs are now displayed using Tahoma? Or is MS Sans Serif now completely overriden and inacessible?

Found new software.Copylock,a thing similar to Replacer but for Windows 9x.

Old fashioned way of booting into DOS or boot CD is just as good.

[computerwizkid]

I accidently deleted CopyLock and the zip file.When I go back to download it again,the download says PAGE NOT FOUND or LINK BROKEN OR TIMEOUT.Anyone have an extra link????

[Aloha]

Is this what you talked about, Computerwizkid?

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/copylock.html

[computerwizkid]

yea