What About Updating Fonts?

[appp]

I wonder if it's worth including updated Times, Arial, Courier, etc fonts. I wonder which of these offerings is a better candidate to pick up this slack.

Backporting from XP is probably an overkill, because they went OTF rather than pure TTF. The so-called Web Core Fonts are, however, out there, despite MS withdrew them from the web-site a wile back. It is even legal to redistribute with the license file.

http://www.zeuscat.com/andrew/software/corefonts/ , for example.

[MDGx]

I wonder if it's worth including updated Times, Arial, Courier, etc fonts. I wonder which of these offerings is a better candidate to pick up this slack.

Backporting from XP is probably an overkill, because they went OTF rather than pure TTF. The so-called Web Core Fonts are, however, out there, despite MS withdrew them from the web-site a wile back. It is even legal to redistribute with the license file.

http://www.zeuscat.com/andrew/software/corefonts/ , for example.

If you ever installed 98SE2ME [ http://www.msfn.org/board/?showtopic=37302 ], you may have noticed it installs 70 fonts from WinME Setup CABs into %windir%\FONTS, out of which 52 are TTF + 18 FON [raster]. To see the entire list, please go to this page:

http://www.mdgx.com/98-5.htm#KRM9S

Some of the fonts bundled with WinME are newer [updated builds] than the ones linked at zeuscat.com.

Another site that offers same fonts:

http://beebo.org/core-fonts/

Please notice that as far as I'm aware these fonts are intended only for Windows 3.1x/95/95a OSR1/95B OSR2.0-2.1/95C OSR2.5/NT4 without SP4 or newer.

Windows 98/98 SE/ME + MS IE 5.5 SP2/6.0/6.0 SP1 all install newer or identical versions.

The only files newer than WinME's [6-8-2000] are the 4 Trebuchet fonts [4-9-2001], all others are older.

I've tried some WinXP fonts with 98SE [don't recall which, was a while back], unfortunately didn't work.

[erpdude8]

The latest version of fonts Arial, Comic Sans MS, Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Tahoma, Times New Roman and Microsoft Sans Serif are included in XP SP2. I installed those on my old W98se and my HP computer with WinME and they work ok. The Microsoft Sans Serif font file (micross.ttf) is featured in XP only but that font works under any 32-bit version of Windows.

I have an unofficial font pack I made myself which has those updated font files from XP that can install under W9x systems but I'm not going to release it. i'm not allowed to distribute it anyway.

[MDGx]

The latest version of fonts Arial, Comic Sans MS, Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Tahoma, Times New Roman and Microsoft Sans Serif are included in XP SP2.  I installed those on my old W98se and my HP computer with WinME and they work ok.  The Microsoft Sans Serif font file (micross.ttf) is featured in XP only but that font works under any 32-bit version of Windows.

I have an unofficial font pack I made myself which has those updated font files from XP that can install under W9x systems but I'm not going to release it.  i'm not allowed to distribute it anyway.

I extracted the TT_ [expanded to TTF] fonts from Win2003 SP1 RC2, and found out they are all compatible with Win9x/ME:

ARIAL.TTF

ARIALBD.TTF

ARIALBI.TTF

ARIALI.TTF

COUR.TTF

COURBD.TTF

COURBI.TTF

COURI.TTF

GEORGIA.TTF

GEORGIAB.TTF

GEORGIAI.TTF

GEORGIAZ.TTF

MICROSS.TTF

TAHOMA.TTF

TAHOMABD.TTF

TIMES.TTF

TIMESBD.TTF

TIMESBI.TTF

TIMESI.TTF

VERDANA.TTF

VERDANAB.TTF

VERDANAI.TTF

VERDANAZ.TTF

These to my knowledge are the newest builds.

The only 1 that doesn't work in 9x environment is L_10646.TTF because it's Unicode.

I took these from XP SP2 [like u said, they all work]:

COMIC.TTF

KARTIKA.TTF

LSANS.TTF

LSANSD.TTF

LSANSDI.TTF

LSANSI.TTF

TREBUC.TTF

VRINDA.TTF

I'll add these fonts to 98SE2XP [soon to be released B)].

Thanks for the heads up.

[erpdude8]

according to this short article at this Bink.nu site:

http://bink.nu/Article3605.bink

Win2003 SP1 RTM, Win2003 x64 edition and WinXP x64 edition will come out next Monday, March 28, 2005. I'll check back with the Bink.nu site next Monday to see if Win2003 SP1 is in final stage.

If you're going to release a 98SE2XP pack and an updated 98SE2ME pack with the newer font files, be sure to include the fontinst.exe & fontinst.inf files.

This is what the fontinst.inf file should look like: (example only)

[fonts]

ARIAL.TTF

ARIALBD.TTF

ARIALBI.TTF

ARIALI.TTF

COUR.TTF

COURBD.TTF

COURBI.TTF

COURI.TTF

GEORGIA.TTF

GEORGIAB.TTF

GEORGIAI.TTF

GEORGIAZ.TTF

MICROSS.TTF

TAHOMA.TTF

TAHOMABD.TTF

TIMES.TTF

TIMESBD.TTF

TIMESBI.TTF

TIMESI.TTF

VERDANA.TTF

VERDANAB.TTF

VERDANAI.TTF

VERDANAZ.TTF

COMIC.TTF

KARTIKA.TTF

LSANS.TTF

LSANSD.TTF

LSANSDI.TTF

LSANSI.TTF

TREBUC.TTF

VRINDA.TTF

When running the fontinst.exe file, it installs the fonts listed in the fontinst.inf file. A reboot is required in order to use the updated font files after installing them this way.