Removing foreign language fonts

"Social Answers" apparently means that when Microsoft doesn't have an answer (among the support people anyway) they hope someone else will come up with one.  Well how about this one....

If you look in the \Windows\Fonts\ folder you will see four strange non-font files, e.g.

     Directory of C:\Windows\Fonts

    07/13/2009  11:32 PM            26,040 GlobalMonospace.CompositeFont

    07/13/2009  11:32 PM            26,489 GlobalSansSerif.CompositeFont

    07/13/2009  11:32 PM            29,779 GlobalSerif.CompositeFont

    07/13/2009  11:32 PM            43,318 GlobalUserInterface.CompositeFont

These are not font files, they are text tables/lists referencing many or all of the other font files in the folder.  There is one directory table for each of four general font styles: 'Monospace', 'Serif', 'SansSerif', and 'UI'. 

Now the key here is that these text files describe how to display _any_ of the Unicode characters in that chosen style, by referencing which fonts contain the definitions of various ranges of Unicode characters.  So if a program wanted to display a "Naskapi Waa" the directory says that that character is one of those in

        <!-- Canadian Aboriginals        1400-167F -->

        <FontFamilyMap

            Unicode="1400-167F"

            Target="Euphemia"

            Scale="1.0" />

What programs you ask?  Why, programs using Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation, and probably .Net and SilverLight, etc. etc.  For the convenience of those programs (which don't want to know nothing 'bout fonts) the programs can just say "SansSerif" and "West-Cree Pwi", thank you.

For convenience, theirs, not yours, they want to guarantee that a complete set of all Unicode characters is available on your system, hopefully less than four times over (for the four styles).

So... it's a "system font" because of this cross-referencing to build up the entire Unicode character set by using all these separate font files.  They don't want you to delete it because, well, who knows what might happen to all those programs dependent on displaying a "Pwoo" (it doesn't look as bad as it sounds).

Hey, it's only 366 megabytes and 63 fonts on each system, right?  Don't you feel good knowing that "Phags-Pa Aspirated Fa" (a script not used since 1368) is available on every Windows 7 system?

For reference, and for a test case, one "Win won't" message is:

"Plantagent Cherokee cannot be deleted because it is a protected system font"

Um, err, it is *really* that vital to the functioning of Win7? 

How about the font for "Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics"?

"Euphemia cannot be deleted because it is a protected system font".

With apologies, my Indian friends include only those from as far north as Wisconsin, so I really don't need that one, or the fonts for the other kinds of Indians, or the Thais, and while I love the food, Ethiopic ain't a prospective need.  Did someone get slap-happy here?

I'm not against the foreign language fonts, as I have need of the Chinese ones, though I don't know if I need all _15_ of them.

(BTW: a nice way to see which might be questionable is to open up the Control Panel -> Fonts window, change display to 'details' (selection next to blue question mark), and then sort on the "Designed for" column.   Nice as you _don't_ want to wholesale delete the 'Latin' or Symbols' fonts.  But 'Khmer'??  C'mon! )

Why has Microsoft forbidden users to delete *obviously* unneeded fonts?   "Phags-Pa" was invented for Kublai Khan?!?!

So ... six years later ... we still can't remove fonts for languages we don't use and never have any intention of using. In order to "protect" me from the horror of ever seeing a blank box where Thai text should be, I'm forced to page through dozens of unwanted, unneeded, useless fonts any time I use virtually any Windows program. And after six years, this still has not been dealt with.

I'll take the risk of seeing an empty box instead of Thai text. I'm a strong person, I think I can handle it. For the love of all that's holy, unholy, or indifferent, I just want to be able to pick a font of my choice for a layout without having to page through dozens and dozens of ones for alphabets I can't read for languages I probably don't even know exist.

Microsoft used to be "You know what you're doing; we'll give you the tools to do it." Now it's like Apple: "We know what's best for you, and we'll force you to do it that way even if you mistakenly think you want something different than what we've chosen for you, because you're not smart enough to make any decisions for yourself."

It is useful to some degree, but in one sense you haven't stated anything particularly new. From Windows' inception, there have ALWAYS been fonts that should be left alone (I'm sure I'm not the only person who's been using Windows since version 3). I UNDERSTAND that. To answer the one question, I am obviously using a US English language setup. So with that in mind - why in the WORLD should a font for Urdu or Khmer be considered System Folder Protected since it has NOTHING to do with the User Interface of this version? I can understand this rationale if I change to a different country's edition (though why I would do that being a native English speaker, I have no idea) - but this serves only to infuriate and confuse folks like myself who wish to keep their systems lean. To keep several hundred megabytes of space continually occupied by fonts that have no possible reason for existence to the average user was a rather poorly conceived idea, if I may say so. I have no problem with keeping Times, Arial, Segoe UI, or any font that might be applicable to the UI of the version I have installed - but this is just plain ridiculous.

Which brings me right back to my question in my last post. Since I AM USING the English version - again, which fonts are important to THIS UI? I truly do not believe that Aparajita has any possible connection to any portion of the US English version UI - but obviously there are some that do and as of yet I have not been able to find any official mention of which fonts are truly system-required and which are not. The only documentation I see thus far is the general list of what fonts ship with Windows 7, which isn't the same thing.

Having said all that - I do wish to thank you for the confirmation that at least for now, "hiding" the fonts is pretty much useless. Those of us who HAVE tried to "hide" them already knew that, but it's nice to hear that officially acknowledged.