Removing foreign language fonts

Fonts for all languages are included in all copies of Windows 7 because we have no way to know that a user is interested in only this or that language. E.g., just because the copy of Windows was sold in the US and the UI language is English, that doesn't imply that the user has no interest in other languages.

Now, we recognize that for any user there will be only so many languages of interest and so fonts meant for other languages are not relevant. For that reason, we did some work in Windows 7 to pick smart defaults (that the user can tailor) to hide fonts so that they don't appear in pick lists. There were some constraints we had to adhere to, and that prevented us from making changes to the way GDI enumerates fonts; and as a result, while we can filter lists in font-picker UI that Windows provides, we can't filter lists in apps such as Word or Photoshop that create their own font-picker UI. This is a limitation we are aware of and may consider for future product releases.

Also, we recognize that hiding fonts may not be enough: that fonts consume system and application resources and can impact perf in those areas. There are various things we may consider to address these concerns in future product releases. In the mean time, our intent was to give users freedom to uninstall fonts they don't plan to use -- though within certain limits: we want to protect a minimal set of fonts that would be needed so that UI elements can be displayed in any language. Our reasons are that, in this connected day and age, users can end up being presented with content in potentially any language, and we want to ensure that they do not see square-box (.notdef) glyphs. Now, again, there are potentially things that we might do in future product releases that would allow us to ensure that while allowing a user to limit the fonts that an app like Photoshop loads; for Windows 7, those were beyond what we were able to achieve. So, we are stuck with a limitation that we will protect certain fonts covering all the languages we support, and therefore apps like Photoshop will load them.

Because different fonts have been used in different generations of UI design, the number of fonts we need to protect in this manner is a little bigger than it might have been hypothetically. For instance, Simsun is an older-generation UI font for Simplified Chinese, Microsoft YaHei is the AERO-theme UI font for Simplified Chinese, and so we end up protecting both. That issue doesn't add too many more fonts to lists, though.

Unfortunately, there were some fonts that were not supposed to be protected but were. This is a bug that we are aware of.

So, looking at some of the cases mentioned earlier in this thread:

• Plantagenet Cherokee and Euphemia are protected because these are the UI fonts for Cherokee and Canadian Syllabics
• Aharoni, Andalus, and Angsana (UPC / New) are all fonts that can be deleted by the user
• Aparajita is a case that was not intended to be protected but, due to a bug, is.

Now, I can tell by looking over the thread that some may say, "But I really don't care if I see a square box glyph instead of a Naskapi Waa." I can understand that. From a product perspective, we need to make choices in terms of what can reasonably managed to provide the best overall customer experience. Today, that is to make sure that minimal set of UI fonts is always there. As mentioned earlier, perhaps in future releases it may be possible to do more.

Btw, there are popular apps that install more fonts than those that ship with Windows, so the length of font lists is more impacted by those. Of course, Windows doesn't do anything that should hinder you from uninstalling any of those fonts.

I hope this is of some help.

Peter

I too find it fairly puzzling why Asian/Middles East/Arabic font sets even show up in the fonts folder of an English lingo system? - why are those installed by default at all? Logically it should be optional (manual add) at best.

EXACTLY!! In defense of Windows 7 I must say that I like the OS overall (the Libraries concept just doesn't make sense to me, but that's another topic). This font thing, however, has me scratching my head in befuddlement - WHY ARE THEY HERE in this language pack at ALL with the user given no choice to NOT add them?

I too find it fairly puzzling why Asian/Middles East/Arabic font sets even show up in the fonts folder of an English lingo system? - why are those installed by default at all? Logically it should be optional (manual add) at best. The deeper you look into Win7 the more you get annoyed by useless features, sorry, I have to say that!

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.