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

Peter (and to those of MSFT who have responded) - thank you for your thoughtful and detailed replies. Obviously there is and will continue to be a vast difference of opinion between our viewpoints as users and what has evidently been the house view, as it were; folks like myself see this as a misdirected example of MS's attempts to please everybody and in this case appears to have placated very few. Google this topic. Those of us posting here aren't by any means the only folks a bit miffed by IskoolaPoota or Kokila :)

It appears then, in summary:

Microsoft stuffed a bunch of fonts that will be of use to a narrow range of users in the United States into Windows 7 and then proceeded to lock many of them under the heading of "needed for the operation of the OS so don't touch these". Some foreign fonts have been protected that should not have been. Only one of those has been named in this thread specifically (Aparajita) though there may be others. Some foreign fonts CAN be deleted - but as yet, it appears that the best way to do so is trial and error (Whoops. This one won't let me delete it. Must be one of those "system" fonts) as there is still no list stating specifics as to which really, truly ARE system fonts and which ones can be stripped by the safe mode/ownership procedures and which are incorrectly tagged and which ones, when removed, really will hose your system (hope you've got that restore DVD handy).

Seriously: were there THAT MANY user requests for this language interoptability during beta testing? For Chinese, Urdu, Cambodian, Khmer and other nationality Asian/Arabic types to be embedded into the OS? Windows XP had it right - foreign fonts shipped with it and keyboard mapping was available but deletion was always a given.

The point has been made that other programs may dump more fonts into Windows than what has been shipped currently in this new OS. Very true. And yep, you betcha I can/will delete those too if some of them prove unsuitable for my purposes :)

As it is evident that there will be no resolution on this topic until possibly Windows 7 SP1 (if then), and as I have the Home Premium Family Pack with only one system currently updated, I will use up the second license on my laptop and then proceed to go font by font to see which one's removal will turn it into toast. This should be interesting :)

Chris, even if I go into the (for me) uncharted waters of ownership and permissions, I want to remove ALL fonts that are not English, or are NOT required for Microsoft and other after-market programs. 

Can I (we) get a list of such required fonts?

I'm in over my head. 

What is Orb? 

Is there a way to allow the Administrator to have total privileges to add and remove any files, included said "Protected" files without using Orb?  I am the only user of my computer, and am listed as Administrator.