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Using New Fonts For Paint.NET


HITMAN-X-

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Nice tutorial.

Just remember, as Rick stated in another post, Paint.NET supports TrueType fonts, not OpenFont fonts.

So, if you know of a good source of FREE True Type fonts, post links here...

I don't know what are "OpenFont" fonts, did you mean "OpenType" fonts ?

Do you mean that OpenType fonts do not work ? And why ? Is that because most of them embed restrictions that restricts Windows of enumerating their glyphs? Well, there does exist OpenType fonts without those restrictions. The only difference being that they can support many more glyph formats and can embed additional tables (such as "feature" tables enabling fine typography or simply absolutely required to support some complex scripts which need contextual ligatures and complex glyph positioning.)

Does this mean that PaintDotNet cannot use these ligature tables, and then cannot access to their glyphs if they are not directly mapped with a Unicode codepoints ? Or does this mean that PaintDotNet will not use fonts that have more than 256 glyphs mapped without reference to Unicode?

Or does this need that PaintDotNet does not know how to process and render glyphs contained in OpenType fonts and that contain Postscript-style Bezier splines, and that it will only accept curves described with TrueType-style Bezier splines?

Note: it you can process cubic splines, you immediately can process quadradic splines, because all quadratic splines are a subset of cubic splines:

* the conversion from quadratic to cubic is exact, you don't need to add additional control points to compute the geometry as they can be infered automatically. You don't need to convert these fonts.

* the reverse conversion requires an approximation by splitting some curves with heavy curvature by adding more control points and then simplifying it by changing pairs of control points into a single one: the glyphs using only quadratic splines will require to compute the geometry of more vertices and control points, and the converted font files will be larger in size).

* for this reason, most modern font files are made now with cubics instead of quadratics.

* some more recent font formats (used in some font design tools) use NURBS which provide more consistant results and that are much easier to position precisely and fit the wanted metrics when designing the glyph shapes : NURBS are later approximated to cubics for building compatible fonts.

Very basic OpenType fonts can also contain bitmap glyphs: as they look very bad except at a single resolution, this is just used for compatibility by converting automatically some old and unsupported font formats; but they exist in Windows anyway, notably for Chinese and Japanese users that can rapidly produce their own ideographic shapes in a basic bitmap editor, and save them in a personal font directly usable with their IME and keyboard layout). Many old bitmap fonts have been converted automatically into approximative vector fonts (TrueType or OpenType).

OpenType may also contain hinting instructions: these hints, inserted in the glyph instructions, are generally not enumerated by Windows (their use in a font requires a licence to implement these hints in a renderer, because their definition and interpretation in a renderer is patented, notably the hinting instructions for ClearType), but with some fonts you cannot get consistent results for showing glyphs at small sizes with good-looking shape (and typographical "color", i.e. consistant weights and metrics) if you ignore these hints. I suppose that PaintDotNet will not process these hinting instructions, but it should not prohibit using these fonts to extract unhinted glyphs and build drawing shapes from them (for example to build Direct3D or OpenGL object templates, or simple 2D geometric transforms like rotated text in GDI+, which also ignores these hinting instructions when glyphs are rotated at arbitrary angles or when the text is scaled at sizes larger than what the OpenType renderer cache will maintain in memory for prerendered glyphs).

So can you be more specific about which font capabilities Paint.NET does not already support though direct calls to GDI+ or though the .Net graphics environment and libraries? Is that because of limitations in some version of the .Net CLR for some older versions of Windows?

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I'm having a little trouble with installing the fonts. Some help? Everytime when I am just about to install my fonts into that main Fonts folder; Step 3, I can't. An error always comes up sayin, "The BACK.TTF file is currently being used and cannot be replaced. Wait until Windows is finished using the file, and then try again."

What do I do?

First delete the font from the Fonts control folder to uninstall it. Make sure that you don't have a program (such as a web browser in its fonts preference settings or a word processor, or a word processor extension in your email agent) holding a lock on it: close the browser, the email agent and any graphics application that includes a font selection menu.

Make sure that this font is not used in your current theme (revert to a standard Windows Theme to make sure that it is not used by window captions, or as a dialog font).

Also exit your instant messenger completely: some of its themes may use various fonts. Close the programs running with a icon in the system tray: some of them use various fonts automatically, only according to their metrics or characteristics, or can use any installed font as a possible fallback.

Some applications are very unfriendly, and maintain a lock on ALL fonts they've seen once while enumerating the fonts in the Windows fonts folder, as long as they running, even if they haven't even needed to use them to render text. Make sure you exit those apps (generally these are the applications that maintain a permanent menu for selecting fonts, instead of generating the menu items on the fly, only when needed, and maintaining a lock only on the visible menu items. This is supposed to speedup the display of these menus, but actually it just makes the startup of those apps very long, and has the very negative effect of using too many GDI or memory ressources as long as they are running, so the system will actually be slower: upgrade those apps, because Windows is smarter and can use a dynamic LRU cache for fonts)

If the font is required by Windows or by the display driver (because it is one of the core fonts needed by the shell or the default Windows Theme, or because this is one of the few default fonts used as fallbacks when a font does not contain some character, or because it is used by the Shell such as the special font containing some window button icons), you won't be able to delete it: these are normally only only the few core fonts owned by Microsoft and preinstalled on you version of Windows (and updated only through Windows Updates).

Once you have successfully deleted that font, you may need to reboot in order to completely unlock it with some older version of Windows (due to the GDI font cache): this is generally needed for most legacy bitmap fonts (in the deprecated .FON format)

Then install the new font.

Avoid all fonts in the legacy .FON format (because they are actually DLL's, which you may have difficulties to remove from memory, due to the system's DLL cache, which maintains these DLL's open for possible later reuse unless you have tweaked your system with registry settings to automatically close DLLs that are no longer in use in any application... Some of these fonts include the fonts used in the DOS-compatible text Console : close any console windows if it's open; note that some hidden consoles may be used in some background applications such as those running in your taskbar).

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I don't know what are "OpenFont" fonts, did you mean "OpenType" fonts ?

Do you mean that OpenType fonts do not work ? And why ? Is that because most of them embed restrictions that restricts Windows of enumerating their glyphs? Well, there does exist OpenType fonts without those restrictions. The only difference being that they can support many more glyph formats and can embed additional tables (such as "feature" tables enabling fine typography or simply absolutely required to support some complex scripts which need contextual ligatures and complex glyph positioning.)

I haven't checked how old BoltBait's post was, but Paint.NET has supported OpenType fonts since 3.5.

KaHuc.png
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restart pdn and it should work. If it doesn't, I have no idea what is going on

No, Paint.NET is not spyware...but, installing it is an IQ test. ~BoltBait

Blend modes are like the filling in your sandwich. It's the filling that can change your experience of the sandwich. ~Ego Eram Reputo

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I'm new here and would like to ask if this is where to post this question [probably not]

I read this thread and another that taught me how to install fonts so I can use them in paint.net

very informative - i now know where to find kool fonts and what type to look for and install!

i'm still having problems with the "sharpness" of the fonts when using a white font with a dark blue color.

or even the black on white. They just look really "fuzzy" when viewing in paint.

Can anyone help me with this? Maybe some links to good thread tutorials?

I'm searching but good ones can take some searching for.

post-70740-128192485769_thumb.png

can anyone also point me in the direction of some good threads on making cool font's like Ego Eram Reputo

and BoltBait [theres another cool white one one of the admin's has that's raised like 3D i can't remember]

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The font I used in my sig/avatar combo is called Designer Block. You can get it at dafont:

http://www.dafont.co...=designer+block

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I've gotten a slew of fonts from dafont.com and there are some that put those wingdingy things to shame. To name just a few......

Angels, dragons, gryphons, ogres, dwarves, heiroglyphs, toons, you name it it's probably there. Some come in both .ttf and .otf. In Win7 all you have to do is click on the download to open it, after unzipping. In the top left corner is an install button. Click on that and it automatically installs.

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Yes just follow the instructions given in the first post of this thread. Vista and Win7 are virtually the same in this regard.

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On 2/4/2007 at 3:03 PM, HITMAN-X- said:

I keep seeing people asking how they get new fonts and how they would use them in Paint.NET. So I made this tutorial to help them people out.

 

View Tutorial: Adding Fonts For Paint.NET (Windows 10)

View Tutorial: Adding Fonts For Paint.NET (Windows 7)
View Tutorial: Adding Fonts For Paint.NET (Windows XP)

Edited May 13, 2012 to remove old links used during the website move. Links above are working however if there any issues, please let me know and I will try my best to fix it.

Yo so like I know this is 10 years old but it really helped tbh

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I have Windows 7 at Harley and I use RegisterFont to install my fonts because of admin rights, when the fonts appear on Paint.net they don't show up and they are just yellow warning signs, if you get what I'm saying. Can you help me please?

Big McThankies From McSpankies!

sakana sig resized.png

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