Font substitution

[Eric]

Word use font substitution when it's running on a computer which lacks a font
that a document needs. How does Word decide what font to use? Are these rules
documented anywhere, either by Microsoft or elsewhere?

Thanks.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Something I've wondered myself. If we're to get an answer, we'll probably
get it from the more knowledgeable folks in the word.printingfonts NG, to
which I'm cross-posting this.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

It seems as though its first choice is the font(s) assigned to Normal
style. (Each paragraph style can have a regular font, an Asian font,
and a complex font associated with it -- those are categories left
over from Windows XP.) If you go to the Font Substitution dialog (does
it exist in 2003? I stuck it on my QAT after I discovered it), it
tells you what font it has used for each of the fonts not on the
system, and offers you the opportunities either to change the
substitution to any other font you've got, or to make the substitution
permanent, in which case the record of the unavailable font is
expunged from your document.

For Unicode ranges not covered by "omnibus" fonts like Arial Unicode
and Tahoma, presumably it hunts for any font that covers them (but
that's not a problem most users will encounter).

 

[Tom Ferguson]

The simple part of the answer is that there are font substitution tables
both in certain printer drivers and in the windows registry.

The first, the substitution tables in the printer drivers, only is seen if
the printer has fonts internally, in the printer ROM, usually, and available
for use by Windows. The idea is that printing is faster if these device
fonts are used rather than 'soft fonts'. The down side is that sometimes the
font does not march in some way. Particularly a problem with symbol fonts.
For example, with Postscript printer drivers, Helvetica is often substituted
with Arial. In contrast, for non-Postscript printers, Helvetica is
substituted by Arial. The first is done by the substitution table in the
printer driver, unless modified while the second is done by the Windows
registry subst. table, unless modified.

As for the rest, fonts specified in the document by the writer or editor
from the assortment available on their computer but not available on the
recipient-user's computer, it gets quite vague. I have never seen any kind
of full discussion about it - and I have looked at various times in the
past.

For now, I can say that PANOSE {do a Google or BING search} data for the
font plays a role in the attempt to find a match.

If you have a particular question or concern about it, perhaps someone can
provide a better answer.

Tom

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It's the PANOSE substitution that's a mystery to me. I have to assume that
it would have to be encoded in the font itself. I rarely run across this but
recently got a document formatted in AGaramond (which I don't have).
Word/Windows was substituting TNR (which seems to confirm Peter's assertion
that the default font is preferred, though I think it's more likely that it
substitutes TNR for any serif font and Arial for any sans serif). I changed
the substitution to Garamond and believe the result was pretty much what the
author intended.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

How would it know serif from sans serif? It would have to have a list
of all possible font names to know that!

When I installed Adobe CS4 Design Standard, it crammed my fonts folder
with fonts I don't need -- six ACaslons, four AGaramondPros, and who
knows how many farther down the alphabet -- without, AFAICT, any
option to not install the fonts in a Custom installation.

 

[Character]

It's the PANOSE substitution that's a mystery to me. I have to assume
that it would have to be encoded in the font itself. I rarely run across
this but recently got a document formatted in AGaramond (which I don't
have). Word/Windows was substituting TNR (which seems to confirm Peter's
assertion that the default font is preferred, though I think it's more
likely that it substitutes TNR for any serif font and Arial for any sans
serif). I changed the substitution to Garamond and believe the result
was pretty much what the author intended.

The only way to tell whether a font is serif or sans-serif is by the
Panose encoding. The encoding that's in most fonts, though, is
practically random. Very few foundries code it completely, and because
much of the coding is subjective, what is essentially the same
typeface may have very different internal Panose descriptions. I just
opened three different versions of "Times"; one of them didn't even
specificy a serif/sans distinction, leaving that particular item as "ANY".

- Character

 

[Character]

It's the PANOSE substitution that's a mystery to me. I have to assume
that it would have to be encoded in the font itself. I rarely run across
this but recently got a document formatted in AGaramond (which I don't
have). Word/Windows was substituting TNR (which seems to confirm Peter's
assertion that the default font is preferred, though I think it's more
likely that it substitutes TNR for any serif font and Arial for any sans
serif). I changed the substitution to Garamond and believe the result
was pretty much what the author intended.

The only way to tell whether a font is serif or sans-serif is by the
Panose encoding. The encoding that's in most fonts, though, is
practically random. Very few foundries code it completely, and because
much of the coding is subjective, what is essentially the same
typeface may have very different internal Panose descriptions. I just
opened three different versions of "Times"; one of them didn't even
specificy a serif/sans distinction, leaving that particular item as "ANY".

- Character

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

For some reason I'm seeing your post three times.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Yves Dhondt]

It works the other way around. In a Word document, some basic information
about the fonts used by that document is stored (panose1, pitch,
font-family, ...). Based on that information it is (theoretically) possible
to decide if a missing font was a font with serifs or not.

I do not know if Word has its own font substitution logic, but normally
that's the task of the OS. In Windows, the substitution rules are stored
inside the registry. For example, there is the mapping of each font-family
onto a 'basic' font (Arial, TNR, Courier New, ...).

The Garamond font belongs to the "roman" family, which uses TNR as its
fallback font.

Yves

How would it know serif from sans serif? It would have to have a list
of all possible font names to know that!

When I installed Adobe CS4 Design Standard, it crammed my fonts folder
with fonts I don't need -- six ACaslons, four AGaramondPros, and who
knows how many farther down the alphabet -- without, AFAICT, any
option to not install the fonts in a Custom installation.