Office 2008 Required fonts

A related question:

Office 2008 has placed fonts in /Library/Fonts/Microsoft/

Many of these fonts are the same as already exist in /Library/Fonts/

From the font menu in Word it appears Office can use all fonts from /Library/Fonts/ and is not limited to fonts inside the Microsoft subdirectory. True?

If I disable fonts in Font Book will that speed up launch of Word (which now takes over a minute on G5 dual 1.8 GHz Mac with 2.5GB RAM).
 >> Stay informed about: Office 2008 Required fonts 

>On the other hand, various features of Office 2008 will be broken or
not look good unless you leave the fonts it installs in place.<<





There are 127 items in the Microsoft folder in /Library/Fonts.

Is there a list of which are specifically required by "various features of Office 2008"? Surely not all 127 of them, right?
 >> Stay informed about: Office 2008 Required fonts 

On 2/15/08 1:49 PM, in article ee8c2da.2.TakeThisOut@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
"drdocument@officeformac.com" wrote:

> There are 127 items in the Microsoft folder in /Library/Fonts.
>
> Is there a list of which are specifically required by "various features of
> Office 2008"? Surely not all 127 of them, right?

We are working on getting a list of required fonts.


--
Diane, Microsoft Mac MVP (MVPs are not Microsoft Employees)
Entourage Help Page <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
 >> Stay informed about: Office 2008 Required fonts 

On 2/15/08 6:37 PM, in article
C3DB8C84.13E2D%diane@invalid.entourage.mvps.org, "Diane Ross"
wrote:

> On 2/15/08 1:49 PM, in article ee8c2da.2.RemoveThis@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
> "drdocument@officeformac.com" wrote:
>
>> There are 127 items in the Microsoft folder in /Library/Fonts.
>>
>> Is there a list of which are specifically required by "various features of
>> Office 2008"? Surely not all 127 of them, right?
>
> We are working on getting a list of required fonts.
>
Does not include 2008 new fonts, but this list is a good start.

<http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Disable-Fonts.html>

Where the Office 2004 applications (only) are concerned ... do not disable
these fonts:
Arial
Batang
Gulim
Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro W3
Lucida Grande
MS PMincho
MS Gothic
MS Mincho
MS Pgothic
MT Extra
PmingLiu
Simsun
Symbol
Times New Roman
Verdana
Wingding

The new Office 2008 Fonts:
Calibri
Sonsolas
Cambria
Constantia
Corbel
Candara
There could be others, but these are the ones I know that are new.

This should help until we get the official list.
--
Diane, Microsoft Mac MVP (MVPs are not Microsoft Employees)
Entourage Help Page <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
 >> Stay informed about: Office 2008 Required fonts 

Really, we have no idea When you switch from one of the sample
templates to another, various fonts will be called in.

Microsoft will take care never to ship a template that uses fonts they have
NOT supplied.

But Word is a Unicode application. If a font it's looking for is not
available, it will take the next most similar font it can find.

I don't think you will break anything by removing all of the Microsoft
fonts. However, I suspect you will get anything BUT "great looking
documents" if you do that

They are working on the launch-time issues. Currently, there is also a
severe performance issue on the PowerPC processors, which they are also
working on.

I would suggest that if a user is loading less than 500 fonts, then probably
fonts is not the issue.

However, it is also true that Office 2008 performs a lot better with today's
modern processors. Despite Mr Job's legendary reality distortion field that
told us about the PPC "super computer" for years, there is a reason he
switched. That reason is that he could not extract enough grunt from the
venerable PPC to do a good job with modern software.

However, performance will get a lot better over the next few months!

Cheers

On 16/02/08 8:49 AM, in article ee8c2da.2 RemoveThis @webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
"drdocument@officeformac.com" wrote:

>
>
>> On the other hand, various features of Office 2008 will be broken or
> not look good unless you leave the fonts it installs in place.<<
>
>
>
>
>
> There are 127 items in the Microsoft folder in /Library/Fonts.
>
> Is there a list of which are specifically required by "various features of
> Office 2008"? Surely not all 127 of them, right?

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:john@mcghie.name
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
 >> Stay informed about: Office 2008 Required fonts 

Thanks.

For my purposes "required fonts" means fonts without which Office applications will fail to launch or run.

It would be helpful if we had a list of "required" fonts (if any). It would also be helpful to have a matrix of which fonts are used in which templates.

For my part (and I know this is just me) I use Office apps for business documents and in that part of my business I could get by with four or five basic fonts. I use Word for its powerful word processing features (sections, line numbering, headers and footers, table of contents, index). I think in all the years since Word version 1 I have only used one or two templates, ever.

I mourn the loss of easy-to use macro recording, failure to display section number in status bar, and inability to tab between fields in TOC and Index entry boxes, about all of which I have given feedback.

First and foremost I need a powerful word processor with cross-platform capabilities. I would like to streamline my installation of Office for best performance and dispense with components I do not use.

I have other applications my prepress work.

Ken
 >> Stay informed about: Office 2008 Required fonts 

Hi Ken:

As far as I know, Office 2008 components will all run without ANY of the
Microsoft fonts installed.

We are trying to get a "list". But we don't have it, and Microsoft doesn't
have it, and they're a tad too busy right now to produce it. So it's not
going to happen ‹ not soon, anyway.

The matrix is an interesting idea. However, really we don't need it. The
Compatibility Report will tell you if a document is requesting fonts you
don't have, and enable you to switch them for ones you do. Since this works
dynamically on any document, it's actually more convenient than the matrix
would be.

Sorry, but I just don't think 127 fonts is ever going to be important enough
to show on anyone's radar.

There are other things we need them to pay attention to right now, wouldn't
you agree?

Cheers

On 16/02/08 11:26 PM, in article ee8c2da.6 DeleteThis @webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
"drdocument@officeformac.com" wrote:

> Thanks.
>
> For my purposes "required fonts" means fonts without which Office applications
> will fail to launch or run.
>
> It would be helpful if we had a list of "required" fonts (if any). It would
> also be helpful to have a matrix of which fonts are used in which templates.
>
> For my part (and I know this is just me) I use Office apps for business
> documents and in that part of my business I could get by with four or five
> basic fonts. I use Word for its powerful word processing features (sections,
> line numbering, headers and footers, table of contents, index). I think in all
> the years since Word version 1 I have only used one or two templates, ever.
>
> I mourn the loss of easy-to use macro recording, failure to display section
> number in status bar, and inability to tab between fields in TOC and Index
> entry boxes, about all of which I have given feedback.
>
> First and foremost I need a powerful word processor with cross-platform
> capabilities. I would like to streamline my installation of Office for best
> performance and dispense with components I do not use.
>
> I have other applications my prepress work.
>
> Ken

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:john@mcghie.name
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
 >> Stay informed about: Office 2008 Required fonts 

I agree. Focus on the basics. (Like section number in status bar, etc., stability and performance.)

Good point about Compatibility Report.

Even though 127 fonts doesn't seem like too many these days, every font is another file or set of files using up hard drive space, and uses more RAM, and the cumulative effect, like barnacles on the hull of a boat, degrades performance. Is it really important to change the default font from Times to Cambria? How often is there a meaningful difference between Helvetica and Arial? (sigh)

It might be a good idea to provide a "basic" install option, with an expanded option for desired template groups and their fonts (or even an installer option to select individual font families), much like the option to optionally install different proofing tools for different languages. I think I'll suggest that in a feedback.

Thanks for your wise counsel.

Ken
 >> Stay informed about: Office 2008 Required fonts 

Hi Ken:

On 17/02/08 1:23 AM, in article ee8c2da.8.RemoveThis@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
"drdocument@officeformac.com" wrote:

> another file or set of files using up hard drive space, and uses more RAM, and
> the cumulative effect, like barnacles on the hull of a boat, degrades
> performance.

Absolutely! To go with Moore's law of computing, there is now another one
from someone at NASA that says "Software gets slower faster than computers
get faster" or something to that effect...

> Is it really important to change the default font from Times to
> Cambria?

It depends on your sensibilities Cambria is a much nicer font, and
supports proper kerning and real ligatures. Times has always seemed too
tightly kerned to me. Don't forget, it was invented by the London Times to
fit the most amount of words on the page, back when paper was the most
expensive part of making a newspaper! Young people find it is simply hard
to read! Even the normally rabid anti-Microsoft typographers have
grudgingly admitted that the "C-series" Microsoft fonts are quite a nice
job.

> How often is there a meaningful difference between Helvetica and
> Arial? (sigh)

Any time you want a Unicode character Helvetica hasn't got Actually, I
prefer Arial, it has a slightly lighter weight than looks nicer to my eyes.

> It might be a good idea to provide a "basic" install option, with an expanded
> option for desired template groups and their fonts (or even an installer
> option to select individual font families), much like the option to optionally
> install different proofing tools for different languages. I think I'll suggest
> that in a feedback.

You already have the ability to achieve that aim: Do a "Custom" install and
you can pick and choose.

However, it could still be worth making the suggestion. I don't think the
"Minimal" option exists any more. You can customise to produce whatever you
like, but previous PC Installers from Microsoft used to have "Minimal"
(Laptop), "Recommended (Desktop)" and "Complete" (For people who wanted to
travel without the installation disks).

They also had a "Custom" section where you could fine-tune the results. In
OS X, we have simplicity at the expense of some convenience

Take care...

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:john@mcghie.name
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
 >> Stay informed about: Office 2008 Required fonts 

On a related topic, I cleaned from my UK system 10.5.2 a load of
Apple-installed Asian fonts and now when I launch one of my Office 2004
apps (Powerpoint I think) an alert flashes up to notify me that font
***** (unintelligible hieroglyphics) is missing. Doesn't seem to impair
performance but it's annoying. Any idea which Asian font Powerpoint
requires to run on a UK system? And why?

Stan
 >> Stay informed about: Office 2008 Required fonts 

Did you read the thread? Diane Ross has already posted a list of the
fonts that should not be disabled in Office 2004.

<http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Disable-Fonts.html>


Stan The Man wrote:
> On a related topic, I cleaned from my UK system 10.5.2 a load of
> Apple-installed Asian fonts and now when I launch one of my Office
> 2004 apps (Powerpoint I think) an alert flashes up to notify me that
> font ***** (unintelligible hieroglyphics) is missing. Doesn't seem to
> impair performance but it's annoying. Any idea which Asian font
> Powerpoint requires to run on a UK system? And why?
>
> Stan
>
 >> Stay informed about: Office 2008 Required fonts 

I used this as my bible when i build my master images for computers. It tells you what fonts are required for the OS. What fonts are required for apps and so on. I am waiting on them to update the MS office section. This really help solve all our font issues.

<http://www.extensis.com/en/downloads/document_download.jsp?docId=5600039>
 >> Stay informed about: Office 2008 Required fonts 

On 2/27/08 1:56 PM, in article ee8c2da.12 DeleteThis @webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
"hellomrzebra74" <hellomrzebra74> wrote:

> I used this as my bible when i build my master images for computers. It tells
> you what fonts are required for the OS. What fonts are required for apps and
> so on. I am waiting on them to update the MS office section. This really help
> solve all our font issues.
>
> <http://www.extensis.com/en/downloads/document_download.jsp?docId=5600039>

FWIW, some of the base fonts that Microsoft has now are actually newer than
the system versions. Really a confusing time right now.

--
Diane, Microsoft Mac MVP (MVPs are not Microsoft Employees)
Entourage Help Page <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
 >> Stay informed about: Office 2008 Required fonts