If the Arial Narrow
font is missing on your system, it may very well
have a visible impact on some of the user
interface (panels) of Project Dogwaffle.
On some
Windows systems, such as Windows 7 / 64-bit,
recent releases, and perhaps even on earlier
similar releases (we don't know exactly), the
Monotype Arial Narrow font (a TrueType font) is
not included by default with the operating system.
It is licensed and included with MS Office, and
other apps, but not as part just of the OS in
itself, so if you didn't purchase MS Office, or if
you have a very stripped down basic configuration
of Windows, then there's a chance that the font is
not present on your system.
How do you notice in
Dogwaffle?
As a
result of missing this font, some panels shown in
Dogwaffle may display somewhat incorrectly, or
incompletely. For example, the Brush Settings
panel (keyboard shortcut 'o' for options) will
have missing words, or parts of the words missing
towards
the end of some long labels, typically. For
example, instead of 'Random Pos' (for random position),
you may see only 'Rand'
appear. This is because the used alternate font will
be too large to fit the whole words. This again is
because Dogwaffle assumes that the Arial Narrow
font is available. VB runtime however
switches to an alternate font when that font is
not found on the system. That alternate font
doesn't have the same metrics, the same
dimensions, and parts of the words may thus be
clipped off. (it could have gone the other way:
the chosen alternate font could have been more
narrow or smaller, but oh well, it didn't).
How else to determine
if you have the Arial Narrow font?
You can run most word publishing or
text editor such as Notepad, Wordpad, or other
tools that let you select a set of font-related
parameters (such as text style, text color,
boldface, italic, underscore, font size,
justification and more, and most importantly, the
font name itself). You should usually see a long
list of fonts that are available, based on what's
installed on your system and available to the
program. If the Arial Narrow font is showing in
the list as here, you're all set. If the font is
not showing, chances are that the font is missing.
(we're no expert at fonts stuff.... perhaps there
are some apps that don't use the Arial Narrow font
even if it's installed? You may want to try this
trick with several apps to double-check if it's
really missing. Or you can go to the font
management tools in Control Panel to see them all.
Here's an example under Windows XP:
This has been fixed in PD Pro 7, where a different
font is used. One that is present in base Windows
OS systems even without MS Office installed.
What to do if
it's missing on your PC
However, if you're not using PD Pro 7 or higher, and
if you are indeed on a system that lacks the Arial
Narrow font and shows missing words in the various
parts of the user interface in Dogwaffle, then you
may be able to fix it in a few ways: (some
are merely experimental suggestions, we don't know
for sure if they apply in your case).
Microsoft
describes the Arial Narrow font here: http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/font.aspx?FMID=1277
- they also feature a long list of
products from Microsoft that do include this
font. You could consider getting one of these
products in order to get the font along with
it. Pay attention to the fact that you may
need very specific versions of these software
titles. Here are a few examples: various
versions of Access, Baseball (game), Encarta
Virtual Globe, Excel, Expedia Streets and
Trips, Frontpage, Greetings, Home Publishing,
MapPoint, Office(several versions), Office
2010, Office 4.3 Professional, Outlook 2000,
Picture It!, Powerpoint, Publisher, TrueType
Font Pack, Small Business Server 2003, Word,
and Works. If you can justify and afford it,
this would be our preferred method.
There may
be other products from other developers, such
as popular web authoring tools, editors,
graphics tools, print editing tools, photo
editing tools, that also include a licensed
copy of Monotype's Arial Narrow font. If you
have the ability to get such a product
installed, it should fix your font issue in
Dogwaffle along the way. If indeed you find
one such other application, please do let us
know. (contact Philip)
There may
be other online sites that offer this font,
but we must caution you to be very careful
with downloading just anything - some of these
are illegitimate hosting sites that may
include malware when you download 'their'
font. Be very careful and aware as to the
legality of what you're downloading, and
always scan your downloads with updated
antivirus/antispyware tools. Read the fine
print. If you can't find the fine print, it's
probably suspicious. If it's free and sounds
too good to be true, it probably is. There are
however some alternate fonts, such as some
open source ones for example, that may do the
job. You could search the web for 'Arial
Narrow alternate font' or similar words. If
you can find one that is legitimate and has
the same or at least compatible metrics, you
might be able to have it renamed and installed
as a replacement for the missing font. We
don't have much experience with this procedure
however and can't really recommend one way or
another. We just know that such font
alternatives do in fact exist. If you know
what you're doing, you may get a free ride
with their font in that way. Kudos to open
source!
Instead of
focusing on the font or buying the font,
there's a workaround for Dogwaffle: if you
have PD Pro 6, then for just a few more
dollars you could buy the
upgrade to PD Pro 7, which fixes the
problem by using a different font that you
most certainly should have on your system. The
upgrade will be available for around $50.
What about
those free
Liberation fonts? Indeed, as you can
read in Wikipedia, Liberation fonts are
available for free (legitimately so!). They
use the same metrics as Arial Narrow fonts. If
you use a program for text editing or
publishing and wish to use a font that mimics
and looks exactly like Arial Narrow, that
could be a suitable alternative. The different
though is that the font name is still going to
appear as Liberation fonts, not Arial. You'll
have to scroll through the font selection menu
to find and pick the liberation font. When it
comes to the program, however, it doesn't know
about that. It will still be looking for arial
narrow. So unless you know of a way to
duplicate the font's internal name to make it
look like Arial narrow, this ain't going to
work.
Last, but
not least, another (possibly free?) option: as
mentioned briefly above, you might find the
Arial Narrow font from a trustworthy
legitimate website, in some cases for free
download. There may be sites that have struck
a deal with the font's copyright owner to
offer those fonts for free download. Or for
other consideration. For example, Arial Narrow
and many other fonts can be found at fontzone.net.
However, we haven't been able to determine if
this or other similar websites are offering
this particular font in full legitimacy. It
*is* possible, but we don't know yet. That
font appears not to be owned by the same as
fonts.com. We caution you to verify the fine
print, trustworthiness of the site before you
download a font. We also strongly recommend to
scan the downloaded material for viruses and
spyware. Proceed at your own risk.
If
you find other solutions to this issue, then
we'd love to hear from you. Please Contact
us
