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FixFonts for non-English Letters

(last changed: November 16 1999 )

Eliminate many problems with non-English letters in Windows95,98 and Windows NT (e.g. Greek symbols or blanks instead of letters)!
You may run the program as much times as you wish after adding some new fonts.
Restart computer for the effect.
You must have MSVBVM50.DLL (VB5 service pack 3 runtime) in the WINDOWS SYSTEM directory (SYSTEM32 for NT) for this program to work. You may download it from here: vb5rtsp3.zip

Download FixFonts v.1.4.0, freeware (20k) Download now! (20k)

What does it do?

This program fills [FontSubstitutes] section of WIN.INI so that your desired code page (e.g. 204 for Cyrillic letters) is default for every installed True Type font. If you don't know the "code page" for your language - look in [FontSubstitutes] section of WIN.INI and find something like this:
Arial,0=Arial,NNN
-where NNN is your codepage number. In fact the program tries to find the line itself and prompts you to change it if you wish.

The FixFonts program prompts you for the code page NNN and after you press "OK" all the lines will look like:
Arial,0=Arial,NNN

Names of all True Type fonts are retrieved from Registry. All old lines in [FontSubstitutes] other then "FontName,0=..." remain unchanged.

Notes about Windows NT

In Windows NT WIN.INI contents are usially redirected to the Registry, so "FontSubstitutes" information is under the following Registry path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes
The redirection is transparent for the FixFonts program, because it uses WriteProfileString Win32 API function, than knows where to write to.

Some tips / Troubleshooting FixFonts

  1. FixFonts makes one-way changes in the system registry - they can't be undone, but they can be changed to new settings. Try to figure: maybe you've set wrong "code page".

    To find out right code page you may look into win.ini, [FontSubstitutes] section on some other computer. Then start FixFonts again and set new code page. Then restart computer and check results.

    You may even copy the whole [FontSubstitutes] section from that computer and replace yours (but don't replace the whole win.ini!)

  2. If there are problems with some fonts: maybe the problem is with that fonts (they need to be upgraded or changed to some newer).

    You may try to delete lines in win.ini, [FontSubstitutes] section, referring to these fonts.