Adding a font

[ajturnersurrey]

Just going through a rebranding exercise - if the rebranding people pick a font which is not in Flare by default, how would I add it?

[NorthEast]

Are you talking about adding the font to your stylesheet?
To pick a font from Flare's font picker it would need to be installed on your PC, but you can still type in the font name for the font-family or font property in the stylesheet.

[Andrew]

I believe the fonts in Flare by default are simply the ones installed on your PC. Note that Flare does not support all font types (it supports TrueType fonts, and possibly some PostScript fonts, by I don't remember for sure).

[ajturnersurrey]

Thanks for your thoughts
To clarify I was thinking -
are there fonts which Flare just won't support?
what file type would I need to install a new font?
how do I select that file from Flare, so that Flare knows it is now an option?

[Andrew]

are there fonts which Flare just won't support?

Yes. Here is a topic that provides some additional information, but I am unaware of any "official" list of supported / unsupported fonts.

what file type would I need to install a new font?

I would imagine you need whatever is required to install the font in Windows. I'm pretty sure that's where Flare gets its list of fonts from -- it does not maintain its own list.

how do I select that file from Flare, so that Flare knows it is now an option?

If Flare doesn't pick up the font when you install it in Windows (make sure you restart Windows after you install the font), then I'd suggest trying to enter the font manually into your stylesheet (i.e., open you stylesheet in a text editor and manually enter the font property / value). There's no guarantee that it will work, unfortunately.

[LTinker68]

how do I select that file from Flare, so that Flare knows it is now an option?

If Flare doesn't pick up the font when you install it in Windows (make sure you restart Windows after you install the font), then I'd suggest trying to enter the font manually into your stylesheet (i.e., open you stylesheet in a text editor and manually enter the font property / value). There's no guarantee that it will work, unfortunately.

In the stylesheet, click on the font-family attribute for a tag to bring up the Font Family Picker. In that screen, click the Define Set button. All the fonts Flare finds on your computer are listed on the right. Select the font(s) to be in the family then click the left arrow to add them to the field on the left. There are also generic terms like sans-serif that you can add to the family, which is recommended. So you would add your base font (e.g., Georgia) that you want the output to use first, if it's available on the user's machine, then you'd select a secondary font (e.g., Arial), a third font (e.g., Helvetica), and a last-ditch-generic style (e.g., sans-serif). You can have more fonts in the family, but you generally don't want more than three or four. The order they appear in the left side is the order they'll be used, if available.

If you manually enter a font into the stylesheet file, be aware that you have to enclose a font name in single quotes if the font name has spaces in it. For example, you would type 'Times New Roman' with the single quotes because it has spaces in the name, but Georgia would be entered without single quotes since it doesn't have multiple terms, although I don't think there's an issue if you do include single quotes around it. You only use the single quotes if you're manually editing the stylesheet file -- if you're using the Stylesheet Editor, it'll take care of the quotes for you.

[ajturnersurrey]

Thank you all

I am now fully set up, with the delightful FS Albert.

[Evetsm]

Hello! I'm facing a similar problem to the one that ajturnersurrey asked on Nov 09 2010.
I'm using Flare 2017 r2. What are the steps I need to do? I tried LTinker68's solution but I think Flare has changed considerable since then.

Thank you!
Steve

[doloremipsum]

Could you describe the problem and what you're trying to achieve in more detail? It's a little unclear what you want!

[Evetsm]

Certainly, doloremipsum. Here is the problem.

I recently upgraded to a laptop with Windows 10 and installed Flare 2017 and the Flare project we use.

When I generate a PDF on the new laptop, the fonts in the PDF are incorrect and do not match fonts in PDfs that I generated on the old laptop. Please see attachment.

How do I fix this problem? Thank you.

[Nita Beck]

Forgive a simple question. You don't say one way or the other if the font you need to use is installed on the new laptop.

[Evetsm]

Nita, no problem.

The font is indeed installed. On the other hand, I've spoken to my colleagues who are not experiencing the issue and they don't have the font installed.

Cheers!

[Nita Beck]

What I'm about to suggest is a total guess, and it comes from guidance I've gotten in the past from MadCap tech support.

With Flare not running...

Browse to the following path with Windows Explorer: C:\Users\[User ID]\AppData\Roaming\MadCap Software\Flare. Delete the FontSets.mcfst file. Relaunch Flare, during which a fresh version of that file will be generated.

Does that fix it?

[Evetsm]

Hi Nita,

That did not fix the problem, but thank you for suggesting.

I will probably create a new topic because the current 'Adding a Font' topic is not really descriptive of my issue. I was browsing for solutions and landed in this topic.

Regards,
Steve

[ChoccieMuffin]

Another thing that isn't even vaguely connected to fonts being installed or not.

When you are using Flare, is your screen setting at 100% or have you zoomed to something different? For some very annoying reason, this can affect the spacing around fonts in generated PDFs. This may not have anything to do with your problem, but still worth ruling out.