Since switching to XP - Mistral font is gone!

[JudySmith]

Since I got my new Dell/XP combo I'm experiencing all sorts of awkward new phenomena.

For example, I had used Mistral fontface on one of my sites, and indeed, the Mistral displayed with a unique style of lettering.

But now, with XP, it appears plain & ordinary. Also, the website displays with alot smaller fonts, but that may be because of switching to a higher resolution (higher pixel count).

I note that other sites which use Mistral fonts also display the way mine does.

Any solution?

 

[NuclearFusi0n]

On the web, it's a bad idea to use any fonts other than the standard ms core fonts...

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

I don't even know what (a) "mistral font(s)" is/are. On the web you generally use serif, sans-serif, monospace, fantasy, and cursive (the latter two barely used at all). Some sites will specify specific fonts like arial, tahoma, etc, but anything beyond that is just stupid to use for a website since the vast majority of users don't go installing random fonts.

 

[JudySmith]

You don't understand. Due to the nature of the site, the only choice was to use the Mistral font, which is the only font that is unique.

The reason I didn't choose to use for example "flaming fonts" is because for one thing, I'm not sure they're available with transparent backgrounds, and secondly I think they take awhile to display, whereas the Mistral displays immediately. I cannot understand why with this new system the Mistral isn't displaying the way it did previously.

After all, doesn't it have to do with the browser? And I've been using IE previously, as well as with the new system. So why the change?

 

[MrChad]

After all, doesn't it have to do with the browser? And I've been using IE previously, as well as with the new system. So why the change?

It has to do with the fonts that are installed on your PC, not the browser. Your new PC likely does not have the Mistral font installed, and as a result IE is defaulting to a different font that it can display. The reason that web sites are usually coded to use Arial, Tahoma or a generic "sans-serif" font is because those fonts are almost universally available on all client PCs, and each visitor will get a similar experience when browsing the site.

Find the Mistral font on your old PC and copy it over to your \Windows\Fonts directory.

 

[JudySmith]

Uh, actually I'm wondering how my site would appear to others who have newer systems. They also would probably not be able to view Mistral as it's really supposed to be.

So what good would it do to copy it over, since it doesn't seem to be made universally available?

It doesn't make sense to me that the www consortium (or whoever sets policy) shouldn't have made more fonts universally available by now. Instead they're even doing away with what the older systems had!

Do you have XP? And if so, are you able to view Mistral as Mistral? Or not?

 

[NuclearFusi0n]

I've never heard of "mistral"
Never seen it on any of my computers anyways. Not on my current box, for sure.

Plain and simple: you can't use Mistral and expect it to work for anybody but you.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: JudySmith
So what good would it do to copy it over, since it doesn't seem to be made universally available?

Exactly the point. MrChad was just giving you a one-machine solution. But the correct solution is not to use Mistral on a web page at all.

It doesn't make sense to me that the www consortium (or whoever sets policy) shouldn't have made more fonts universally available by now. Instead they're even doing away with what the older systems had!

Sorry, but you clearly have no idea how fonts work in an OS. Fonts are provided by OS vendors for the system as a whole. They have nothing to do with your browser per se or any standards-making body. They are also valuable. Nice fonts = more pleasant user experience, so vendors are not keen on giving them away to rival OS's. Hence, the unofficial "standard" is to use the generic fonts already mentioned - those are either fonts that are widely cloned across OS's or generic names that the OS will resolve to a particular font it can use.

 

[Doh!]

Originally posted by: JudySmith
It doesn't make sense to me that the www consortium (or whoever sets policy) shouldn't have made more fonts universally available by now. Instead they're even doing away with what the older systems had!

Do you have XP? And if so, are you able to view Mistral as Mistral? Or not?

The answer would be a big "no" for all XP and other Windows users unless the users installed the font manually (either the font alone or through a 3rd party application). Just because you use a particular font, you can't expect it to be universally available (unless you work at MS). Getting a new system or a new OS has nothing to do with having a particular font.

 

[ISAslot]

If you really want "Mistral" to display on your site for you and everyone. Type your text into a graphics editor and save it as a .gif file. It's not a perfect solution, people won't be able to select your text, and it may make your site slower for a dial-up user, but if you really need "Mistral"...

 

[JudySmith]

Originally posted by: ISAslot
If you really want "Mistral" to display on your site for you and everyone. Type your text into a graphics editor and save it as a .gif file. It's not a perfect solution, people won't be able to select your text, and it may make your site slower for a dial-up user, but if you really need "Mistral"...

Thanks everyone for clarifying things. I have some further questions:

(1) There are some sites which take forever for unique fonts to finally display, and then there are others, for example Google & Draac.Com which have really unique lettering (i.e. see Draac's "Lets Talk Html") and which display fairly quickly - even if not as instantaneously as universal ordinary fonts. Now since I realize that Mistral is not universally available, is there anywhere on the www that there are Macabre fonts with transparent backgrounds that I can download for free? I mean something like the "Creepy Girl" font in this url: http://www.fontscape.com/explore?5B8 and also, that would display very quickly, the way the stuff on Google & Draac do?

(2) This isn't exactly relevant to the above, but I thought I'd ask how to smooth jagged edges by rounding out fonts? I know there's supposed to be a way, but I forgot exactly which steps to take, and though I searched the Dell help menu for "font" I didn't find the instructions for rounding out fonts. And, btw, although my fonts are set at ClearType, the display is still jagged.

 

[MrChad]

In response to (1), the "Let's Talk HTML" on draac.com is a graphic, not text. You can use whatever fonts you like in a GIF or JPG image, and they will display correctly regardless of the fonts that the visitor has installed on his/her computer. Using fonts in a graphic is kind of like opening up Paint and drawing the letters with the paintbrush tool. The speed at which a website loads depends on a number of things. If the graphics on the page are small files, they should load quickly. If the server on which the website is hosted has a fast connection (Google has one of the fastest servers on the web), the graphics and text will load quickly.

 

[JudySmith]

Originally posted by: MrChad
In response to (1), the "Let's Talk HTML" on draac.com is a graphic, not text. You can use whatever fonts you like in a GIF or JPG image, and they will display correctly regardless of the fonts that the visitor has installed on his/her computer. Using fonts in a graphic is kind of like opening up Paint and drawing the letters with the paintbrush tool. The speed at which a website loads depends on a number of things. If the graphics on the page are small files, they should load quickly. If the server on which the website is hosted has a fast connection (Google has one of the fastest servers on the web), the graphics and text will load quickly.

Yes, I knew that the Draac & Google lettering were images. That's what I meant above.

In any case, I decided to just switch to Verdana Italic as the path of least resistance. I still wish (just as the auto industry had become standardized) that some bigshot would create sets of readable fonts of all types, i.e. scary, fancy, etc. and then advertise to everyone that they can download those fonts for free, so that then those fonts should become known as universal fonts by dint of everyone having them. The reason I'd been confused, was because I had thought that Mistral was a universal font just like Times Roman, since it came with my system.

BTW, is comic sans a widely available font?

Also, can you remind me what the steps are for rounding out fonts on WinXP - so as to sharpen my display and lessen jagged edges? Thanks!

 

[EeyoreX]

that some bigshot would create sets of readable fonts of all types, i.e. scary, fancy, etc.

Adobe is a huge "bigshot". I believe they have a huge library or readable fonts.

and then advertise to everyone that they can download those fonts for free, so that then those fonts should become known as universal fonts by dint of everyone having them.

The auto industry doesn't give anything away. There is no incentive to give fonts away for free. People/companies go through a lot of hard work to create a unique font set. Most of these people are not ever going to just hand out their hard work. I know I'm not going to do my job for free. Are you?

Also, can you remind me what the steps are for rounding out fonts on WinXP - so as to sharpen my display and lessen jagged edges? Thanks!

Do you mean ClearType? If so:

Right click your desktop
Click Properties
Click the Appearance tab
Click the Effects box
Click Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts:
Select ClearType

\Dan

 

[JudySmith]

No, actually I didn't mean ClearType. As I mentioned in my above post, my fonts were already set for ClearType. I meant there's a series of steps which leads to a Radio button option to "round out fonts" and that's supposed to make the text clearer.

Re: the font issue, I'm still confused as to why fonts are so much harder work than say, Irfan or Leech. Aren't software programs even harder to produce? I don't mean to debate, but rather asking perplexedly why fonts are so much more valuable.

To give an example you may relate to better: Assume that the situation was even more limited than it already is: Assuming that the only font widely available at present would be Times Roman - and no other. Wouldn't site designers then say, "hey, this is crazy! Why aren't more typefaces widely available?"

So I'm saying the same thing except in a broader sense. And I don't mean everything under the sun, but rather one utilitarian scary font another utilitarian "aristocratic/fancy" font another funny font.

Finally, Mr. Chad (or anyone): Is there an URL which lists universal fonts? Like, besides Arial & Tahoma, which other fonts are universal? For example is Comic Sans universal? Or say, Wingdings & Webdings? Or Lucida & Lucida Handwriting?

 

[EeyoreX]

No, actually I didn't mean ClearType. As I mentioned in my above post, my fonts were already set for ClearType. I meant there's a series of steps which leads to a Radio button option to "round out fonts" and that's supposed to make the text clearer.

If ClearType isn't the answer, then I am not sure, since that is what ClearType is supposed to do, round out your fonts to make them look more smooth.

To give an example you may relate to better: Assume that the situation was even more limited than it already is: Assuming that the only font widely available at present would be Times Roman - and no other. Wouldn't site designers then say, "hey, this is crazy! Why aren't more typefaces widely available?"

In the beginning, the situation is as you desribed it, much more limited than now. Originally, the only fonts to be found were the ones that came with your OS. Then designers (this is pre-web, so we are taking about page layout, publication, etc) decided to start creating their own fonts, since only the most basic fonts were available. Then, what followed this was the thinking "Hey, I am doing a lot of work, creating this/these fonts. I should be compensated for this!" And thus, the font business was born, Bitstream and Adobe made and make large amounts of money for their unique type faces. Of course, there are many open source font faces and people who develope them for anyone to use, like InfranView and other open-souce/free software.

As far as a listing of "standard" fonts.
Here is a list of all fonts that are installed with various Windows OSes, from Windows 95 through Windows XP. This is a list I found of "standard print fonts". This is a list of what MS FrontPage consdiers "standard".

Below is a list of all fonts installed for Macs (OS 9):
Avant Garde
Bookman
Charcoal
Chicago
Courier
Helvetica
Helvetica Narrow
Monaco
New Century Schoolbook
Palatino
Symbol
Times
Zapf Chancery
Zapf Dingbats

There are many definitions, I suppose, of "standard" fonts. The lists I point to for the OSes should probably be considered the best, as anyone running the OS will have those fonts at the very least.

\Dan

 

[dawks]

Originally posted by: EeyoreX

No, actually I didn't mean ClearType. As I mentioned in my above post, my fonts were already set for ClearType. I meant there's a series of steps which leads to a Radio button option to "round out fonts" and that's supposed to make the text clearer.

If ClearType isn't the answer, then I am not sure, since that is what ClearType is supposed to do, round out your fonts to make them look more smooth.
--------------
Yup. The only other possibility is some program that has a setting for smoothing fonts, such as Photoshop.. But this is exclusive to graphics programs as far as I know.

As for

(1) There are some sites which take forever for unique fonts to finally display, and then there are others, for example Google & Draac.Com which have really unique lettering (i.e. see Draac's "Lets Talk Html") and which display fairly quickly - even if not as instantaneously as universal ordinary fonts. Now since I realize that Mistral is not universally available, is there anywhere on the www that there are Macabre fonts with transparent backgrounds that I can download for free? I mean something like the "Creepy Girl" font in this url: http://www.fontscape.com/explore?5B8 and also, that would display very quickly, the way the stuff on Google & Draac do?

I dont understand how one font can 'load' faster then another. The only reason would be, that one font is within an image, and generally, images take longer to download. Arial will never display faster then Comic Sans MS.

And fonts are actually EXTREMLY complex and difficult to make. At least good/usable fonts are. There are so many design issues, like making sure the scale well (a font needs to look the same at 12pt, as it does at 120pt).. Printing issues.. AA issues.. making a good font takes weeks if not months of very detailed work.

Now with you wanting to use a non-standard font on your website, the only way for others to view that font is if you ask them to manually download and install the font on the computer. OR, you can place any and all text within an image. Otherwise the browser just displayes the page with a standard font (on windows I believe its times new roman).

 

[JudySmith]

Originally posted by: EeyoreX
As far as a listing of "standard" fonts.
Here is a list of all fonts that are installed with various Windows OSes, from Windows 95 through Windows XP. This is a list I found of "standard print fonts". This is a list of what MS FrontPage consdiers "standard".

\Dan

Thank you very much for the links - the first one should come in handy. What gets me is that the idiots at MS decided to have different [overlapping] sets instead of standardized sets for all their various versions of Windows. (Like Win98 has Lucida Handwriting but not Trebuchet, and WinXP is vica versa. And alot more in that vein. What IS it with them?

As for Cleartype, that didn't fix my blurriness.

 

[EeyoreX]

Thank you very much for the links - the first one should come in handy. What gets me is that the idiots at MS decided to have different [overlapping] sets instead of standardized sets for all their various versions of Windows. (Like Win98 has Lucida Handwriting but not Trebuchet, and WinXP is vica versa. And alot more in that vein. What IS it with them?

No prob on the links. As for the different font sets, I can't answer for all the choices MS made, but with choices like Trebuchet, for example, is simply that the font was not yet in existance for Windows 98's original release. (It was originally created as part of Microsoft's "web fonts" that came with a version of IE) So newer versions of Windows have these fonts installed by default. As for the decision to remove other fonts, I have no idea.

\Dan