Bizarre font installation problem

I’m having a problem installing some fonts. I’ve installed additional fonts before without problems—but not this time. The problem is that the font list isn’t being updated: RISC OS can’t seem to see that the fonts are there.

It isn’t an issue with the fonts themselves—by renaming font folders I can have them replace other fonts and they then appear correctly: but the list of fonts simply isn’t being updated at all. Any idea as to what might be causing this? Is there, for example, a limit on the number of installed fonts? (Not that I have all that many.) No error messages are appearing.

Have you selected ‘Rescan fonts’ on the ‘Fonts’ configuration plug in? On RISC OS 5 I think you have to do a ‘*FontInstall’ from the command line?

I tried *FontInstall but it didn’t make any difference until I tried deleting the Messages1 file in the directory (actually, moving it elsewhere) and then doing *FontInstall. It’s working fine now, but oddly, hasn’t recreated the file…

Yes, the Midlands User Group came up with the same solution on Saturday!

Messages[#] is a short-cut that avoids scanning the directory. As such it can greatly improve scan times when one has multiple font directories and thousands of fonts (like me).

It is neither created nor removed automatically.

How do you create it then please?

You can do so manually if you’re masochistic.

Or, you can use Darren Salt’s !FontMsgs utility from: http://old-www.moreofthesa.me.uk/progs.utils.html#fontmsgs

(And yes, I’d have made that a link if Textile didn’t absolutely refuse to allow it)

You can do so manually if you’re masochistic.
Or, you can use Darren Salt’s !FontMsgs utility

But what is the official way to have an up to date messages1?
I’m guessing it must come with one present and that if you ‘install’ fonts in the correct way it gets updated?

If yes and you think messages1 is not correct, then presumable you could revert to a factory standard messages file, move all non standard fonts out of !Fonts and then add then Install them correctly. Yes?

If Yes the problem I foresee if some added fonts were just extra weights of existing fonts. To get round that you’d have to revert to a standard !Fonts and then check for added weights in the moved fonts. I think!

Originally !Fonts didn’t have a message1 file and still doesn’t require one. When the list was introduced I made sure I didn’t have one but with the passing of time can’t remember why. Perhaps because I keep two copies of !Fonts (!Fonts & !Fonts2) and keep my additions in the second.

Don’t know if this might be of use.

But what is the official way to have an up to date messages1?
I’m guessing it must come with one present and that if you ‘install’ fonts in the correct way it gets updated?

No. As I said, it is not created (nor updated) automatically.

To get round font path limitations and ADFS directory limits, my !Fonts runs a BASIC program which defines Fo$Path as …!Fonts. and then adds all subdirectories of !Fonts to Font$Path using that path, ie Fo:A-M, Fo:N-Z, Fo:Dingbats, Fo:EFF, Fo:Free etc, all of which have their own Message files.

However, as I’ve pointed out before, RISC OS 5 has a bug with FontInstall which wastes memory and makes font finding slower and slower every time *FontInstall is invoked. Caution!

Well, that’s odd. I had an up-to-date Messages1 file before the problems mentioned above; I’d installed fonts previously in exactly the same way as this time; I don’t know if the file was present then nor whether it is present in a “fresh” RO5/Pi installation.

The only thing I can think of is that the last fonts I installed, prior to this most recent time, were installed via PackMan.

The bug is still here: message1 is not needed, but if present (and it is present in the standard harddisc image), it can get corrupted. Then all the font list become ‘strange’. Only solution: suppress message1 and reboot.

No. As I said, it is not created (nor updated) automatically.

Not true.

Installing fonts via Configure → Fonts → Install fonts will invoke the FontMerge utility to perform the installation. This, in turn, calls the Installer module which does automatically create the font “Messages1” file, as can be seen here.

I am posting this because I installed a few fonts, and then manually removed some of them when decided not to have them (there’s no “quick preview” prior to installation…), yet after successive reboots and such, NetSurf kept on flashing up the font scanning indicator for the missing fonts, plus they were listed with *FontCat. This, I tracked down to the “Messages1” file within fonts, and to this thread that said such a file is not created automatically. Well, if not, where did it come from? I copied out some fonts, removed the Messages1 file, rebooted, and then “installed” the fonts and automagically the Messages1 file reappeared.

The obvious question now is, if the installation of fonts creates the Messages1 file, how does one sensibly uninstall fonts to keep this file in sync with what is actually there?

The obvious question now is, if the installation of fonts creates the Messages1 file, how does one sensibly uninstall fonts to keep this file in sync with what is actually there?

Actually I think you could extend that question to the install/de-install of any item of software that adds items to the !boot structure.
Recent discussions regarding Zap remind us of one such item that might be on many installs around.