TMG Fonts
(Note: This applies to TMG v4x and before and is not applicable to TMG v5x. or later)
Many users of TMG report problems with reports printing with odd symbols or characters or other unknown words or phrases in their reports. Often this is the caused by TMG not being able to find a certain font on the users computer. TMG requires four fonts to be installed on the computer. These are:
HelvSS43
HelvSS75
Wholly
MS/LineDraw
If you check your Windows Fonts directory/folder and one or more of these are not shown there, the you will need to install them. The installation procedure usually installs the first three unless they are already installed. In some cases, they have not been installed or have somehow been removed from the system, so you will need to re-install them. The first three fonts above may be found on your Installation CD. To install them, go to your Control Panel window (accessible from the MyComputer icon), and select the Fonts icon. Select the File=>Install New Fonts option and point to the drive holding your TMG Installation CD. The fonts should appear in the List of fonts field. Highlight the font(s) that you wish to install and click on the OK button.
If the LineDraw font is not installed, you will need to download it from the Files page of the Wholly Genes website. After downloading it, you will need to install it much like the first three above. The LineDraw font is one that MicroSoft used to include, but no longer does. Occasionally, the problem is related to the fact that you don't have the latest Courier New font, so you need to go to MicroSoft's website and download the latest Courier New font and install it.
If you have the above fonts installed, then the problem may be that you have too many fonts installed on your computer. TMG's reports are generated by a third-party program that does not recognize more than 255 installed fonts. This is a holdover from the old Windows 3.x operating system. The next version of TMG (v5.0) is not expected to have this problem. In the meantime, you will need to "uninstall" some unused fonts so that only 255 or less are installed.
It is easy to "uninstall" fonts by just moving them to another directory/folder. Just create a new directory/folder (called something like Fonts-Un or Fonts-X) and use the drag and drop feature (place the mouse cursor on a font to be moved, hold the left button down, move the cursor to where the font should be moved, and release the mouse button) of Windows to move fonts to the new directory/folder.
While the process above is not all that hard, it can be a bit awkward to someone who has not done anything like drag and drop before. Thus you may wish to use a font management program to move fonts around your system. This kind of program makes this process easier than the drag and drop method. Some computers already have font managers installed. You may be able to install one from the installation disks of your printer (some HP printers include Font Smart on their installation disks). If you don't have a font manager already installed or available to install, you can find many on the Internet. Most are shareware although you can find a few freeware versions for non-commercial use. Just use your favorite Internet Search Engine and enter "Font Manager" as the keywords.
As noted above, you should uninstall fonts that you don't use. However, that supposes that you know exactly which fonts are needed by every program which most people don't. Thus I recommend that you uninstall enough fonts so that you only have about 235 fonts installed. This will allow room for growth either from installing new programs or from having to move back (re-install) a few fonts that you uninstalled.
Some fonts (other than those noted above) that you will want to retain are Arial, Courier, Times New Roman, Marlatt, and your favorite fonts. Any variations of these fonts should also be retained.
Finally, if you are using MS/Word as your word processor, you may want to check that you have the right update. If you select Help=>About in Word and the version does not end in SR-1 or SR-2, then you may want to go to the Microsoft website and download the update.
Also check that the Courier New font is the correct version. Select Control Panel=>Fonts, select the Courier New and open it. The version should be 2.50 or later. If it is not, then download the latest version from the Microsoft website <http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/default.asp>.
Comments to: Lee Hoffman/KY
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