Weird font previews in text tools?

[OurJud]

Can anyone explain why the little square font previews alongside each font when you scroll through the list in text tools, bear no resemblance to the actual font? Most of them look like Arabic or Chinese - which renders them pretty useless becuase they tell you nothing about the font.

[Ofnuts]

Gimp and OS version (I assume that you aren't really on XP)?

[OurJud]

No, sorry. W7. I'll change that now.

Gimp V 2.8.16

   

The previews suggest some foreign script, but they're nothing of the sort.

It's more a wondering than an issue now, as I found a tutorial showing how to easily scroll through fonts using the docking feature.

[rich2005]

These are standard foreign language fonts, (arabic, hebrew, chinese, etc. scripts) that come pre-installed by MS Windows.

They can be hidden for many applications by using the Windows font manager, but not for Gimp.

Ignore them if you can.

[OurJud]

(08-31-2018, 11:48 AM)rich2005 Wrote: These are standard foreign language fonts, (arabic, hebrew, chinese, etc. scripts) that come pre-installed by MS Windows.

They can be hidden for many applications by using the Windows font manager, but not for Gimp.

Ignore them if you can.

Thanks, rich, but not sure I understand. If I select one of these fonts, it doesn't change the text to Arabic or Chinese. They're all different typefaces, but still in English.

[rich2005]

It is how your computer is set up to use western fonts. Most fonts contain many character sets (characters with accents, Eastern script characters etc.) and the facility to use a code page a mechanism for selecting which character set to use)

You can look those terms up.

Your computer will use a 'latin' set, same as your keyboard. If you look at the font displayed, very often it is Verdana, the fall-back MS font.

Want to explore the fonts? Windows has a character map application, lets you see all the details.

example: https://i.imgur.com/eZHUGnQ.jpg