Article

I needed a way to automate the distribution of fonts (TrueType) fonts via a script. I was surprised to discover that it's not as easy as just copying the font files to the %windir%\fonts folder. Searching around on the Internet, I see that it's not so uncommon to want to be able to do this, but surprisingly, I found no free solution for accomplishing this task - and the programmatic way is over my head.

Typically, to install and register a new Windows font, you have to use Explorer, browse to the Windows Fonts directory, then use the Install New Font... menu item.

However, I discovered something interesting. You can just copy the TTF files from DOS into the font directory (%windir%\fonts), then if you open explorer to the fonts directory the new fonts will automatically get registered. So, this could be scripted like this:

copy *.TTF %Windir%\fonts /y
explorer /e, %Windir%\fonts

And the fonts would successfully be added to the system. However, it isn't exactly silent. The user is left with a Windows Explorer window open that they would need to then close.

I wanted a more silent way to do this. Same concept, except I launch explorer in a hidden window (using my RunHide program), then kill the process silently. Thus, you can silently add new fonts programmatically by:

copy *.TTF %Windir%\fonts
copy %windir%\explorer.exe %temp%\xpl.exe /y
runhide %temp%\xpl.exe /e,%windir%\fonts
ping localhost -n 5 >nul
taskkill /im xpl.exe /f

Kludgy, but it'll work and without any user interaction (or notice).

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