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iambmw
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Thinapp with a Font File

I have a custom built application that utilizes a EUDC Font file attached to the Arial font.  When I package the app, part of the install is to delete the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\FNTCACHE.DAT file after installing the font, and then reboot to rebuild the windows font cache.  Execution on the capture machine (a fresh VM Windows XP SP3) works flawlessly.  On any other target machine, however, the application acts as if it doesn't have the font file installed.  If I install the font file on the target machine outside of the package, the thinapped application works fine.  I have tried Merged and WriteCopy isolation modes.

Does anyone have any experience including fonts in a thinapp package?  Any tricks or troublshooting ideas?  I searched the forumn for Font, Fonts, and FNTCACHE with no helpful results.

I am using Thinapp 4.6, capturing for WinXP.

Thanks,

B.

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Cievo
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Yes, you are right. Fontcache is loaded/re-created during start-up.

I don't think there is regular way to refresh it on-fly.

If you want to use Thinapp with this app you should do steps required for font cache refresh on all computers where app will be launched.

***Good question is half of the answer...***

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Cievo
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Question is if font cache file is the same across all XP machines. If so you can check if you have font cache file FNTCACHE.DAT located in your project's directory %SystemSystem% (This represents directory C:\Windows\System32).

***Good question is half of the answer...***
iambmw
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Thanks for the suggestion, Cievo.

To answer your question directly, I doubt that the FNTCACHE.DAT is the same across all machines, because it depends upon the installed fonts, and I would suspect a variety there.  For the purposes of this package, however, I just need to make sure I have access to this specific font file which contains custom symbols.

The first time I packaged the app, the FNTCACHE.DAT wasn't included, but I went back and repackaged, making sure it was included, and that it was the same file from the working capture machine (it was rebuilt properly after the font install and reboot during the capture process.)  It seems that even though FNTCACHE.DAT is included in the package, it isn't used by the target machines.  My guess is that on the target machines the font cache is already loaded into memory at startup by Windows, so having the newer FNTCACHE.DAT in the package does no good.  Is Thinapp smart enough to know it must re-load the font cache?  Is there any way I can force this behavior or test my suspicion?

I would appreciate any insight or other suggestions.  Thanks!

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Cievo
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Yes, you are right. Fontcache is loaded/re-created during start-up.

I don't think there is regular way to refresh it on-fly.

If you want to use Thinapp with this app you should do steps required for font cache refresh on all computers where app will be launched.

***Good question is half of the answer...***
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