The font known as 'MS Sans Serif'

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2006/01/27 06:01 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2006/01/27/518198.aspx

Loyal SIAO reader Serge Wautier just posted about MS Sans Serif. In the post he talked about this font a bit, saying:

The problem is that this font supports the Western European code page only.When one adds an Eastern European language such as Polish, appTranslator realizes that the font will not display correctly in Polish hence replaces the default dialog font by Tahoma.Now Tahoma is a _little_ bit wider than MS Sans Serif, resulting in long source text items being cropped, especially if the controls were really just wide enough to display the text.

I figured it might be good to set the record straight. :-)

Now if you look in the fonts folder (click to see it bigger):

You will see mostly TrueType fonts, and then you will see some or most of the following bitmap fonts:

• Courier
• MS Dialog
• MS Sans Serif
• MS Serif
• Roman
• Script
• Small Fonts
• Symbol (Symbol)
• perhaps Terminal
• those WST* fonts

(Your exact list may vary, of course!)

Note the total number of fonts I have there -- 283, including a visible Marlett.

Now, let's go the DOS prompt and look to see what is there:

Hmmm.... looks like there are a few more there than the font folder is admitting to, isn't there? :-)

The fact is that what you as MS Sans Serif is actually one of many different files covering different sizes and code pages. When you change your default system locale, one of the dances that happens is that the fonts registered with Windows will be changed to match your choice and your font size and resolution, so that you will be able to see text in the console (more on dealing with this issue another day!).

So what you see as one entry can actually be one of a dozen or more font files. And it won't always be Western European, though it will work to match your default system locale....

Which does not change the validity of the other things that Serge said, including the fact that Microsoft Sans Serif is a much nicer font! In fact this whol post is using Microsoft Sans Serif, if you have it installed!

(I will talk more about Microsoft Sans Serif another day....)

This post brought to you by "Ｍ" (U+ff2d, a.k.a. FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M)

# Serge Wautier on 27 Jan 2006 7:21 AM:

# Joseph Bruno on 27 Jan 2006 7:43 AM:

# Michael S. Kaplan on 27 Jan 2006 8:24 AM:

# Michael S. Kaplan on 27 Jan 2006 8:24 AM:

# The SZ on 30 Jan 2006 5:01 AM:

# Michael S. Kaplan on 30 Jan 2006 10:06 AM:

# ramkiran on 29 Apr 2008 5:55 AM:

Domel on 29 Oct 2011 12:41 AM:

Michael S. Kaplan on 29 Oct 2011 12:09 PM:

kinokijuf on 5 Feb 2012 9:11 AM:

Michael S. Kaplan on 5 Feb 2012 12:43 PM:

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