by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2006/10/19 03:34 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2006/10/19/842895.aspx
Several people have asked me about using Consolas in CMD. Why isn't it in the list automatically, if they have the font, some of them have wondered....
The info on the requirements for a font to appear in the console on Windows are in the article Necessary criteria for fonts to be available in a command window.
Also in that article is the way to force the font in there on all of the non-Win9x based versions of Windows. Basically you can create a .REG file with the following text in it:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont]
"00"="Consolas"
Click the file to write to the registry, and then reboot. You can now use Consolas in the console. :-)
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# Centaur on 19 Oct 2006 5:59 AM:
The last time I tried, Consolas did not support box drawing characters. Which makes it pretty useless as a console font.
# Michael S. Kaplan on 19 Oct 2006 10:31 AM:
Per Greg Hitchcock on the ClearType team back in February of this year:
"...we’re in the process right now of arranging the work for adding the missing glyphs to support Consolas in the console window."
which would take care of that concern, I believe. :-)
And even before that one can do plenty with the font in the console, since not everyone feels a huge need to support them in their everyday thing and feels comfortable using the registry key to override....
# Daniel Beardsmore on 22 Apr 2008 4:26 AM:
Well, just to be sure, I tried HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\etc out of indignation that cmd is too stupid to read separate user settings, but no avail. I have to set this globally? How do things like this even become global settings?
# Michael S. Kaplan on 22 Apr 2008 8:02 AM:
The fonts underneath are global, so the list of additional ones considered valid is tuned to match. Not that mysterious. :-)
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