More CorelDRAW X8 Font Headaches

[Bobby H]

Font headaches with CorelDRAW X8 continue. Certain installed fonts have been disabling themselves from use in the application. Rather than disappearing completely from the font menu the font names are there, but styled in default Arial and selecting the font just makes it look like Arial.

There's no rhyme or reason why certain fonts disappear and others do not. It's not all Postscript Type 1 fonts suddenly vanishing or all OpenType. Even some fonts in the same type family, same sub-menu and same font format have disappeared from use.

I can try uninstalling the fonts and then re-installing. Sometimes they'll be seen properly in CorelDRAW X8 and sometimes they will not.

I'm wondering if it has something to do with the huge Windows 10 Creators Update Microsoft pushed out recently.

 

[Nodnoc]

I am running CorelDRAW X7, and had this same problem last Friday. I spent most of the afternoon dealing with it but nothing was working. I finally did a system restore from a point in the 1st week of June and it seemed to fix the bug. All files were complete with proper fonts. Earlier this week I had to restart my PC, upon the reboot I saw it updated the system. I opened a file and Arial dominated the screen. I manually uninstslles the update and we were golden again.

Definitely not a proper fix to the problem, but I would say you are correct, the Creators update is causing the trouble.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

....

I'm wondering if it has something to do with the huge Windows 10 Creators Update Microsoft pushed out recently.

......

Definitely not a proper fix to the problem, but I would say you are correct, the Creators update is causing the trouble.

Anytime that there is an update, that would always be my first place to start. Timing of things may not always be the best evidence, but the history of updates (especially coming from MS) combined with timing leads me to start there.

Have to remember, while it's good to always be current (or current as one can be), updates inherently add instability to a system. And this appears to be case in point.

 

[Bobby H]

The strange thing is this font fiasco has happened a couple weeks after MS pushed this mega-update to both my work desktop PC and notebook at home. My feeling is this font handling problem is a combination of buggy Corel software and half-baked garbage code pushed from MS. As of this morning the Windows fonts folder in my desktop PC is showing only the fonts bundled in the OS and default fonts from Adobe CC applications. Corel's font manager shows all the other fonts that should be present in the system, but with all the previews of the typeface under each font name switched to Arial. I'm having to go through and uninstall all of those fonts. I keep trying to delete the font database in C\Users\User Name\AppData\Roaming\Corel\FontDatabase\V1 but that doesn't seem to clear up the errors.

I think Corel should seriously consider s***-canning its Font Manager application. Its performance is absolutely horrible and is only seeming to cause all sorts of issues. It slows CorelDRAW X8 down to a crawl. I may uninstall X8 and then see if I can re-install it without that Font Manager application. I hate Windows' own font managing application. It has an infuriating habit of refusing to uninstall fonts, saying it's in use by the system. Corel's font managers have not been any better.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

It's possible that it could be a combination of things.

A user in one of my digitizing groups (my digitizing software of choice comes with Draw even though I don't install it) and she was saying that the other day one of Draw's webinar's done by Terry that there was an issue there as well. It was text on a path and it wasn't correctly following the path.

 

[Bobby H]

Adding another wrinkle to this enormous font headache, a bunch of the Adobe Typekit fonts are not showing up in the CorelDRAW X8 font menu. Either just one weight of a type family shows or just the basic four weights (regular, italic, bold, bold-italic). I have several type families synced from Adobe Typekit.

This garbage is literally forcing me to use other applications instead of CorelDRAW X8 to get my work done. Corel is going to have a hard time staying in business with technical problems like this happening. I've done a good bit of web searching regarding this issue. Lots of other Corel users are affected by this bug. There are complaints about it in Corel's user forums and on Microsoft's own forums.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

What I would be worried about too, is that isn't Corel wanting to go with a more aggressive early release cycle for new versions? As in every year a new version.

I could have sworn that I heard that somewhere in the CorelDRAW 2017 youtube video.

 

[Bobby H]

In my humble opinion CorelDRAW 2017 is a rip-off "upgrade." CorelDRAW X8 was released just last year. Version 2017 doesn't have enough new features or improvements to make it worth a full $200 upgrade. If Corel wants to go to a yearly upgrade cycle they're going to have to cut the price in half. $200 every 2 years for a full version upgrade isn't bad. We've been used to that for a long time. Now they want $200 every year? I'm not going along with that, especially since the Draw application is the only thing I use out of that Corel suite.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

In my humble opinion CorelDRAW 2017 is a rip-off "upgrade." CorelDRAW X8 was released just last year.

To me, it's not all that different then the CS5.5 upgrade when it came out.

Version 2017 doesn't have enough new features or improvements to make it worth a full $200 upgrade. If Corel wants to go to a yearly upgrade cycle they're going to have to cut the price in half. $200 every 2 years for a full version upgrade isn't bad. We've been used to that for a long time. Now they want $200 every year? I'm not going along with that, especially since the Draw application is the only thing I use out of that Corel suite.

In truth, as old as some of these programs are, how much can they really improve on what people need (not want, but need) for workflow concerns?

Some of the old versions that I have used (and still use thanks to the ability of VMs), some of the same tools that I used way back when are the same tools that I use now. Sure there are some new gimmicks that may actually be useful for me, but by and large, about the only point to upgrade is to keep current with the latest OS versus really any workflow need.

However, I can easily see this as making a subscription based plan far more appealing and if Corel prices it like Adobe does their Photography plan of $9.99, you are going to be down to just about half that $200.

It's getting to the point to where I'm wanting to stick more and more with legacy when it comes to these applications and run them in VMs or use WINE when I can. Most of the files that I get are JPGs or PNGs as it is, so as far as incoming, I don't have to worry about that like some on here do.

 

[Jim Hill]

I have the same problems with fonts that I have used for many years in earlier versions of Coreldraw.

Arial Bold is gone along with a few other fonts. Not sure if updates are causing this or something else.

Jim

 

[Andy D]

I have had issues with fonts showing up in CorelDraw since version 16.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but just because you have a font installed in your
window fonts, doesn't mean that it will show up in CorelDraw, there's an extra step now, correct?

 

[Bobby H]

There's no consistent sense of logic in how this latest font bug is working. I have both X6 and X8 installed on my desktop PC. I still have X6 installed for certain occasions, like needing to open early 1990's .CDR files since such file support was removed in X7 and X8. Plus X6 loads and runs a heck of a lot faster than X8. So, if I'm in a rush and I don't need certain features from X7 and X8 I'll work in X6.

Anyway, in X6 more fonts are showing up in the font menu than X8, such as all the Typekit fonts I have synced from Adobe. Certain type families I've installed (such as Gotham) have all the weights present while many are missing in X8. This points to a fundamental conflict with Corel's new Font Manager application and Windows.

By the way, the Windows Creator's Update deleted Bitstream Font Navigator (installed with X6) from my desktop system. A couple other applications were eliminated as well. I saw someone in some forum claim the Creator's Update killed support for Postscript Type 1 fonts, but as far as I can tell they're still working. Some of them just refuse to properly show up in the X8 font menu.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

There's no consistent sense of logic in how this latest font bug is working. I have both X6 and X8 installed on my desktop PC. I still have X6 installed for certain occasions, like needing to open early 1990's .CDR files since such file support was removed in X7 and X8. Plus X6 loads and runs a heck of a lot faster than X8. So, if I'm in a rush and I don't need certain features from X7 and X8 I'll work in X6.

I have kept my copy of X5 handy in case there was anything that I needed from Corel. I do have X6 and X8 due to it's integration with my digitizing software as well (I just never installed them), but it seems like X5 might still be the most stable out of the bunch, just not 64 bit, which I can run it in my 32 bit VMs anyway. If it comes down to my needing Corel.

By the way, the Windows Creator's Update deleted Bitstream Font Navigator (installed with X6) from my desktop system. A couple other applications were eliminated as well.

This is something that irks me to no end with the new OS. It should not be deleting programs. Even if there is a compatibility issue, it should not delete them. 9 times of 10 I have been able to conflicts. Only when it wasn't compatible with the OS from the get go was it an issue that couldn't be solved.

 

[Bobby H]

I ended up uninstalling then re-installing CorelDRAW X8, but without installing the Font Manager X8 application. Running X8 without the Font Manager makes a pretty big difference. CorelDRAW X8 launches much faster and files generated using X8 open much faster. The downside: you're stuck using Windows' own absolutely horrible font management application. It has a very nasty habit of flat out refusing to uninstall fonts once they're installed. If you want to remove a typeface it says 'the font is in use by another application." Then you have to hack the Windows registry and do other tricks to delete the installed font. There is zero excuse for that garbage. Aside from that problem (which has been an extremely frustrating problem with Windows for many years now), at least all my installed fonts now show up properly in the CorelDRAW X8 font menu.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Aside from that problem (which has been an extremely frustrating problem with Windows for many years now), at least all my installed fonts now show up properly in the CorelDRAW X8 font menu.

I've never had a problem with uninstalling installed fonts on Win 7. Is it something particular to Win 8.1 and newer? (Yet another reason I'll be sticking with my Win 7 VM if that's the case as well for my design software anyway).

 

[Bobby H]

I've encountered the same font installation problem with Windows 7. The act of uninstalling fonts hasn't been reliably simple since the days of Windows XP.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I've encountered the same font installation problem with Windows 7. The act of uninstalling fonts hasn't been reliably simple since the days of Windows XP.

Do you uninstall en masse or one at a time? I've only done one at a time, although I do have a considerable font collection, I don't tend to go hog wild with their installation, thus uninstalling 1 at a time isn't a Herculean task.

 

[Bobby H]

It doesn't matter whether the fonts are uninstalled one at a time or as a group. Windows' font manager will occasionally decide the font is in use and refuse to delete it. One trick that can help is un-checking the "details pane" under "layout" in the font manager. But that doesn't always work. Getting into the registry and deleting the desired font entries does work. But that's a pain.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

It doesn't matter whether the fonts are uninstalled one at a time or as a group. Windows' font manager will occasionally decide the font is in use and refuse to delete it. One trick that can help is un-checking the "details pane" under "layout" in the font manager. But that doesn't always work. Getting into the registry and deleting the desired font entries does work. But that's a pain.

I've never had that happen.

I was holding out hope that it was due to maybe I only uninstall one at a time.

It could be a process that you are running in the background that's tying some of them up. I don't know, but I've never had that issue.

I even did some installing and uninstalling over the weekend after this thread (working on getting some fonts digitized to embroidery fonts) and they all uninstalled every time. On Win 7 and on Win 8. I do have a VM of Vista, but I don't do this type of work with that VM so I didn't bother checking it. I don't have Win 10, so I wasn't able to test it with that.

Got to be something going on to reconcile the whole thing that hasn't been discovered yet. Otherwise, it should be relatively easy to replicate if it is/was a Windows issue right out of the gate.

 

[Bobby H]

The problem I have been encountering with Windows' font manager is not unique. It's a very common problem, one I've dealt with personally on multiple Windows machines. If you do a web search using "Windows can't uninstall fonts" you'll find numerous articles and forum discussions about this very issue. Windows' font manager is really that lousy.