I’ve been sitting on this new version of DfontSplitter 0.2 for Windows until I had a solution to the corrupt font error. With a solution found, I feel ready to offer this improved version of the Windows product.

The new release has been rewritten from the ground up in C#, rather than Visual Basic and the interface completely redesigned in Visual Studio 2008. Compared to the previous 0.1 revision, this release has:

• The ability to convert more than one .dfont at once (batch converting), using a similar interface to the Mac version
• Runs fondu in a background thread so the user interface does not lock up during a convert operation with lots of files
• Rudimentary drag and drop support — in most cases you can drag and drop .dfont files from an Explorer window on top of the list box to add them, as well as using the Add Files button.

It’s cleaner, hopefully more stable and brings the Windows feature set roughly in line with that of the Macintosh version. Remember, if you have issues with the TTF files being reported as corrupted, the FontForge workaround will help in almost all cases.

You can download this release from the DfontSplitter project page.

Let me know what you think and feel free to spread the word about this new version to people still using 0.1.

UPDATE 2011-05-09: While some particularly stubborn fonts do require this process, users who have previously experienced difficulty with older versions of DfontSplitter should first try with DfontSplitter 0.3.1 or later, which include a possible fix for this issue.

I think I’ve finally found a solution to this annoying error message that Windows gives when you use DfontSplitter to convert some fonts and then try and use those converted fonts in Windows.

It involves using a third-party open source application called FontForge to convert the TTFs that DfontSplitter gives you from a Mac-specific TTF format into ‘regular’ TTF format.

A full tutorial on using this method is included as a YouTube video screencast below.

If you can’t or don’t want to watch the video, essentially the process is:

• Use DfontSplitter on the .dfont file as normal
• Open the resulting TTF files you want in FontForge
• Export each TTF file from FontForge with File > Generate Fonts. Make sure TrueType format is selected.
• Import the resulting TTF files into Windows fonts folder.

Please do let me know if this process works for you and give any feedback — especially if you’d previously had problems using a .dfont you had wanted to use on Windows.

I love tiny little details, even if they’re not ever intended to be seen by the public.

The screenshot above is one I took in Need for Speed: Most Wanted (while looking backwards). What I find interesting in this is the detail written on the cardboard box texture on the left.

» Read the rest of this post…

Ever since installing Windows Vista on my desktop PC, I’ve had issues running games. I have a semi-self-built PC running on a Foxconn motherboard that uses the SiS 661FX chipset and a GeForce 6600 GT.

The issue I had was graphical corruption under pretty much any game I ran. Random polygons would appear in scenes, making it very difficult to actually play games properly. An example of this corruption in Halo 2 is below.

Note that these problems did not occur under Windows XP on the same hardware.

After quite a lot of searching, I stumbled across this forum thread, where I found a solution which works for me.

Specifically in this posting, the author details a link to an older Windows 2000 driver for the SiS AGP slot itself.

Here’s my Spec’s:

Operating Systems: Dual Boot – Vista Ultimate & Win XP Pro
Pentium 4: 3.4GHZ
2GB of 400MHZ Memory
8 Hard Drives, 4 Internal & 4 External (I download a lot of Music & Appz)
Gigabyte Motherboard ( 8S661FXMP-RZ )
Pioneer DVD Writer 16X
19″ LCD Monitor
Operating Systems: Dual Boot – Vista Ultimate & Win XP Pro

Hi Kenmu,

I was having the same problems as you with artifacts (Graphic Corruption) on my brand new XFX Geforce 7800GS AGP with Vista Ultimate, My motherboard is a Gigabyte 8S661FXMP-RZ, So it’s using the S661FX Chipset,

So I know Gigabyte don’t have any Vista drivers, but I tried an older driver from there site

Here’s the link —> http://asia.giga-byte.com/FileList/Driver/motherboard_driver_chipset_sis_agp_661fx_651c.exe

Download and install it, I couldn’t believe that driver worked for me, Everything is back to it’s normal self, no Graphic Corruption and the speed is way up to normal levels when playing games

I installed this driver and I now no longer get polygon corruption as above, and I can play Halo 2 (and the other games) in Windows Vista just fine.

It did introduce a new problem with playing videos in games, but I’m not really bothered about that for the time being, as I can now actually play the game.

If you have a motherboard with this AGP chipset on it (even if, as the author of the post said, your mobo is not from Gigabyte), this solution is definitely worth a try.

If for some reason the link to the driver mentioned there fails to work, get in contact and I can send you a copy of the relevant driver file.

Further to my earlier post on discovering a bug with DfontSplitter for Windows which surfaces on some versions of Windows, I have now discovered a workaround for this issue on Vista.

If you are using DfontSplitter on Vista and when you convert a font, Windows then complains that it is not a valid font file, you can use this workaround to install the font into your Fonts folder. The font should then work normally.

I’ve tested this with a bunch of fonts, but it might not work absolutely everywhere. You’ll just have to try it and see if it helps.

The details of the workaround are listed here, on the dev wiki.

I’m still interested in testers for XP Service Pack 2. If you’d like to help out please get in contact via email or leave a comment below.

Yeah, so, I just released some Windows software.

My program for converting and splitting Mac OS X .dfont files into TTF files, DfontSplitter has been a pretty popular route in to my website for some time now.

While the original program is written for OS X, it became apparent from my website statistics that many people who needed to convert .dfont to .ttf were Windows users.

So, today, I have released DfontSplitter for Windows, version 0.1. This program is, again, simply a wrapper script for fondu, which does the real work. It has a completely unique GUI, custom built for the Windows platform.

There is also a brand new project page for DfontSplitter, with links to both the Mac and Windows versions of the software and the documentation too.

Hopefully this can serve the need of Windows users who need to convert those filetypes, and don’t want expensive or spyware-ridden software. Enjoy!

A quick footnote – this is a bit of a licensing quagmire. There are lots of different licenses that apply to different bits of DfontSplitter for Windows, including GPL 3.0, GPL 2.0, BSD and Creative Commons. That’s all explained on the project page, and in further depth in readme and licence files in the downloads.

Oh and it’s also slightly ugly, in terms of how it interacts with fondu. But it works. 🙂

I’m not usually that much of a gamer. Apart from a brief stint playing World of Warcraft, which, incidentally wasn’t really for me, I generally don’t have (or make) the time to play lots of games.

That wasn’t always the case. Back when I was at school, I used to be a lot more of a gamer than I am now, and one of the games that I grew up playing was the Civilization series.

I wasn’t ever particularly skilled at it – mostly sticking to the lower difficutly levels and playing it more for fun than seriously, but I enjoyed playing the turn-based strategy game.

I lost interest in it, but recently went out and purchased Civilization IV thanks to a random urge to come back to the series (playing it on my games-only Windows installation which dual boots with Kubuntu on my desktop PC).

I’m really enjoying it. Again, I am nowhere near skilled, but Civ IV seems to get it right and go back to the series’ roots while introducing new elements, in a way which for me wasn’t done so well in III.

If, like me, you used to play the Civs, but sort of grew away from it, I would definitely recommend giving Civ IV a try (there’s a 100-turn playable demo for the Windows platform).

If you haven’t played the series before, you could very well enjoy it, but beware there is somewhat of a learning curve to get into the mindset of the Civ player. The lowest difficulty levels are a lot easier than in III, though, so I’d imagine it would be much less challenging to pick up and play than it used to be.

I don’t want to be unnecessarily Microsoft bashing here, but take a look at these two identical web searches on Google and Live Search:

First, Google (click to enlarge).

Now the same search on Windows Live Search (or whatever it’s called now):

Notice that in the Windows Live Search one, there is absolutely no mention of free software as in the freedom type. Not even a scrap of evidence that the FSF exist.

Now, either Windows Live Search is worse than I originally thought, or there’s some kind of conspiracy thing going on here. I hope for Microsoft’s sake it’s the former.

If it were the latter, I would be very worried.

It’s not Google being quirky either, Yahoo also list the FSF as the top result for the same query.

Do the searches yourself – on Live Search, Google and Yahoo.

UPDATE: turns out this only happens when Live Search is set to weight UK results (like when you come from a UK-based IP address through Live.com). More info.

You’ve probably seen this already, but if not, I just have to share this gem:

Man, I wish Windows still cost only $99. In case you were wondering, this ad is real.

This OSNews article.

Ballmer:

“The deal that we announced at the end of last year with Novell I consider to be very important. It demonstrated clearly the value of intellectual property even in the Open Source world. I would not anticipate that we make a huge additional revenue stream from our Novell deal, but I do think it clearly establishes that Open Source is not free and Open Source will have to respect intellectual property rights of others just as any other competitor will.”

Clearly, Microsoft are openly admitting here that they are unable to sell Microsoft products on their own merits, and so they have to bully people into thinking that choosing open source solutions is legally unsafe by firing random bursts of intellectual property violation bravado.

Here’s a challenge for you, Steve. Show me some infringing code. It’s all out there, in the open. Show me some infringing code and we’ll collectively sort it out.

Except that’s not the point. MS don’t want to actually start a patent war – I guess they know full well they have infringed more than a few of other people’s patents, so they don’t want to open a can of worms.

The game is FUD. Fear, uncertainty, doubt. Here’s how it goes.

• Some open source solutions are better and cheaper than MS ones. Lots of people start investigating them to use instead of MS solutions.
• MS notices this and invents some wonderful reason why open source is ‘unsafe’ legally.
• MS spread the idea that “open source is unsafe”.
• The people that were investigating the open source products hear MS’s idea, believe it, and go “we don’t want trouble with MS lawyers, we better not choose the open source product”.
• These people go on to buy MS products.
• MS get money and retain market share.

I don’t think they can play that game forever. At some point, they’re going to have to change their strategy.

It’s just a shame they have to resort to such childish methods to sell their products. Imagine what they could do if they put all their time, effort and money into making great products instead of bullying the world into rebuying their stuff.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”