The purpose of this section is to describe how to move fonts from one computer to another. It is not intended for distributing fonts to several users. This description is not intended to encourage illegal copying of fonts. We assume that you are removing fonts from one computer and adding them to another.
The steps are as follows:
1.Build an FINSTALL.DIR file.
Using Windows, select the Printers icon from Control Panel, select the PCL/HP LaserJet printer, and choose the Setup command.
Once inside the driver-specific dialog box, choose the Fonts button to call the Printer Font Installer. The fonts you plan to save should be listed in the left list box. Hold down the CTRL and SHIFT keys while choosing the Exit button. The
installer prompts for a filename and path. Choose OK to accept the name of the FINSTALL.DIR file. Then, quit Windows.
2.Use the MS-DOS xcopy command to copy files to a floppy disk, by following these instructions:
To change to the directory containing the soft fonts, type:
cd \PCLFONTS
To make sure that all the files in the directory are not marked for archive, type:
attrib -a *.*
To copy files to the first disk, type:
xcopy *.* a: /m
If MS-DOS reports an “insufficient disk space” error, repeat the xcopy command. The /m option on the xcopy command instructs MS-DOS to mark the files it has copied to disk, so when you repeat the command it does not recopy the files that are already on disk.
Repeat the xcopy command until all the files are on the disks.
3.Copy the files from the floppy disks to the new machine, by following these instructions:
On the new machine, to make a directory for the fonts, type:
cd \
mkdir \PCLFONTS
cd \PCLFONTS
To copy the fonts from the floppy disk into the new directory, type:
copy a:*.*
Repeat this step for every floppy disk.
4.Install from the directory to itself to get the soft fonts listed.
Run the Printer Font Installer on the new machine through Control Panel's Printers icon. Select the HP LaserJet printer that uses PCL, and then choose
the Setup command.
From the driver-specific dialog box, choose the Fonts button to start the
installer. Choose Add fonts and specify \PCLFONTS as the source for
copying fonts. The installer should list all the fonts you just copied into the \PCLFONTS directory.
Hold down the CTRL and SHIFT keys while selecting all the fonts in the right
list box. Choose the Add button between the two list boxes. The installer will prompt for a target directory. This must be the same directory from which you are installing the fonts. If you are installing from \PCLFONTS, as these instructions indicate, then choose OK to accept \PCLFONTS as the target directory.
The installer then shuffles the fonts very quickly from the right list box to
the left list box. It does not copy any fonts; it simply updates the WIN.INI
file. If this does not happen quickly, then you probably did not build an FINSTALL.DIR file as described in Step 1, or did not install fonts from
and to the same directory.
The fonts will be moved to the new computer. This procedure is probably the fastest and simplest way to move fonts from one computer to the other. However, we do not recommend it as a general method of distributing fonts. The installer has a more elegant and less error-prone way of loading fonts from floppy disks as described in the next section.