Adding fonts to an OS is ancient, so it is baffling to me to have such trouble finding any resources on how to add my fonts to Android. How many fundamentals do they have to turn decades backward?

  • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Installing custom fonts has never really been a popular thing on any platform except in niche cases. Perhaps the best known use case is for print design and publishing where designers expect to be able to use any font they want in a magazine layout and have the printers able to put it on the page.

    • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
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      3 days ago

      On Macs in the 90s, it was the easy and fun thing to do, especially after the Fonts folder was created.

      • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        It was easy and fun until you had thousands of fonts in there, then programs would just crash when you opened the font selector. They weren’t expecting to be rendering previews for all those fonts and just ran out of memory. To solve this issue people invented font managers to allow you to carefully enable and disable sets of fonts before launching the apps you wanted to use them with.

        Source: I briefly worked for a local printing press that had thousands of fonts.

        • MaxHardwood
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          3 days ago

          Oh gawd. When doing IT support for graphic designers this was the wrost.

          My random font that I always use from Corel Draw '97 is missing!

          • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            This print shop I mentioned would just tell all their customers “include the fonts on the floppy/CD or we send it back” and then they kept every single font people sent them for years and years. Eventually they didn’t need to ask because they just had everything!

    • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 days ago

      Lots of people do real work on iPads and iPads have plenty of fonts. iOS while not as easy as on a desktop, does let you add fonts. Maybe it’s one reason why Android has all but entirely abandoned the idea of tablets. iPad is what everyone goes for because they’re meeting the users’ needs - mostly, anyway.

      I love Android and wish it would be able to promise the same because I have much more freedom to customize and I have more authority over the software, storage, and more things. It’s just many factors seem to have been neglected, and rather than “it’s on the todo,” the attitude seems to be “no; you don’t need or want that,” and that’s supposed to be Apple’s sanctimonious stance, not Android.

      • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Both Apple and Google take that stance all the time. Google is legendary for the number of products they killed (many that had millions of users). One of my biggest annoyances is how much they’ve dumbed down Google search and gotten rid of Boolean operators and other features I used all the time to narrow things down.

        • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldOP
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          2 days ago

          Well Google search stopped being about accuracy quite a while ago. It’s all about money now and directing searches to the highest bidder.

          I don’t think Boolean operators are not able to be used anymore, are you sure about that?

          I’m so sick and tired of literally everything in the world that has beautiful potential quickly getting turned into just another way to shovel in cash by feeding stupid and troglodyte level sophistication.

          Can not one fucking thing remain intelligent and noble? Do we get nothing at all? Everyone sells out, ultimately - and I don’t even think it’s always by choice. Call me a conspiracy nut but I’ve long ago concluded that there are authorities maintaining an influence and status quo of ignorance and stupidity, and anyone who dares to try to serve up something better gets threatened or killed, bought out, whatever needed to put an end to their honorable intentions.