Something downloaded or installed Arial on my computer today. Arial is one of those typeface families I never use. I think I used it once in 1992. That was the last time. I have never liked the look of it, although I am glad that Monotype resorted to creating an original design (or, rather, adapt a design it owned) when commissioned to creating a Helvetica substitute for Microsoft. Design-wise, it does not sit well with me, so I have never had it installed.
   Imagine my surprise when my Google Toolbar and numerous other pages (notably Google itself) began displaying in Arial today—even though it did not show as installed on my computer at all. It does lie dormant in one of the ‘Fonts’ folders, but considering that has never caused them to be installed without human intervention, I never thought they would do much harm.
   I don’t know how sites can install fonts (outside some of the font embedding tools)—then have them not show up in any menu as installed—but that seems to be what happened today.
   I have often said I can break most programs quite readily as the weirdest things happen to me—and this counts as one of them.
   I have had to go into the Windows XP font folder and remove all Arials out of there and now, everything specified for it displays either in Lucire (our house sans serif) or Helvetica. But its appearance remains a mystery. It wasn’t there earlier in the day, only on a restart. I also don’t want to say it, because it’s more likely my memory is not serving me correctly, but I could have sworn that I had deleted all Arial font files off this computer when it arrived, which has typically been my practice. Posted by Jack Yan, 12:12  permalink

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