Related Article: Replacement Unicode Fonts

MarcEdit has been designed to take advantage of the host operating system’s accessibility options and naturally scale up or down based on the font size and face selected in the preferences.  By default, MarcEdit attempts to render all data in the Arial Unicode MS font.  This font, which has been available on the Windows operating system since 1997 and as a part of OSX for the last 3-4 years, has long been the standard for providing comprehensive unicode coverage.  Unfortunately, starting with Office 2016 (how the font was distributed on Windows) and Windows 10, the Arial Unicode MS font is no longer available.  If a user has updated a previous system with the font, it should remain available.  If a user has received a new machine, the font is likely missing.

Does this have an effect on MarcEdit?  Well, yes.  If the Arial Unicode MS font isn’t found, the tool will look for alternatives.  Presently, the tool looks for the Arial font, the Times New Roman font and the Terminal font.  If these fonts cannot be utilized, it will ask the operating system to provide a font type.  Unfortunately, when the operating system provides a font, the tool really has little control over what that might be.

So, you’ve installed or updated MarcEdit and things just don’t look right.  No worries.  You have options.  Most of MarcEdit’s windows can be resized, which can offer temporary relief.  But long-term, the solution is just to update your preferences.  Selecting the preferences icon (Figure 1), open the preference’s window.

Figure 1: Preferences Button

Select the Language link on the left (or the highlighted link if unreadable: Figure 2).

Set Language and Font Settings

Figure 2:  Preferences Window

Select the desired font from the list, and then update the font size (by default, the program is set to 9 pt), and then click OK.

The program will rescale and reapply the selected font, which should correct any font/font sizing issues.