AutoCAD LT accommodates a font that is not currently on your system by substituting another font.
If your drawing specifies a font that is not currently on your system, AutoCAD LT automatically substitutes the font designated as your alternative font. By default, AutoCAD LT uses the simplex.shx file. If you want to specify a different font, enter the alternative font file name by changing the FONTALT system variable. If you use a text style that uses a Big Font, you can map it to another font using the FONTALT system variable. This system variable uses a default font file pair of txt.shx, bigfont.shx. For more information, see Using Unicode and Big Fonts.
In previous releases of AutoCAD LT, you could display PostScript fonts in the drawing. AutoCAD LT 97 cannot display PostScript fonts, Autodesk has supplied TrueType font equivalents in place of the PostScript fonts supplied with previous releases. These PostScript fonts are mapped to the equivalent TrueType fonts in a font mapping file supplied by AutoCAD LT.
For third-party or custom SHX fonts that have no TrueType equivalent, AutoCAD LT substitutes one of several different TrueType fonts called proxy fonts. In the Multiline Text Editor dialog box, proxy fonts have a different appearance from the fonts they represent to indicate that they are substitutions for the fonts used in the drawing.
Custom SHX fonts do not appear on the Character tab in the Multiline Text Editor dialog box. If you want to format characters by assigning one of these fonts, first create a text style that uses the font and then apply that text style to the characters.
Sometimes you might want to ensure that your drawing uses only certain fonts, or perhaps you might want to convert the fonts you used to other fonts. You can use any text editor to create font mapping tables for both of these purposes.
You can use these font mapping files to enforce corporate font standards, or to facilitate off-line printing. For example, if you share drawings with consultants, you may want to use a font mapping table to specify what font AutoCAD LT substitutes when it encounters a text object created with another font. Similarly, you can edit the drawing using quicker-drawing SHX fonts and then switch to more complex fonts for the final plot by setting up a font mapping file that converts each SHX font to an equivalent.
The font mapping file is a plain ASCII text (FMP) file containing one font mapping per line. Each line contains the name of a font file (with no directory name or path) followed by a semicolon (;) and the name of the substitute font file. The substitute file name includes a file extension such as .ttf.
For example, you could use the following entry in a font map table to specify that the times.ttf TrueType font file be substituted for the romanc.shx font file:
romanc.shx; times.ttf
AutoCAD LT comes with a default font mapping file. You can edit this file using any ASCII text editor. You also can specify a different font mapping file in the Preferences dialog box, by using the FONTMAP system variable.
Example: Font Substitution Rules