Can not set font family in init file in Windows

Question

In my .emacs file I have the following:

(setq default_font "Office Code Pro D")
(when (member default_font (font-family-list))
  (set-face-attribute 'default nil
                      :family default_font
                      :font default_font))

After startup, if I evaluation the (when... function, my font family is set properly, but it is not set correctly when this file is sourced on startup.

After startup, if I check the value of default_font it is (correctly) Office Code Pro D, however, it does not set the font for my Emacs session unless I evaluate that part specifically.

Is there a reason why this does not get set in startup?

(Typically I run Emacs daemon on boot and this does not work).

Answer 1

With a quick check with Emacs 24.4 when you have just an Emacs daemon running font-family-list is nil so your code does nothing at that point. You'd need to add your function to a hook that runs after you have a GUI window, for example after-make-frame-hook.

Alternatively, why not set the default font using Customize? There's a Set Default Font in the options menu by default which (after Save options, also in the options menu) sets the default font in your init file using custom-set-faces.