Fonts all look the same?

gbaker · General User Joined: 14 Dec 2005 Posts: 5

I'm trying to get windows ttf fonts installed for oowriter and am having strange results.

I created a directory: /usr/local/fonts/ttf and copied all of the ttf/TTF fonts from my windows machine into that directory. I then used chkfontpath and spadmin to update the font path and add the fonts to oowriter.

The result is strange. The fonts all appear in the font list, however they all look the same in the drop down (i.e. they don't preview properly), and when I apply them they all look the same as well (can't tell what font it actually is, but it's not what I'm selecting).

I've read all of the font tips that I can find, but nothing seems to help. One document mentioned getting rid of the font cache which I've done...to no avail. Other documents seemd to imply that I need .afm files, so I used ttf2afm to create them...still no help.

Obviously I'm not much of a font expert (hey...I'm an embedded programmer, not a font guy!) but this is getting kind of frustrating.

My wife keeps saying "just let me edit the document in Microsoft Word, it's easy!", which causes me to shudder...but she might be right!

Anybody have a tip or two before I give up and go back to MS Word??? (ouch).

Thanks,

..glen

Robert Tucker · Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 9:29 am Post subject:

To install ttf fonts on a Linux machine system wide the usual location is:

/usr/share/fonts/truetype

For use by a user in all applications:

/home/user_name/.fonts

For use on OpenOffice system wide:

<path to openoffice>/openoffice.org2.0/share/fonts/truetype

For use in OpenOffice on a per user basis:

/home/user_name/.openoffice.org2/user/fonts

For system-wide installation you may also want to check your XFree86 or Xorg configuration file.

You can also install MS Core Fonts (ttf) for OpenOffice use at:

File>Wizards>Install fonts from the web

gbaker · General User Joined: 14 Dec 2005 Posts: 5

Robert Tucker · Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 10:20 am Post subject:

On Debian Defoma is, I believe, finding my fonts - since /usr/share/fonts/truetype isn't listed in my XF86Config-4 file, I guess it must know to look there. A little Googling indicates to me that chkfontpath is for the X fonts on Red Hat - system fonts, X fonts and fonts for applications may be different. I doubt that adding a path to your newly installed fonts at the top of the font path list in XF86Config or corresponding file for Xorg will do irreversible harm - it may be worth trying. [Also, maybe not too stupid to mention of course, check the permissions on the fonts and the folders they are in.]

You certainly shouldn't need to convert ttf to afm.

File>Wizards>Install fonts from the web for OO2.0 and File>AutoPilot>Install fonts from the web for 1.1.x. There's some instructions for installing Microsoft core fonts system wide on Red Hat at http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxListOfFonts.html

Spadmin is, I think, mainly to do with fonts you want to use for printing.