I thought that mkfontdir and mkfontdir were only needed for Type 1 fonts? My CentOS only has fonts.dir and fonts.scale in the Type 1 directory.

You run them for TTF files as well (you do get a fonts.dir and fonts.scale files with TTF). The idea is that you're helping X and applications; e.g., OpenOffice and/or LibreOffice, out with scaling and the like. The utilities are useful with scalable fonts including TTF and Type 1.

You actually want to run mkfontscale first, then mkfontdir; for some reason I always get those bassackwards. Take a read though the manual pages for those utilities for complete information.

Hope this helps some.

I simply put all my added fonts in a folder /usr/share/fonts/truetype/myfonts/

I also make sure the permissions are set to root->read-only

and run sudo fc-cache -fv

This seems to work fine without any added complexity. Is there a reason I shouldn't be doing it this way?

I'm just an individual user, but in any event a representative of a law enforcement agency would have to present a properly-executed search warrant, otherwise they're not getting on the premises.

The FBI and local law enforcement likely couldn't care less.

Not as far as I know. As I said, the files produced by these are only present for Type 1 fonts in CentOS. I've just checked the Red Hat documentation, and they mention running fc-cache, but not mkfontscale or mkfontdir.

tronayne is a Slackware user; they often need old ways of doing things. Note that X and OpenOffice do not use the same font-display code, according to Red Hat.

I do have a problem with fonts. I have six flavors of Franklin Gothic in my "myfonts" folder yet the font viewer only shows five of them, and Libre Office shows only four. Windows does a similar thing -- not all of them are visible to Windows or OpenOffice.

It depends on Microsoft. With their recent EULA they can conduct automatic searches and disable systems if they wish.

And they have the right to force an audit (the big hammer for most things), and that audit will/can include all computers on the premises.

This was the disruption that causes some companies to avoid Microsoft software.

They could inspect my Microsoft network remotely but not a Linux network because their EULA doesn't cover Linux or other OS's. To enter the premises they would have to convince law enforcement to obtain a search warrant, or they could subpoena my computers and I believe there would have to be a pending lawsuit for that to happen.

It depends on the contract with Microsoft. The BSA/Microsoft do not usually need anything but a phone call to initiate an audit. They may even be able to just show up at the door. Such audits can include any system owned by the company as they can say files may have been copied and thus causing an infringement... As I recall (memory only, I think it was an SCO Netware? license that they wanted continued - but the customer did not) this happened once before - and some files were found on unrelated systems (these were executables, not fonts). Even though the executables wouldn't run, it was still counted as a license violation.

Microsoft has a rather restrictive license on fonts (as they do on everything else).

Warrants only come when you are accused of violations and are accompanied by US marshals/FBI (I think that is because infringement is a federal crime only...) for the purpose of seizing evidence for possible use in a trial. No pending lawsuit has to exist.