The font I want...
 

In order to use OpenOffice documents that I have pulled over from Word more accurately, I have copied over the Arial family of fonts into my /usr/share/fonts/truetype directory. This works totally correctly for OpenOffice. However I now find, with Arial being such a common "base" font, that Firefox insists on using it to display most web pages.

Although I like the look of Arial for word processed/printed documents, I don't like it when used to display web pages on-screen. I prefer the basic Sans-Serif font Firefox normally uses.

I really want Firefox to stop using the Arial font in /usr/share/fonts/truetype for displaying web pages. I am aware I can select a default font in Firefox's preferences, but that would mean it would use that font all the time, overriding the web page's preference. I would prefer not to do this... but I just want it to stop using Arial!!

Short of deleting the Arial font from /usr/share/fonts/truetype, and copying it back again whenever I need to work in OpenOffice (I surf the web more than I type documents), is there anywhere I can copy the Arial font family to, in /usr/share/fonts/truetype, where Firefox won't find it but OpenOffice will? I notice there is an "openoffice" sub-folder inside /usr/share/fonts/truetype, but moving Arial into there does not make any different - Firefox still finds it.

A trivial problem, I know - but any suggestions please?

Steve Wylie

Steve,

Are you saying that you would like to never see Arial again on pages where the page is requesting Arial? Or are you saying that you want to never see it again on *any* page?

BTW, you can select a default font that does not override the page's preferences... just click the little box "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections about" in the fonts window that comes up when you click Advanced under Content in Firefox Preferences.

My problem is, that if I select "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above", the majority of web pages seem to display in Arial. I don't know whether this is most people's "default font" for web pages, but it just doesn't look very good on my screen. Personal preference, I guess. Maybe most web page designers pick Arial by default as it is virtually guaranteed to be on most people's (Windows) PCs. In Linux, with open source fonts and without Arial present, it appears to default to a font that just looks better on my screen.

So, as far as I can see, if I could have Arial on my machine, but "hide" it away from Firefox but still have it available for OpenOffice, that would be great. Failing that, I will have to copy the Arial family of fonts across from my Windows partition whenever I need to do some word processing...

What happens if you rename arial.ttf to TheFontIDontlike.ttf?
You'll still be able to use it (I expect), but maybe Firefox will think "Arial" is not installed.
I don't know how much information about a font is embedded in the ttf file, and which apps may read it, so this may not work.

FontForge
 

Changing the fontname on the filesystem is not enough. Font files store their font face and font family name information within themselves as well. Use a font creator application like FontForge (open source) to save your Arial font with all internal name values modified to a different name.

This is no perfect solution, because OpenOffice can also request Arial, and you will have to modify the file to use your own ArialRenamed. If a document's author requests Arial, then that's what he/she wants to have.

You could develop some code to make your font display engine use or avoid fonts based on your application preferences, but that's a lot of work for very little practical value.

Regrads,
SIMP

Fedora Development

sounds odd that most pages would show up as arial. in my experience, most sans serif pages on the web are in verdana. do you have the other MSTT fonts installed?

Yes, this is what I thought. Guess the easiest thing all round is to delete the Arial fonts from my Linux partition and just copy them back over from Windows when I need them.

Thanks for the advice.

Steve

Reply to Slackhack: Hmm, that's a point. I shall take a look when I get home from work tonight and see if I didn't copy across Verdana or something. I did *assume* I was looking at Arial....

I'm just saying maybe the page specifies "verdana, sans-serif" and if you don't have verdana it's defaulting to arial as the sans.

I remember before, when I was trying to resolve this unwanted appearance of Arial, that I tried deleting Arial from /usr/share/fonts and it solved the problem. Unless I mis-remember. I'll check tonight and see what happens. The proof of the pudding and all that...

You were absolutely right, slackhack - I copied Verdana into /usr/share/fonts/truetype, and the web pages now display in this font rather than Arial, even thought Arial is still present in the folder. So, best of both worlds in the end! Thanks for the advice.

Steve