[SOLVED] Having difficulty installing (and understanding) fonts
Linux - SoftwareThis forum is for Software issues.
Having a problem installing a new program? Want to know which application is best for the job? Post your question in this forum.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
Having difficulty installing (and understanding) fonts
I'm running Xubuntu 16.04 LTS. 64 bit computer. I recently got a photo editing software called Pixeluvo. When I install fonts to the .fonts folder while all the fonts show up in Libreoffice, only one of the font show up in Pixeluvo. Screenshot 214: what I installed in .fonts. #215 What shows up in Pixeluvo.
And exploring this I've found that fonts are stored all over the place and more often than not they don't all show up in either Pixeluvo or LibreOffice.
Another thing is I installed LinuxLibertine and all these fonts showed up in LO and in Pixeluvo. (you can see in #215 screenshot). I don't remember how I installed the LinuxLibertine but however I did it got it in both places.
And like in GIMP having eight million fonts I never use can be a time suck. Can I go into those file system folders and just delete the entire folders for things like Noto and Stix (which is like hieroglyphics)? See 216. (I have to admit I almost never touch the File System and am hesitant to do so without expert advice.)
as far as deleting them -- I'd move them off to somewhere else for safe keeping update fonts and see if something goes wrong, if yes then find out what fonts you may need to put back then do so. update fonts again.
as far as deleting them -- I'd move them off to somewhere else for safe keeping update fonts and see if something goes wrong, if yes then find out what fonts you may need to put back then do so. update fonts again.
Thanks BW. Good advice. Ran the command and got this:
Both the fonts I want (Monteserrat and Roboto) are true type. Do you think I could make a folder for each of them and put the folders in the usr/share/fonts/truetype/ folder? (screenshot) Thanks.
How old a program is Pixeluvo? If it's rather young, its problem could be that ~/.fonts was deprecated some time back. Some apps, among which L.O., IIRC, do not rely on fontconfig, instead including their own font locating mechanisms. From the archlinux wiki
Quote:
The font paths initially known to Fontconfig are: /usr/share/fonts/, ~/.local/share/fonts (and ~/.fonts/, now deprecated).
I don't "install" many "extra" fonts. "Installed" fonts on my systems are whatever the installer installs, plus Droid and Linux Libertine if not included by default. Mostly when I add extra fonts, I copy the font files from their source into /usr/local/share/fonts/. That way, each "user" on my installations (all of which are in multiboot) has access to these extra fonts rather than each individual "user" needing a personal copy in ~/.local/share/fonts/.
I commonly find that running fc-cache isn't necessary after adding fonts to, or removing fonts from, /usr/local/share/fonts/, but I suppose that may depend on individual distros' fontconfig implementations, or maybe it's necessary if the individual files added are not in the root of any of the standard font paths.
You probably lost more than you gained by deleting Stix:
Quote:
Summary : STIX scientific and engineering fonts
Size : 845616
Description :
The mission of the Scientific and Technical Information Exchange (STIX) font
creation project is the preparation of a comprehensive set of fonts that serve
the scientific and engineering community in the process from manuscript
creation through final publication, both in electronic and print formats.
How old a program is Pixeluvo? If it's rather young, its problem could be that ~/.fonts was deprecated some time back. Some apps, among which L.O., IIRC, do not rely on fontconfig, instead including their own font locating mechanisms. From the archlinux wiki
I don't "install" many "extra" fonts. "Installed" fonts on my systems are whatever the installer installs, plus Droid and Linux Libertine if not included by default. Mostly when I add extra fonts, I copy the font files from their source into /usr/local/share/fonts/. That way, each "user" on my installations (all of which are in multiboot) has access to these extra fonts rather than each individual "user" needing a personal copy in ~/.local/share/fonts/.
I commonly find that running fc-cache isn't necessary after adding fonts to, or removing fonts from, /usr/local/share/fonts/, but I suppose that may depend on individual distros' fontconfig implementations, or maybe it's necessary if the individual files added are not in the root of any of the standard font paths.
You probably lost more than you gained by deleting Stix:
Here, Roboto is installed by default:
I would expect apt to install fonts-roboto in the same location as rpm did on openSUSE.
I didn't uninstall it yet. What would I be losing? I'm not a scientist. Most of their fonts are gobbledygook to me.
The space Stix consumes on your system is trivial. It includes mostly glyphs missing from common font sets. Without Stix, when you open a web page with scientific or math formulas, you won't be seeing what the formulas are supposed to look like, regardless whether you might understand them.
The space Stix consumes on your system is trivial. It includes mostly glyphs missing from common font sets. Without Stix, when you open a web page with scientific or math formulas, you won't be seeing what the formulas are supposed to look like, regardless whether you might understand them.
I'll keep the Stix, thanks. I read the link. So that seems the way to go (pasting the fonts into /usr/local/share/fonts), but how do I get root privileges so I can paste them there? Thanks.
One quirk with fc-list is that .pcf fonts need to be gzipped (.pcf.gz) or they don't show up (debian jessie) in fc-list, but will in xlsfonts. But xls names versus face names. Also bitmap fonts are disabled by default on many distros. Enabling bitmap fonts can cause firefox to crash depending on versions.
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config
To enable bitmap fonts or edit one of the /etc/fonts/ configuration files. Don't recall which one atm. Not likely to be an issue if using distro supplied fonts.
Either login as root (e.g. Ctrl-Alt-Fn) and open a file manager (e.g. mc, my own choice), or open a file manager using sudo from an X terminal.
*Everyone should have mc installed by default. If mc isn't installed, you should install it (e.g. 'sudo apt-get install mc').
Thanks. That MC is amazing! I did read up about it but I had a few questions. To copy (see 224) do I just go with the defaults checked? I was concerned about 'with source mask' and 'using shell patterns.' (MC would really be helpful on a regular basis if I could trust it.) And #6 in the MC function keys is basically the same as "cut"?
And I was reading about MC and it said if copying directories the changes would be applied 'recursively.' I Googled and looked around but I still don't really know what recursively means.
And I plopped a couple of fonts (via MC) into /usr/local/share/fonts and unfortunately they do not show up in Pixeluvo.
I remembered that when I put the font LinuxLibertine (there are about seven of them) into LibreOffice via Synaptic Package Manager the LinuxLibertine fonts also showed up in Pixeluvo. So I Catfish file searched and found LinuxLibertine in /usr/share/doc and /usr/share bug. I took screenshots of the doc one because I figured it wouldn't be the bug one. (see 229 & 230). As you can see I didn't find the actual font ttf files.
One quirk with fc-list is that .pcf fonts need to be gzipped (.pcf.gz) or they don't show up (debian jessie) in fc-list, but will in xlsfonts. But xls names versus face names. Also bitmap fonts are disabled by default on many distros. Enabling bitmap fonts can cause firefox to crash depending on versions.
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config
To enable bitmap fonts or edit one of the /etc/fonts/ configuration files. Don't recall which one atm. Not likely to be an issue if using distro supplied fonts.
Thanks Shadow. That's good to know. So the idea is any time a font changes in $HOME/.fonts/ run those commands?
This is a command I'd never run. Running as root in your home directory is calling for trouble, all files created/modified will be owned by root, this can cause weirdest errors when user started applications cannot write and modify these files.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.
