How to install true fonts


Release 1.0 July 24 2005


Preface: To list and install new fonts in Windows is easy, but it can be sometimes complicate in Linux. This documentation hopefully helps you to clear how fonts works in Fedora.

How does it works?:
Fedora does not has a true type package in its distribution CDs (NB: the package ttfonts from rpmfind.net is a Macromedia fonts, some how I can not use it within the OpenOffice pack). Fortunetaly there are many sites, which offer true type fonts for just 0£, among them are http://www.grsites.com/fonts/ and http://www.fontesgratis.com.br .
Here are the steps to install new fonts.

1) Get the TT fonts form the net and copy them at /usr/share/fonts/ttf
mkdir /usr/share/fonts/ttf
cp XXX /usr/share/fonts/ttf where XXX is the ttf files.

2) create two empty files for the font system:
touch /usr/share/fonts/ttf/fonts.dir
touch /usr/share/fonts/ttf/fonts.scale

3) add the font path from step 3 to the font system:
chkfontpath -a /usr/share/fonts/ttf

4) restart the X font server (NB: this step must ALWAYS do in X Window; after restart, you are not able to see the new fonts yet)
service xfs restart

5) logoff anh then login i X Window.

6) Check to see if the new fonts have been installed properly with "xlsfonts | grep XXX" and "cat ~/.fonts.cache-1 |grep XXX".
nb: the name of the new installed fonts can be found by reading the test file "/usr/share/fonts/ttf/fonts.dir".

You can now see your new fonts with "kcharselect" (char-map), OpenOffice Write, kcmshell kde-fonts (configuration of font in KDE).

Voila & enjoy

Copenhagen 24th, July 2005, Tuan Nguyen