Windows True Type Fonts in Linux

[voidmain]

For those of you dual booters out there (or those that have a copy of Windows) you can add your Windows fonts to Linux.  I found if you copy all of your fonts from your Windows partition into your TrueType font directory in Linux and turn on TrueType fonts in your Xserver config your Windows docs will look much better when opening from OpenOffice for instance.  And you can create documents using these fonts.  And OpenOffice will list the fonts in the font pulldown very much like MS Office does.

If you have RedHat 7.2 and you have your Windows 9x partition mounted on "/c" just do this:

# cp /c/windows/fonts/*.ttf /usr/share/fonts/default/TrueType

Make sure you have TrueType fonts turned on in your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.  It would be under the "Module" section listed as "Load freetype" (I think this is necessary, I didn't actually read any docs).

I also turned on Anti-Aliasing in KDE and you can get nice smooth fonts and also have all of your Windows fonts available.

Other Linux distros should be similar. Font directories may be in a different location.

Side Note:  I am running XFree86 v4.1.0-15 and KDE v2.2.2-1

Have fun!

[badkarma]

I also saw a hack for the X font module to clean up the display of true type anti aliased fonts on slashdot a while back, this might be worthwhile also, haven't tried it myself yet though .....

[lost]

Dont forget the mkttfontdir utility, most distributions dont have this included, but this is needed to generate a font directory if you are not using a True Type Font Serevr.  search for it off freshmeat or google and youll find it.

[gnomez]

Anti-aliased fonts under KDE look great when enlarged, but I find them terribly blurry and ugly at small point sizes (less than 14) I told X to not anti-alias fonts below 14 in size but that made it even uglier.  Any suggestions?  (This is on Red Hat 7.2)

[voidmain]

I wish I had the answer.  To me, fonts are the single biggest gripe I have with Linux (although I can live with it for now, it's one of those things that I think need to be resolved before it's ready for a corporate desktop). I have to currently give this one to Windows but I have hope, and if I had energy I would start making some coding changes to the X server.  Unfortunately I don't have that kind of time and I primarily deal with servers so.  I just hope we get some brilliant minds on board soon to solve these problems.  And although X is a lot better with the 4.X series I think there is plenty of room for work here. It would be nice for the n00bs (and not so n00bs) if there was an easy graphical configuration tool that would allow you to easily change things like refresh rates and sizes from within X on the fly (you know, like a right click on the desktop, can't believe nobody has thought of that one (: ).  It's come a long way from the old days though when you had to get the specs for your video card and your monitor and break out your calculator to create the modes for each clock and resolution.

[ March 11, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Calum]

hideho, me again, just to let you know about this page here which has a nice little tutorial about anti-aliasing fonts in linux.
hope it helps somebody!

oh, and here's a slightly more adventurous looking one too.

[ March 27, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[Calum]

i've been trying to come to grips with the fontage, but no luck. i must be thick.  

quote:Make sure you have TrueType fonts turned on in your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4. It would be under the "Module" section listed as "Load freetype" (I think this is necessary, I didn't actually read any docs).

i have a XF86Config file (no -4) and could not find any relevant section. is there some howto-for-dumbasses available that any of you know about? i would really like to make the fonts work. Once i get my fonts in there and so on, will my apps, (openoffice, and so on) automatically use those fonts?

[voidmain]

Calum, you must be running an older distro with XFree 3.x.  The XF86Config-4 is for XFree 4.x servers.

[choasforages]

when i installed 500+ fonts from windows i just used the kde font tool in the control panel