[Fwd: Re: [Scribus] Newbie font-question]

[Peter Linnell]

On Thu, 2003-08-21 at 01:29, Craig Bradney wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> First posting to the group, so firstly I have to say what a welcome
> surprise it was when I found Scribus. I'm left with Adobe Indesign 2.02
> from a move to Linux. Indesign does the job I want pretty damn well but
> as its the last Windows-based package I need, hopefully I can replace it
> with Scribus soon if Scribus fits the bill.
> 

A lot depends on what you do in ID. There are a lot of common abilites
like vector drawing tools and excellent PDF export. Certainly we have a
better mailing list.<g> 


> First question for now though, is also about fonts. I have many truetype
> fonts that KDE picks up fine but Scribus does not, all are within the
> same truetype directory of my Gentoo installation. 

Ahh.. The Scribus can't find the fonts question: 

> Some missing ones
> have spaces in the file names, some do not.

Your lucky. Consider this v. 0.1 of the Fonts FAQ.

The rules of fonts (generally) in Xfree86 and Scribus. 

1. Font file extensions should be in lower case eg. ttf, pfb etc.

On any platform - except - maybe - Cygwin. 

Always.

Fix this first. 

Do this now.

I'm not kidding.

Your hair might catch on fire.

You were warned..

I prefer the belt and suspenders approach, so make sure every font file
name is in lower case. 

There was an earlier post about this today with a short script to fix
this. 

2. Within each directory with fonts, there should be *at least* a
fonts.dir and for scalable fonts i.e. True Type of Type 1, there should
always be a fonts.scale file, as well. fonts.alias might be there, but
does not matter to Scribus, as there is lots of code to sniff out what
fonts are really installed and where.  

If you are installing fonts via an rpm or script, the included fonts.dir
and fonts.scale may over write and will not recognize other fonts in the
same directory.

You should have the Xfree-utils package or something similar which
should have ttfmkfdir and mkfontdir. Older distros might also have
mkfontscale. 

After installing TTF's:

# ttfmkdir -o fonts.scale and then:

# ttfmkdir -o fonts.dir

In that order. 

3. *Never*, ever have spaces in font names. Never. Ever.  Underscore and
dashes are acceptable.

4. You can use the /~.fonts mechanism in fontconfig, but often fonts.dir
and fonts.scale are not refreshed by fontconfig. (Fixed in newer
versions.)

Things to avoid font hell in Linux and make them work optimally in
Scribus:

1. For historical and practical reasons fonts have been installed in
several different directories and can also be used across a network. 

Simpilfy your font paths and always install fonts as root into: 

/usr/X11/lib/fonts/TTF for True Type and

/usr/X11/lib/fonts/Type1 for Type 1 fonts.


2. Eliminate un-needed font paths.

3. Copy fonts from your Windows directory, do not add extra font paths
or symbolic links to a Windows partition.

4. I now always install fonts via the Kfontinstaller, as root and enable
the option to create .afm files for all fonts.

5. Some of the apps which change the font path on the fly in Linux: Open
OFfice, Star Office, Abiword, KDE - when launched. Open these before
Scribus.

There is a lot of info on font installation and how the font discovery
mechanism in fontconfig works in the documentation - you did install the
docs ?

Hope that helps,
Peter