lubuntu font installer (just an idea)

[Jonathan Marsden]

Karl,

On 07/15/2012 03:36 PM, Karl Anliot wrote:

> Lubuntu doesn't have an automatic way to install font files. I 
> noticed a user asking how to do this in lubuntu, he must have had a 
> font he needed to use.

> A new program could list fonts to remove, and install fonts from
> font files, and launch a font viewer if the user wants to look at a
> font. Someone could code this?

Perhaps, but is there a good reason to do so?  Fonts can and (IMO)
should be packaged, just like other installable software.  They can then
be installed using existing package management tools (dpkg, apt-get,
synaptic, lsc, software center, ...), and updated automatically that way
as needed.

Creating and maintaining a new "special" application just to install
fonts does not seem to me to have significant benefits, when packages
and all their associated software tools and infrastructure already exist.

Worst case, if a user is willing to "go around" the package management
system to install an unpackaged font, they can use pcmanfm or any other
file management tool to create a directory under
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ , copy their *.ttf files in there, and then run

  sudo fc-cache -f -v

This is the exact same approach described for Ubuntu at

  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Fonts

As far as I can see, Lubuntu is no better and no worse than Ubuntu in
this respect.  When a user asks how to install an unpackaged font, and
they are unwilling to package it, I suggest we can direct them to that
wiki page.

Jonathan