Font Questions

[volvoguy]

Howdy all! I may need to ask this on the users list, but since it's
not a technical issue I thought I'd try here first.

I'm trying to deal with fonts - installing them, previewing them, and
perhaps even editing them. I know with other distros, you could
double-click on a font file and you'd get a little sample window
(similar to Windows). The "icon preview" feature is better than
nothing, but it doesn't seem to work on remote files (Samba mounted),
which is where I keep my thousands of fonts until I need one.

Except for the font dialog in "Desktop Preferences", Ubuntu doesn't
seem to provide any font related tools/options.

The next question is about the best place to put (install) TTF files.
Can fonts installed in my home folder (or .fonts actually) be used
system-wide? I don't actually have a .fonts folder, so that kinda
threw me off a bit. Do you need to run a program/script to make the
system aware of new fonts?

I think it's actually a good thing that I'm running into usability
issues. Before Ubuntu I never bothered with fonts and graphic file
formats because I did all my design in windows - Linux just wasn't up
to the task. I had a recent hard drive crash and getting a replacement
is going to take a while . I decided to install Ubuntu on a smaller
extra drive I had, and there's nothing I haven't been able to do with
Ubuntu. This may seem like a "so what" thing to people in different
professions that have been using Linux exclusively for a while - but I
consider it a huge milestone that a moderately-geeky graphic designer
can get all his work done with Linux. :-)

Ok. I'm rambling now. If anyone can offer suggestions about the best
ways to work with fonts in Ubuntu, I'll be very grateful.

-- 
Aaron

Ubuntu SVG Artwork - www.volvoguy.net/ubuntu
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Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere. ~ G.K. Chesterton