installing additional fonts

[komputes]

Gérard BIGOT wrote:
> 2009/8/19 Pastor JW <pastor_jw at the-inner-circle.org>
>
>   
>> On Tuesday 18 August 2009 10:25:27 pm dwain wrote:
>>     
>>> i have been reading the linux bible 2008 and have learned much about
>>> running linux.  more than i have learned before.  i would like to install
>>> some additional fonts, but i haven't found a way to do this in the gnome
>>> desktop.  while trying to configure a network printer i found a tab to
>>>       
>> add
>>     
>>> additional fonts, but i would like to install them system wide.  would
>>> someone please point me in the direction to accomplish this task?
>>>       
>> In Kubuntu, which is what I use and much prefer, going to System Settings,
>> Appearance, you will find the Font Installer and other font tools.  In
>> Ubuntu
>> however, people tell me this tool function is missing, ...a Gnome thing I
>> guess.  You can however, install fonts from synaptic package manager if you
>> find the ones you want available there. Or add "Font Forge" to handle true
>> type fonts.
>>
>>     
>
> put whatever font you want to add to ~/.fonts/ and reboot.  There's a magic
> line to invoke at the prompt level, so as not have to reboot, but I can't
> remember (fccache something?).
>   
The command to update the font cache w/o rebooting is:
$ sudo fc-cache -f

This command is to be run after adding new fonts manually to either
under ~/.fonts or /usr/share/fonts.

Note that placing fonts in ~/.fonts (/home/USERNAME/.fonts) will make
these fonts only available to that user. You usually cannot see folders
in your home folder that start with a .dot, so to view these hidden
folders, go to "View > Show Hidden Files".
 
If you want the fonts to be accessible by all users (system wide), then
place your .ttf font files in /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ (as Andrew
previously suggested.) You will need to do this as root which can be
tricky for new users, so see below for an easier solution.

If you want the simple way out, I find kfontview, an amazing little
piece of KDE software, allows you to preview the fonts and then decide
whether you want them installed locally (your user) or system wide (all
users), and it does this all graphically. You can get it through
add/remove. kfontview was its own package, but in newer releases
kfontview is now part of the kdebase-workspace-bin package and is no
longer in the repositories as its own package. If anyone knows of a
GNOME equivalent for this, it would be awesome.

-komputes