[PLUG-TALK] Available Fonts in Firefox on Ubuntu

Richard C. Steffens rsteff at comcast.net
Wed Nov 5 23:58:45 UTC 2008


John Jason Jordan wrote:
> Fonts have a name inside the font file that is not necessarily the name
> of the file.  To figure out what the internal name is find the font
> file, which is probably in /usr/share/fonts somewhere, or it might be
> in your home folder inside /.fonts. Once you have the file,
> double-click on it and it should display it in the Gnome or KDE font
> viewer applet. The applet displays what the font looks like and (I
> think) the name of the font.
>
> If that does not give you the internal name of the font then I suggest
> opening it in Fontforge. I have never done this, but I know Fontforge
> is an OSS font creation and editing program like the old proprietary
> Fontographer that I used years ago. I know Fontographer displays the
> internal font name, and also other internal things about the font such
> as what style it is (text, symbol, script, etc.). Fonts contain a lot
> of internal information that the OS and applications use. For example,
> you see Nimbus in Openoffice.org, but when you select some text and
> italicize it OOo needs to know that it must switch to the italic font
> file for that text. Which file is the italic is contained inside the
> font file.
>
> Exactly where and how the internal information is stored depends on
> whether it is a Type 1, TrueType or OpenType (or other) font. 
>   
Not finding anything obvious in /usr/share/fonts, or in ~/.fonts, I 
searched the file system for a file containing the text, "URW Chancery 
L" and found three. One is where I entered it in /etc/fonts/local.conf. 
Another is /etc/fonts/conf.avail/30-urw-aliases.conf. The third is a 
link to the second. The place it uses that name suggests that it is the 
family name:

        <alias binding="same">
      <family>Zapf Chancery</family>
      <accept><family>URW Chancery L</family></accept>

I never did find an actual font file, but I have the use of that font in 
OO. The question remains, how do I get Firefox to use it?

-- 
Regards,

Dick Steffens
 




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