Can't manually install some fonts with fc-cache

radioboy · 2013-08-20 05:54:20

I migrated to xubuntu 12.04 a few days ago, after having long used kubuntu 12.04.
EDIT: I am using the xfce 4.10 and 4.12 ppas. (Reasons here: thunar 1.6.0 with tabs)
Kubuntu has a nice and easy font installation GUI. It worked flawlessly for every font I threw at it.
Now, in xfce, I tried installing Linux Libertine G and Linux Biolinum G ttf fonts (http://numbertext.org/linux/),
which worked fine in KDE.
I put it in /usr/share/fonts/truetype, ~/.fonts, ~/.fonts/someotherfolder, running either "fc-cache -vf" and "sudo fc-cache -vf".
Neither method resulted in the fonts being recognised by any programs, like LibreOffice, Inkscape, etc.
The same happens with Inconsolata-dz for use with vim-airline and tmux powerline.
I tried removing the user and system font cache files and running "sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig" followed by "sudo fc-cache -vfr",
restarting applications, rebooting and repeating the process, etc. No luck in any case.
I have tried in xfce the usual system of copying to ~/.fonts and running fc-cache with e.g. Anonymous Pro. and Droid Sans Mono Slashed,
and they worked ok.
Do you have any ideas on why I might be experiencing these issues?

Last edited by radioboy (2013-08-20 19:34:58)

MountainDewManiac · 2013-08-20 07:08:40

I typed in "how to install fonts in xfce" into one of those Internet search engines and got about 10,000 results. The first one suggested this web page:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Fonts?highlight=%28fonts

I also found this (from a different web page):

This has been a real experience, but, I have the answer.
First download the font correct name is aaaiight.ttf it may be in zip, if so unzip it and have the ttf file ready to copy.
Open Terminal, su to root and open thunar. In File System>usr>share>fonts>truetype open folder freefont. Either copy/paste or drag and drop aaaiight.ttf to this folder.

And this ([SOLVED] How to install TT fonts in F17 Xfce?):

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=281742

And then I thought, "I bet there's an app for that in Synaptic Package Manager." So I ran it, typed font into its search box, and saw that the 14th result (on my system) was called font-manager.

Font Manager currently allows the user to:
- Preview installed fonts
- Compare installed fonts
- Easily install or remove fonts
- Easily activate and de-activate installed fonts
- Specify different directories to search for fonts
- Group fonts into "Collections", and easily activate or
de-activate groups of fonts
- Export "Collections" to an archive for easy backup, sharing, etc.
- Provides quick access to all GNOME font utilities.
Font Manager suggests the installation of python-reportlab to allow users
to export font collections in the PDF format.

I should have looked in Synaptic first, lol. Font-manager's description mentions GNOME, but Xfce uses GTK2, so I figured it would at least run. I double-clicked it, clicked Apply, and waited for it to install. I was pleased to see that when I double-clicked it, Synaptic didn't mention installing anything else along with it, so no dependencies (that I don't already have installed, at least). While it was installing, I downloaded and extracted the font archive you mentioned...

I then ran font-manager (if you cannot find it in your menu, hit alt-F2 and type its name). It checked for installed fonts, loaded them, and sat there. I clicked on the little "manage fonts" icon (it's a gear) and selected Install Fonts. I then browsed the directory in my downloads directory I extracted the font archive to, selected all of the font files, and clicked on OK. Font-manager informed me that it needed to reload its list and I let it. I then ran Libre Office Writer, opened the font list... and saw the fonts I installed. Easy as π, lol. BtW, the remove fonts function works, too (I plan to delete the extracted directory, so...).

Note that due to the nature of linux and Synaptic Package Manager, there are probably more font manager apps listed. I stopped looking when I found font-manager because it's late, I'm lazy, and the list of installable files that I got when I used font as a search term numbered 872 packages, lol.

Whenever you want to do something in linux, ask yourself if there's a possibility that you might NOT be the first person to have wanted to do it. If the answer is, "Yes," search in Synaptic to see if some helpful person has written an app to allow you to perform the task without having to actually know how to do it. The terminal and the various "under the hood" things in linux are great and powerful... and 99.999999% of the time, unnecessary lol . I love it. Now, if only Synaptic had some gardening apps, maybe I would have enough of a harvest to can....

Regards,
MDM

Last edited by MountainDewManiac (2013-08-20 07:10:00)

radioboy · 2013-08-20 09:04:12

Thank you MountainDewManiac, but if you read my post again, you'll see that I followed the usual steps mentioned in the web sites you suggested.
I always do my research before posting in a forum. I didn't mention it in my post, but yes, I did try using font-manager, and looked
through several other results in synaptic searching for alternatives. Seemingly the only other option remaining now is installing all
the necessary kde libraries just to install a few fonts, which I think you might agree on being overkill. After all, some fonts do get installed
simply by copying them where they belong to and then using fc-cache. I have no issues installing fonts from ubuntu repos.

I just tried using font-viewer to install Linux Biolinum, and despite now they were seen by font-manager, they were slashed as inactive.
After activation, they were still not seen by other programs, so no success yet.

ToZ · 2013-08-20 10:40:22

I don't have a Xubuntu 12.04 install handy right now, but I tried this in Arch and it worked. I downloaded http://www.numbertext.org/linux/e7a3847 … 120116.zip, extracted the ttf files from the zip file and copied them to ~/.fonts then ran "fc-cache -vf" and they showed up in libreoffice.

Are you getting any error messages running "fc-cache -vf"?

$ fc-cache -vf
/usr/share/fonts: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 8 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/100dpi: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/75dpi: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/TTF: caching, new cache contents: 51 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/Type1: caching, new cache contents: 35 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/encodings: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 1 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/encodings/large: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/misc: caching, new cache contents: 59 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/util: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
/home/toz/.local/share/fonts: skipping, no such directory
/home/toz/.fonts: caching, new cache contents: 10 fonts, 0 dirs
/var/cache/fontconfig: not cleaning unwritable cache directory
/home/toz/.cache/fontconfig: cleaning cache directory
/home/toz/.fontconfig: not cleaning non-existent cache directory
fc-cache: succeeded

Are the fonts being found?

radioboy · 2013-08-20 18:29:40

ToZ wrote:

I don't have a Xubuntu 12.04 install handy right now, but I tried this in Arch and it worked. I downloaded http://www.numbertext.org/linux/e7a3847 … 120116.zip, extracted the ttf files from the zip file and copied them to ~/.fonts then ran "fc-cache -vf" and they showed up in libreoffice.
Are you getting any error messages running "fc-cache -vf"?
Are the fonts being found?

ToZ, thanks for verifying this on your system. I don't get any error message besides
some ocassional cache cleaning problem, that doesn't appear after running fc-cache -fv again
(or its sudo version). I think there must be something going on with some of these specific fonts.
Since they are graphite versions of other fonts, I (just in case) verified I have installed the graphite libraries, and I do:
libgraphite2-2.0.0
libgraphite3
pango-graphite

I installed libgraphite2-2.0.0 just in case when I was already running out of options to fix this issue.
Of course, that didn't help.

MountainDewManiac · 2013-08-20 18:42:15

I just had a thought: Since I was able to use font-manager to install the fonts that you mentioned having trouble with in your first post, do you feel that it would be helpful for me to do a search in Synaptic for all files installed on my system that contain the term "fonts" and to compile a list of said files (with their respective version numbers) so that you might see if there is something that is missing on your system that may not be readily apparent to you?

Regards,
MDM

radioboy · 2013-08-20 19:18:34

MountainDewManiac wrote:

I just had a thought: Since I was able to use font-manager to install the fonts that you mentioned having trouble with in your first post, do you feel that it would be helpful for me to do a search in Synaptic for all files installed on my system that contain the term "fonts" and to compile a list of said files (with their respective version numbers) so that you might see if there is something that is missing on your system that may not be readily apparent to you?
Regards,
MDM

Yes, that would be super-helpful for me, although I think it's faster if you run

dpkg -l | grep font | awk '{print $2 " " $3}' | xclip -selection clipboard

in the terminal and paste results, or if you have pastebinit:

dpkg -l | grep font | awk '{print $2 " " $3}' | pastebinit

and paste the resulting url. Thanks!

Edit: I forgot to mention something important in my first post. I am using the xfce 4.12 ppa.

Last edited by radioboy (2013-08-20 19:30:18)

MountainDewManiac · 2013-08-20 19:58:22

radioboy wrote:

I forgot to mention something important in my first post. I am using the xfce 4.12 ppa.

That shouldn't matter - I am, as well (along with, of course, the 4.10 PPA, since the 4.12 PPA web page states that it must be added to sources first).

radioboy wrote:

dpkg -l | grep font | awk '{print $2 " " $3}' | xclip -selection clipboard

Result:

The program 'xclip' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install xclip

radioboy wrote:

dpkg -l | grep font | awk '{print $2 " " $3}' | pastebinit

Result:

The program 'pastebinit' can be found in the following packages:
 * pastebinit
 * pastebinit
Try: sudo apt-get install <selected package>

I will compile a list from Synaptic either late tonight or sometime tomorrow (as time permits).

Regards,
MDM

EDIT: I tried the first thing you suggested, but removed most of the text. That did give me some output. IDK if it is in any way, shape, or form comparable to what I would have gotten had the original text (in full) you specified been properly carried out. But here is what I got:

$ dpkg -l | grep font
ii  console-setup                               1.70ubuntu6                               all          console font and keymap setup program
ii  font-manager                                0.5.7-4                                   i386         font management application for the GNOME desktop
ii  fontconfig                                  2.10.1-0ubuntu3                           i386         generic font configuration library - support binaries
ii  fontconfig-config                           2.10.1-0ubuntu3                           all          generic font configuration library - configuration
ii  fonts-droid                                 20111207+git-1ubuntu1                     all          handheld device font with extensive style and language support
ii  fonts-freefont-ttf                          20120503-1                                all          Freefont Serif, Sans and Mono Truetype fonts
ii  fonts-kacst                                 2.01+mry-6                                all          KACST free TrueType Arabic fonts
ii  fonts-kacst-one                             5.0+svn11846-6                            all          TrueType font designed for Arabic language
ii  fonts-khmeros-core                          5.0-5ubuntu1                              all          KhmerOS Unicode fonts for the Khmer language of Cambodia
ii  fonts-lao                                   0.0.20060226-8                            all          TrueType font for Lao language
ii  fonts-liberation                            1.07.2-5                                  all          Fonts with the same metrics as Times, Arial and Courier
ii  fonts-lklug-sinhala                         0.6-2                                     all          Unicode Sinhala font by Lanka Linux User Group
ii  fonts-nanum                                 3.020-1ubuntu1                            all          Nanum Korean fonts
ii  fonts-opensymbol                            2:102.2+LibO4.0.4~rc2-0ubuntu1~quantal1   all          OpenSymbol TrueType font
ii  fonts-sil-abyssinica                        1.200-3                                   all          smart Unicode font for Ethiopian and Erythrean scripts (Amharic et al.)
ii  fonts-sil-padauk                            2.80-1                                    all          smart Unicode font for languages in Myanmar
ii  fonts-takao-pgothic                         003.02.01-5ubuntu1                        all          Japanese TrueType font set, Takao P Gothic Fonts
ii  fonts-thai-tlwg                             1:0.5.0-5                                 all          Thai fonts maintained by TLWG (meta package)
ii  fonts-tibetan-machine                       1.901b-4                                  all          font for Tibetan, Dzongkha and Ladakhi (OpenType Unicode)
ii  fonts-tlwg-garuda                           1:0.5.0-5                                 all          Thai Garuda font
ii  fonts-tlwg-kinnari                          1:0.5.0-5                                 all          Thai Kinnari font
ii  fonts-tlwg-loma                             1:0.5.0-5                                 all          Thai Loma font
ii  fonts-tlwg-mono                             1:0.5.0-5                                 all          Thai TlwgMono font
ii  fonts-tlwg-norasi                           1:0.5.0-5                                 all          Thai Norasi font
ii  fonts-tlwg-purisa                           1:0.5.0-5                                 all          Thai Purisa font
ii  fonts-tlwg-sawasdee                         1:0.5.0-5                                 all          Thai Sawasdee font
ii  fonts-tlwg-typewriter                       1:0.5.0-5                                 all          Thai TlwgTypewriter font
ii  fonts-tlwg-typist                           1:0.5.0-5                                 all          Thai TlwgTypist font
ii  fonts-tlwg-typo                             1:0.5.0-5                                 all          Thai TlwgTypo font
ii  fonts-tlwg-umpush                           1:0.5.0-5                                 all          Thai Umpush font
ii  fonts-tlwg-waree                            1:0.5.0-5                                 all          Thai Waree font
ii  gnome-font-viewer                           3.6.0-0ubuntu1                            i386         font viewer for GNOME
ii  gsfonts                                     1:8.11+urwcyr1.0.7~pre44-4.2ubuntu1       all          Fonts for the Ghostscript interpreter(s)
ii  gsfonts-x11                                 0.22                                      all          Make Ghostscript fonts available to X11
ii  gucharmap                                   1:3.5.99-0ubuntu1                         i386         Unicode character picker and font browser
ii  kbd                                         1.15.3-9ubuntu1                           i386         Linux console font and keytable utilities
ii  libfontconfig1:i386                         2.10.1-0ubuntu3                           i386         generic font configuration library - runtime
ii  libfontembed1:i386                          1.0.24-2ubuntu0.1                         i386         OpenPrinting CUPS Filters - Font Embed Shared library
ii  libfontenc1:i386                            1:1.1.1-1                                 i386         X11 font encoding library
ii  libfreetype6:i386                           2.4.10-0ubuntu1.1                         i386         FreeType 2 font engine, shared library files
ii  libt1-5                                     5.1.2-3.5                                 i386         Type 1 font rasterizer library - runtime
ii  libxfont1                                   1:1.4.5-2                                 i386         X11 font rasterisation library
ii  libxft2:i386                                2.3.1-1                                   i386         FreeType-based font drawing library for X
ii  t1-xfree86-nonfree                          4.2.1-3.1ubuntu1                          all          non-free Postscript Type 1 fonts from XFree86
ii  ttf-dejavu-core                             2.33-2ubuntu1                             all          Vera font family derivate with additional characters
ii  ttf-dejavu-extra                            2.33-2ubuntu1                             all          Vera font family derivate with additional characters
ii  ttf-indic-fonts-core                        1:0.5.11ubuntu1                           all          Core collection of free fonts for languages of India
ii  ttf-mscorefonts-installer                   3.4ubuntu3                                all          Installer for Microsoft TrueType core fonts
ii  ttf-punjabi-fonts                           1:0.5.11ubuntu1                           all          Free TrueType fonts for the Punjabi language
ii  ttf-ubuntu-font-family                      0.80-0ubuntu5                             all          Ubuntu Font Family, sans-serif typeface hinted for clarity
ii  ttf-wqy-microhei                            0.2.0-beta-1ubuntu1                       all          A droid derived Sans-Seri style CJK font
ii  x11-xfs-utils                               7.7~1                                     i386         X font server utilities
ii  xfonts-base                                 1:1.0.3                                   all          standard fonts for X
ii  xfonts-encodings                            1:1.0.4-1ubuntu1                          all          Encodings for X.Org fonts
ii  xfonts-mathml                               6ubuntu1                                  all          Type1 Symbol font for MathML
ii  xfonts-scalable                             1:1.0.3-1                                 all          scalable fonts for X
ii  xfonts-utils                                1:7.7~1                                   i386         X Window System font utility programs

EDIT #2: I forgot to mention that I am running Mint 14 Xfce (32-bit). I have the standard repos for that distro, the Xfce 4.10 & 4.12 ones, and various "app" PPAs such as the one from the LibreOffice people that gave me LibreOffice 4.0.4.2 (Build ID: 400m0(Build:2)). But I try not to fly too wild with my PPA choices and tend to only select the ones which provide the most stable apps/components (such as the LO one). I do not know if that makes any difference.

Last edited by MountainDewManiac (2013-08-20 20:07:17)

MountainDewManiac · 2013-08-26 00:07:11

radioboy: Any progress on your issue? I'm still wondering why font-manager isn't working for you, since it worked fine for me using the same font file archive you tried, without my having bothered to place the extracted files into any special directory (and without my having any knowledge of the "accepted way" to install fonts in linux).

Regards,
MDM

Last edited by MountainDewManiac (2013-08-26 00:07:45)

radioboy · 2013-09-04 09:02:50

Hi MountainDew. I'm sorry I didn't answer earlier.
I contrasted your package list with mine and I couldn't find a package that made a difference on the issue. Thanks a lot for your help with that.
I tried installing some other packages (I don't remember which ones now), tried cleaning font chaches again, moved all the relevant user configuration folders to
a temporary one to start afresh with that, etc., to no avail. Since I really needed that font for some existing projects, but mainly due to several other problems
like wild changes in font kerning with different gtk themes, bad screen redrawing on window resizing, etc., I had to go back to kde.
Now things work alright, including of course the problematic fonts.

I'm definitely can't blame xfce here since ToZ succeeded in installing the fonts. I also was using the two xfce ppas I mentioned (4.10 and 4.12), so I know I should expect
a bit more of issues occasionally. Perhaps I did not remove old configuration files that might have been indeed relevant, and there might have been classic issues with the
ati fglrx driver for redrawing, etc.

Sadly I didn't have time for more tests and maybe trying removing the ppas, so I just went back to kubuntu.
I really liked the responsiveness of xfce in general, so I hope I can give it another try in the future.
Thanks a lot again Mountain and ToZ for your help!

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#1 2013-08-20 05:54:20

Can't manually install some fonts with fc-cache

#2 2013-08-20 07:08:40

Re: Can't manually install some fonts with fc-cache

#3 2013-08-20 09:04:12

Re: Can't manually install some fonts with fc-cache

#4 2013-08-20 10:40:22

Re: Can't manually install some fonts with fc-cache

#5 2013-08-20 18:29:40

Re: Can't manually install some fonts with fc-cache

#6 2013-08-20 18:42:15

Re: Can't manually install some fonts with fc-cache

#7 2013-08-20 19:18:34

Re: Can't manually install some fonts with fc-cache

#8 2013-08-20 19:58:22

Re: Can't manually install some fonts with fc-cache

#9 2013-08-26 00:07:11

Re: Can't manually install some fonts with fc-cache

#10 2013-09-04 09:02:50

Re: Can't manually install some fonts with fc-cache

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