Fonts

Day 15

DejaVu Sans is the default font in Oo Writer, and while I like it better than Arial or Times New Roman, it just isn't cutting it for me as a primary font. I noticed that DejaVu does some strange things when its converted to pdf files (and since my Eee is not connected to a printer, and my machine that is connected doesn't have OpenOffice or DejaVu, this is my only option for producing hard copies). Letter spacing selectively disappears. I don't know if this is a font issue, or an quirk with the pdf export function, but for the time being I decided to look into some other, time-tested fonts.

My first thought was to get back to basics - the core Microsoft fonts. This was fairly easy since I already had the necessary Xandros repositories. Instructions on how to add them can be found on the EeeUser wiki page. From there, it was a quick trip to the console, and I had all the basic fonts ready to roll.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

Now for some not-so-common fonts. My favorite site for "flavor fonts" is 1001freefonts.com. Since I am currently working on a unit for my class that uses an old Twilight Zone episode, I thought I might benefit from having the classic title font on tap. Sure enough, it was there. I downloaded the .TTF file, but then hit a wall. On Windows, this file would be dragged into the font folder. I am aware that Linux system folders are not so easy to navigate, so I didn't know where this font folder was located, if it existed at all. On a whim, I right-clicked on the font file. Holy cow, there was an "install" option! My font installed somewhere in my system and I was able to delete the file resting on my desktop.