HOWTO: Tahoma Font in Breezy

[Casey]

As far as I can tell, microsoft distributes this under a different license than the other true type core fonts. I think that you have to have a valid windows license to use this.

I did this for a friend who wanted to use Tahoma in Breezy.
The msttcorefonts package was already installed in this case. It is a prereq for this to work that you install the msttcorefonts package (to create the directory that we will use). You could modify this to use a different fonts directory, but this howto would not cover it).

Disclaimer: I don't have a Windows license so as far as I can tell I am not allowed to do this by the license. Therefore I really can't help if it doesn't work, though I don't see any reason it wouldn't work (it worked on my friend's copy of breezy).

The first step is to install cabextract if you do not already have it installed. You can do this through synaptic. If you have already installed the msttcorefonts package (which creates a directory that we use later and thus is necessary), then you do not need to perform this step, as cabextract was installed at that time.

Next download the tahoma font package from microsoft. It is available here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/ie6sp1/finrel/6_sp1/W98NT42KMeXP/EN-US/IELPKTH.CAB

I obtained this link from the .spec file at http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/

Next, using the terminal navigate to the directory to which you downloaded the file. For my friend, this was the desktop.

cd Desktop
At this point a new folder was created:

mkdir tahomafont
Now the downloaded font was moved to the tahomafont folder:

mv IELPKTH.CAB tahomafont
Now the directory was changed to the tahomafont folder:

cd tahomafont
Now the cabextract utility was used on the .CAB file:

cabextract IELPKTH.CAB
Now the resulting .ttf files were copied to the msttcorefonts folder in the system's fonts directory (note this step will require sudo):

sudo cp *.ttf /usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/

Now the fonts should be installed. Open up the Gnome font selector (System->Preferences->Font) and insure that the Tahoma font is available in both regular and bold forms.

Edit: At this point feel free to delete the tahomafont directory that you created, as well as all of its contents.

Hopefully this will be of assistance to some people.

[Xian]

You could also verify that font path is in your /etc/X11/xorg.file.
Just look in the Section "Files" and review the FontPaths listed.

Also rebuild your font cache.

$ sudo fc-cache -f -v

[poofyhairguy]

This almost got lost in the desktop forum. Glad I wanted Tahoma and found it.

[majed]

What i did was copy the tahoma.ttf file from my windows installation to my ubuntu fonts directory and then rebuilt the font cache and all was fine :)

[cowlip]

THis worked great, THANK U!

[shigs]

Good stuff, this should probably be tacked onto some of the counter strike and wine FAQ's.

[stoffe]

Just wanted to say thanks a lot! =)

[detyabozhye]

Thanks, helped me with installing fonts in general. ^_^

[repeat]

What i did was copy the tahoma.ttf file from my windows installation to my ubuntu fonts directory and then rebuilt the font cache and all was fine :)
Where can I find the fonts directory?

I can't use the 'go to font folder' option in preferences -> fonts because I need root access for copying. So I have to use the command line for this...

[majed]

Where can I find the fonts directory?

I can't use the 'go to font folder' option in preferences -> fonts because I need root access for copying. So I have to use the command line for this...

It is a hidden directory under your home directory; its name is (.fonts). Using the terminal, you can go to it with this command:


cd ~/.fonts

Good luck!

[Sarisar]

OK thanks all. I did it a mix of all the way. Got my father to copy over all his FONT directory onto a USB stick (I was too lazy to reboot into windows on my laptop). Copied the TTFs into ~/.fonts and ran the fc-cache and... then it crashed when trying to select the font.

So don't try ALL the TTF fonts. But just tahoma works fine :)

Thanks again everyone - I may yet beat Ubuntu with your help :)

[justaguynpc]

Thanks, I was really at a loss with my install of Dapper without Tahoma!

Everything is as it should be ....................... :)

[maulattu]

What i did was copy the tahoma.ttf file from my windows installation to my ubuntu fonts directory and then rebuilt the font cache and all was fine :)

nice! this simple method worked very good for me :) (followed by "sudo fc-cache -f -v")
thanks :-\"

[YaNoS]

Thanks for the 'HOWTO'!

[kostkon]

Thank you very much for this HOWTO!!

[~~Tito~~]

i have a problem when you get to the last part it says there is no file or folder.

[Pronco]

it doesn't work in Ubuntu Feisty Fawn

It looks like a squares

it should be something wrong in particular as I should change something I guess

Here's a snapshot attached to this POST . Take a peek into it

Cheers,
Pronco

[Pronco]

Any updates

Thank You!

[toutatis]

Thanks for the explanation, Tahoma is my favourite font. It was what I missed most from Windows.

Roel

[Pronco]

Did someone take a look into my snapshot ?

I would ask you to attend to my issue as possible as you can.

Thank you.

[jfarschman]

i have a problem when you get to the last part it says there is no file or folder.

Tito, You need to install the MS Core Fonts

apt-get install msttcorefonts

Then follow the instructions to add the missing Tahoma font.

[Pronco]

Eventually Tahoma is currently working in my Ubuntu

It has been fixed by a tweaked fontconfig XML files and currently looks like on Windows

Thank You
Pronco

[Impaque]

Works like a charm in Ubuntu 7.10. Moreover, this Tahoma font actually works, unlike the Tahoma I copied from my Windows XP (I haven't actually done a diff on them to see if they differ, but the method from this thread simply worked instantly, while WinXP Tahoma gave squares instead of letters, like someone posted on this topic).

Thanks!

[escobar_]

Works like a charm in Ubuntu 7.10. Moreover, this Tahoma font actually works, unlike the Tahoma I copied from my Windows XP (I haven't actually done a diff on them to see if they differ, but the method from this thread simply worked instantly, while WinXP Tahoma gave squares instead of letters, like someone posted on this topic).

Thanks!

Thank you guys so much for this guide. I copied Tahoma from my XP installation but only squares showed up. With this guide I got everything working nicely.

Cheers!

[MasterProg]

Here's a shell script I made to do this automatically. It installs msttcorefonts package and downloads and installs Tahoma font. After that font cache is rebuilt.



#!/bin/bash
# Install Microsoft Fonts (Including Tahoma)

if [ "$(id -u)" == "0" ]
then
if apt-get install msttcorefonts; then
mkdir temp-tahomafont
cd temp-tahomafont
if wget http://download.microsoft.com/download/ie6sp1/finrel/6_sp1/W98NT42KMeXP/EN-US/IELPKTH.CAB; then
cabextract IELPKTH.CAB
if cp *.ttf /usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/; then
if fc-cache -fv; then
cd ..
rm -r temp-tahomafont
echo "Microsoft fonts are now installed"
else
echo "Could not rebuild font cache"
exit -1
fi
else
echo "Could not copy the font to /usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/"
exit -1
fi
else
echo "Could not download Tahoma font"
exit -1
fi
else
echo "Could not install msttcorefonts package"
exit -1
fi
else
echo "Run 'sudo ./addfonts.sh'"
exit 0
fi


Save it as 'addfonts.sh', allow it to execute:
chmod +x addfonts.sh and then run it as root:
sudo ./addfonts.sh

[Lunx]

I've been looking for an easy way to get hold of Tahoma, followed the steps in the OP and it worked perfectly in Intrepid :)

Found this site that has some really interesting information on fonts in Linux (http://avi.alkalay.net/linux/docs/font-howto/Font.html)

[eju]

Thank you Casey, that worked fine.
Really useful article

[cyrylski]

works cool under Lucid Lynx, 10.04.

Thanks a lot for the script!