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/downlo...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!