Installing commercial fonts, postscript type 1

English Applications
1

Is it possible?

I raise the question because I’ve tried with only partial success.

The fonts are commercial ones, from Adobe, with filenames like:

BLADD___.PFB*
BLADD___.PFM*

and they are identified by the command fileas

BLADD___.PFB: PostScript Type 1 font program data (BellCentennial-Address 001.000)
BLADD___.PFM: Printer Font Metrics BellCentennial-Address, 1351 bytes, Bell Centennial Address

It seemingly did work fine to install such fonts by the relevant module in KDE’s systemsettings. They show up as the should in KCharselect. But when I try to use them in a word processor like LibreOffice, the fonts are non-existing. Why?

What have I failed to do? Can someone tell me what I should do or point in the right direction?

I must emphasize that installing open and freetrue type fonts in the manner described above works flawless and without any hassle whatsoever. Those TTF fonts are available in LibreOffice.

2

@Abigail_Donovan Hi, assuming they are in standard locations for your user(?) just run fc-cache -f -v to update/rebuild the font database, it should show the locations and any fonts it processed in the output.

3

You can use fontforge to convert it to a different font type if problem still persist.

4

Hi, Malcolm Lewis,

I followed your instructions. Still, despite it, those fonts are not shown (or can be used) in LibreOffice. But in KCharselect they are, as before.

The cache was rebuilt by fc-cachewith the switch --really-force and almost (but not exactly every one) all files in .cache/fontconfig in my home directory have a new timestamp accordingly.

So there still must be something missing.

The fonts from Adobe are all in /usr/local/share/fonts/[a-z] and the permissions looks OK:

 33k -rw-r--r--. 1 root root root  32k 17 maj 01.37 /usr/local/share/fonts/g/GILL____.pfb
4,1k -rw-r--r--. 1 root root root 1,2k 17 maj 01.37 /usr/local/share/fonts/g/GILL____.pfm

And this is what fc-query has to say:

fc-query /usr/local/share/fonts/g/GILL____.pfb 
Pattern has 26 elts (size 32)
        family: "Gill Sans"(s)
        familylang: "en"(s)
        style: "Light"(s)
        stylelang: "en"(s)
        fullname: "Gill Sans Light"(s)
        fullnamelang: "en"(s)
        slant: 0(i)(s)
        weight: 50(f)(s)
        width: 100(f)(s)
        foundry: "adobe"(s)
        file: "/usr/local/share/fonts/g/GILL____.pfb"(s)
        index: 0(i)(s)
        outline: True(s)
        scalable: True(s)
        charset: 
        0000: 00000000 ffffffff ffffffff 7fffffff 00000000 ffffffff ffffffff ffffffff
        0001: 00000000 00020000 000c0006 61000003 00040000 00000000 00000000 00000000
        0002: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 3f0002c0 00000000
        0003: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 10000000 00000000 00000000
        0020: 77180000 06010047 00000010 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
        0021: 00000000 00000004 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
        0022: 02240000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
        00fb: 00000006 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
(s)
        lang: aa|ay|bi|br|ch|co|da|de|en|es|et|eu|fi|fj|fo|fr|fur|fy|gd|gl|gv|ho|ia|id|ie|io|is|it|lb|mg|nb|nds|nl|nn|no|nr|nso|oc|om|pt|rm|sma|smj|so|sq|ss|st|sv|sw|tl|tn|ts|uz|vo|vot|wa|xh|yap|zu|an|fil|ht|jv|kj|kwm|li|ms|ng|pap-an|pap-aw|rn|rw|sc|sg|sn|su|za|agr|ayc|bem|lij|mfe|mjw|tpi|unm|wae|yuw(s)
        fontversion: 0(i)(s)
        fontformat: "Type 1"(s)
        decorative: False(s)
        postscriptname: "MGillSans-Light"(s)
        color: False(s)
        symbol: False(s)
        variable: False(s)
        fonthashint: False(s)
        order: 0(i)(s)
        namedinstance: False(s)

More hints on what to do? Please… I would prefer not to convert from PostScript type 1 into TTF, as conram suggested.

5

@Abigail_Donovan and in the cache rebuild did it show in the output the /usr/local/share/fonts and the fonts present?

6

A quick search yield, libreoffice doesn’t support type1 fonts and that includes PFB fonts.

7

Yea, that’s a well-known fact. Type 1 fonts are not well supported anymore, for years (for lots of software tools).

Heck, even Adobe has dropped support

https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/kb/postscript-type-1-fonts-end-of-support.html

8

Yep PFB is a legacy font. :wink: aka type1.

9

Amazing. I just took for granted that Type 1 is still supported. I never took care to check it out. I apologize to you all for me overlooking that fact (KCharselect fooled me).

So I have to fall back to convert the old Type 1 fonts to… what? TTFs? with FontForge, then? Any alternatives?

10

Yes, when I used fc-cat after the rebuilding of the cache. I could grep for the newly installed type 1 fonts. It looked alright, as far I’m able to tell.

11

@Abigail_Donovan So as indicated use fontforge to convert to ttf.

2 Likes
12

Just as a footnote: Here is a post [July 2017] that starts with:
“Please be aware that, as of LibreOffice version 5.3 (the Leap 42.2 update this week), LibreOffice no longer supports Type 1 (Postscript) fonts.”

2 Likes
13

Almost ten years ago. No wonder I had forgot it. And then I found my old fonts from Adobe and got this idea of installing them in their original form.

14

It seems not too hard doing that, after reading on FontForge’s website. If I fail I’ll come back to you.

15

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.