or perhaps the right question to ask is ``why not ?'' The typical
Linux user has experienced a migration from Windows, and probably
has an enormous collection of TrueType fonts. Many of these
fonts ( eg those that ship with MS Word and Corel's products )
are of fairly good quality. However, some Linux applications, such
as Star Office and LaTeX do not support TrueType fonts, but do support
Type1 fonts. update: it looks like Star Office can handle TrueType
fonts, but I'm still trying to work out the details. At best, it involves
some fairly gruesome hacks.
This is a pity, because
with ghostscript support for TrueType, and TrueType font servers,
Linux has the infrastructure it needs to handle TrueType.
To convert your TrueType fonts into Type1 fonts, go to
http://quadrant.netspace.net.au/ttf2pt1/
and get ttf2pt1.
To convert a TrueType to a Type1 font,
use the following syntax:
ttf2pt1 -b file.ttf name
Where name is the name of the file corresponding to the new Type1
font ( ie it's arbitrary. It's a good idea to make it the same as the ttf file.
eg ttf2pt1 -b foo.ttf foo.
Well, that worked fine for one font. If we have a lot, we
need a smarter way to do it. One can just
just use a loop:
for X in *.ttf; do ttf2pt1 -b $X ${X%%.ttf}; done
Alternatively, you can download the
ttfutils
package and use ttf2type1 for the conversions.
Download
