Fonts in Open Office question(s)

[Jim Kuzdrall]

On Friday 20 January 2006 08:56 am, Bill Freeman wrote:
> Summary:
>
> 	I'm editing a document in OO, and the font select box on the
> tool bar indicates that some of the text is, for example, "Arial".
> But when I click the drop down (or use the context menu) to see font
> choices, "Arial" is not there (whether the cursor is in "Arial" text
> or not).

    If you are using SuSE, you can get all the MS TrueType fonts via 
YaST Update.  As they explain, they can't include them because of 
copyright, but Microsoft makes them available free.  I didn't get them 
because my old CD of Corel Linux had the whole Microsoft set plus many 
more.

    I advise against installing the 300 open source TT that SuSE has.  
They are terrible.  Also, the open source Helvetica font got stuck in 
my OO and I can't get it out of the list, no matter what I try.

    If you want the fonts, I can gzip a bunch and email them to you.  As 
long as they are for private correspondence, there is no copyright 
problem.

> 	I'm somewhat new to OO, having stuck to plain text, LaTeX, and
> hand crafted HTML or PostScript in the past.

    Used groff exclusively up to 1995.  I finally switched over fully to 
GUI in 2000.  I built all my groff macros into OO, so it was a very 
comfortable change.  It was easy and works well.

> 	Have you any advice about features and fonts to avoid or use
> to insure that, when saved as a doc file and read with a copy of
> Word, the formatting, including page breaks, looks the same?

    I have a collection of about 450 TrueType fonts from my purchases of 
Corel WordPerfect over the years.  Fortunately, one Manual had a 
section by a typography expert who outlined 8 or so font tasks and 
suggested several fonts for each.

    The expert emphasized readability over style.  The subset I use are 
based on that advice.  Remember that "Arial" and "Swiss" are knockoffs 
of the Helvetica print typeface, so there are not so many fonts once 
the near-duplicates are removed.

Jim Kuzdrall