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Inspired_Blue
Asked: 2016-03-10 21:23:42 +0800 CST

Why are fonts being substituted in Libreoffice even if they are installed?

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I am very sure Arial is installed on my computer, because when I type fc-match Arial I see LiberationSans-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Sans" "Regular" as the output in the terminal.

However all the fonts in my LibreOffice Calc look horrible. As I hover over "Arial" in the fonts, I see "Font Name". The current font is not available and will be substituted`.

Why is this happening? How to stop this?

libreoffice

2 Answers

  1. If fc-match suggests you a font which is not the one you requested, it means the font is not installed.

    To install it, type this in a terminal:

    sudo apt-get install --reinstall ttf-mscorefonts-installer

    That will reinstall the ttf-mscorefonts-installer. Make sure you accept the license otherwise it will again not install the font.

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  2. As stated in comments on the other answer here, you have in fact no Arial font installed other wise fc-match Arial would state the following: 

    $ fc-match Arial
Arial.ttf: "Arial" "Regular"

    Edit: as @Anwar stated in comment fc-match can yield a false result, so to be sure do as well an fc-list Arial which should yield an output like the following:

    $ fc-list Arial
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/Arial_Italic.ttf: Arial:style=Italic,Cursiva,kurzíva,kursiv,Πλάγια,Kursivoitu,Italique,Dőlt,Corsivo,Cursief,Kursywa,Itálico,Курсив,İtalik,Poševno,nghiêng,Etzana
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/Arial.ttf: Arial:style=Regular,Normal,obyčejné,Standard,Κανονικά,Normaali,Normál,Normale,Standaard,Normalny,Обычный,Normálne,Navadno,thường,Arrunta
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/arialbd.ttf: Arial:style=Bold,Negreta,tučné,fed,Fett,Έντονα,Negrita,Lihavoitu,Gras,Félkövér,Grassetto,Vet,Halvfet,Pogrubiony,Negrito,Полужирный,Fet,Kalın,Krepko,đậm,Lodia
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/Arial_Bold_Italic.ttf: Arial:style=Bold Italic,Negreta cursiva,tučné kurzíva,fed kursiv,Fett Kursiv,Έντονα Πλάγια,Negrita Cursiva,Lihavoitu Kursivoi,Gras Italique,Félkövér dőlt,Grassetto Corsivo,Vet Cursief,Halvfet Kursiv,Pogrubiona kursywa,Negrito Itálico,Полужирный Курсив,Tučná kurzíva,Fet Kursiv,Kalın İtalik,Krepko poševno,nghiêng đậm,Lodi etzana
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/arialbi.ttf: Arial:style=Bold Italic,Negreta cursiva,tučné kurzíva,fed kursiv,Fett Kursiv,Έντονα Πλάγια,Negrita Cursiva,Lihavoitu Kursivoi,Gras Italique,Félkövér dőlt,Grassetto Corsivo,Vet Cursief,Halvfet Kursiv,Pogrubiona kursywa,Negrito Itálico,Полужирный Курсив,Tučná kurzíva,Fet Kursiv,Kalın İtalik,Krepko poševno,nghiêng đậm,Lodi etzana
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/Arial_Bold.ttf: Arial:style=Bold,Negreta,tučné,fed,Fett,Έντονα,Negrita,Lihavoitu,Gras,Félkövér,Grassetto,Vet,Halvfet,Pogrubiony,Negrito,Полужирный,Fet,Kalın,Krepko,đậm,Lodia
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/ariali.ttf: Arial:style=Italic,Cursiva,kurzíva,kursiv,Πλάγια,Kursivoitu,Italique,Dőlt,Corsivo,Cursief,Kursywa,Itálico,Курсив,İtalik,Poševno,nghiêng,Etzana

    So to make sure it is really properly installed (the usual command runs sadly in 404 errors during installation) do the following:

    apt remove --purge ttf-mscorefonts-installer

    This removes the current installation. Just doing this to make sure we accept the EULA in the next following installation dialog.

    sudo apt install ttf-mscorefonts-installer

    It most likely gives you while installing a few error messages while installation, stating that it can't fetch the font from sourceforge.net. To work around this simply do the following:

    TMP=$(mktemp -d)
cd "$TMP"
awk '/Url/ {system("wget "$2)}' /usr/share/package-data-downloads/ttf-mscorefonts-installer
sudo /usr/lib/msttcorefonts/update-ms-fonts "$TMP"/*
sudo touch /var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/ttf-mscorefonts-installer

    This is should result in a fairly long output processing all the Microsoft fonts and updating them. All now needed to do is cleaning up.

    cd ..
rm -r "$TMP"

    To test now do an fc-match Arial again which should now yield the above stated result.

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