One problem that I've always had with OpenOffice.org is getting my Linux system's fonts to show up in OpenOffice.org (OOo). Then I found out about the executable 'spadmin.bin' and everything is easier now. Not yet easy, unfortunately, but easier. Play along to get your fonts working in OOo as well!
Installing your fonts
First, let's make sure that we have the Microsoft TrueType fonts installed, since everyone seems hung up on these (I use the Liberation fonts for Free Software licensing altruism, so we'll do those as well).
There are two ways to do this, either from the command line (my preference) or from Synaptic Package Manager (or another package manager). Here is the first, on the Debian command line; first we search for the terms, and then install the pacgage names it returns (as always, click the image to make it larger) :
Here is the second method, installing the same packages but using Synaptic; after (1) searching for "Microsoft TrueType" you'll want to right-click the box and (2) Mark it for install, then click (3) Apply at the top:
Now, of course you must also have OpenOffice.org installed; if you don't have OOo, use either of the above two methods to install it along with your fonts.
Locating and Running 'spadmin'
Once we have the fonts installed, we'll want to run the 'spadmin.bin' program. This program isn't in a normal place, so we'll have to find it. It may be in the same path on my computer as it is on your computer, but lets check anyway. In a Konsole, Terminal, or other command prompt, run this:
locate -i spadmin.binAnd hopefully you'll get a return like this:
/usr/lib/openoffice/program/spadmin.binThat is the computer's path for the application. For you Windows users, it's kind of like C:\User Programs\Libraries\OpenOffice\programs\spadmin.bin (except for the fact that a Windows machine doesn't have its files laid out like that, but that is a DOS path example anyway).
The path that your locate command returns is the path of the application that we want to run, so our next command is exactly that:
/usr/lib/openoffice/program/spadmin.binSee this screenshot to make sure that your locate commands did what I hoped they would (click to enlarge) :
On one machine where I ran this, it took almost four minutes to get the OpenOffice.org spadmin.bin program to actually open. Yeah, it is very slow. Check my screen shot #3 again (just above) to see if it looks the same if you're wondering where the window is at.
When the spadmin.bin program finally opens, it looks like this:
Click on the [Fonts] button; a new window will open. Click on [Add...] and a third window will open. In the Source Directory field at the bottom, erase all of that and type in this path:
/usr/share/fonts/Check mark the Soft Links option -- this means you don't have another copy of the fonts taking up space, just a link to the original fonts. Also make sure to have Search Subdirectories checkmarked, since there will be a lot of fonts in the subdirectories as well.
Click the [Select All] button. Phew! It should now look like this:
Click the [OK] button and it will install your fonts! There, nothing to it, right?
If the program asks if you want to overwrite previous fonts that may have the same name, I would answer 'None' as this shows, but you can answer however you feel. If you think some fonts that you have now are wrong, hit Yes for them, or All to do all of the overwrites.
As you can see from this last screenshot, OOo stores your fonts (or links to the fonts) in the path
/home/USERNAME/.openoffice.org2/user/fonts/
If you have fonts in OOo that you don't want, you can remove the links or files from this folder. Note that removing a link doesn't uninstall the font from your computer, just OOo. Also note that removing a real font from this directory removes it forever, so if its the only copy it may be best to move the real font file somewhere else. Anything that you installed with my HowTo should not be the only copy of a font.
This path '/home/USERNAME/.openoffice.org2/user/fonts/' is probably different in the newly released OpenOffice.org 3.x and maybe this whole font thing is taken care of in that release. But until then, this should do the trick.
Thanks for stopping by, and I hope that you learned something!
EDIT: I realized that I missed any fonts installed to your own personal login! After importing the fonts in the last step (above), you likely will want to install the other fonts that you have at /home/USERNAME/.fonts/ So rerun the above [Fonts] > [Add] thing and for this next round, navigate to /home/USERNAME/.fonts/ and again checkmark 'Search Subdirectories' and again 'Select All' and again 'Create Soft Links Only'. This was a huge hole in our HowTo and I hope this helps!
*Yeah, OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice was already a trademarked German software offering, and so when StarOffice was OpenSourced and Freed, it was named OpenOffice.org. At least, I think that is how it goes.
