Upgrade loses fonts

users
#1

Today I upgraded my Slackware-14.1 workstation from LO-5.1 to -5.3 and I
no longer have access to all the font subdirectories in /usr/share/fonts/.
Instead I have what appear to be every south- and east-Asian language fonts.

   I need to remove those and restore the fonts I regularly use, such as
Baker Signet and Bitstream Amerigo.

   My web searches suggest that LO automagically finds /usr/share/fonts/ and
its contents, but that's not what happens here. I need to fix this situation
quickly and need advice from those with more intimate knowledge.

Rich

#2

The problem is that my Slackware-14.1/32-bit wants version -5.1.4 and does
not support -5.3.0.

   Is there an older distribution archive site where I can download this
version?

Rich

#3

This is weird . . .

I did not see "tuffy" in the font list within LibreOffice till I looked into the usr/share/fonts/truetype and /opentype. I never knew I had some of these fonts till I looked. There are some of these fonts that were in my ".font" folder and also in the "usr/share/. . ." folder. Most of the ".font" folder fonts are not in the "usr/share/ . ." list.

The real question is - how safe would it be to removed fonts in the "user/share/fonts/truetype" or "/opentype"? What would be the safest to do the add/remove using Ubuntu MATE 16.04?

I have added and removed fonts in the ".font" folder, sometime on a daily or weekly basis. I tend to have 300 to 500 ".ttf" and/or ".otf" files in the ".font" folder. I tend to add special fonts into that folder as needed for a project.

#4

I've never used ~/.font/; all the fonts installed on the system are in
/usr/share/fonts/ subdirectories. All in one place.

   Now I need the 5.1.4 tarball to re-install that version.

Rich

#5

Rich,
I don't know where you got your Slackware package to install or if you created it yourself, as I do. Or you installed the RPM directly. I use SlackBuilds.org for my Slack packages. Here is S14.1 LO 5.1.4:

https://www.slackbuilds.org/result/?search=libreoffice&sv=14.1

There is a link to the LO website where you can download 5.1.4. Alas, it is no longer available or broken. I did some drilling work for you and here is 5.1.6 on a mirror site, which is supposed to be the stable version:

http://ftp.ussg.indiana.edu/tdf/libreoffice/stable/5.1.6/rpm/x86/

Another point is that I was told that the most stable LO is x.x.6+. Since 5.3 is not there yet, I will wait until 5.3.6 is released or try 5.2.6. I am currently running LO 5.1.6.2 on My Slackware 14.2 system. Like you, it runs fine.

I also am confused as to why you seem to have lost fonts in /usr/share/fonts. You are not running LO as root are you? That path and all the files in there should only have root write permissions. Running LO as a user should not remove fonts from that directory. I have not looked at 5.3 yet, so I do not know what the distribution package would overwrite when installed as root. I always look at the package innards before I install it to see if there are any nasties in there which could cause problems. I have been burned in the past by packages that do nasty things. I just looked at my LO 5.1.6.2 Slackware package that I created and there is no /usr/share/fonts directory, so it could not overwrite anything when installed.

Alas, reinstalling LO 5.1.4 will probably not restore your missing fonts. Good luck.

HTH.
Girvin Herr

#6

Girvin,

   The link produces a 'Page not found' message as that old version is not
directly available from the LO web site.

   I found the archive of old versions. Downloaded and installed 5.1.4.2.
That restored the typefaces available.

   As time permits I'll incrementally upgrade versions to find the latest
that will run on 14.1.

Regards,

Rich