OpenOffice Fonts and Printing

[John Varela]

OpenOffice Writer offers only 17 fonts out of the I-don't-know-how-many that came installed on my iMac. It doesn't even include Times New Roman. The spreadsheet offers a few more fonts, including Times, but not Times New Roman.

Oddly, I imported an RTF document in Times New Roman and that font stuck in OpenOffice Writer. I haven't tried printing it yet.

Can I get OpenOffice apps to recognize all the installed fonts?

Also, OpenOffice sometimes doesn't recognize the driver for my attached HP 5940 printer, and only offers a generic printer. Sometimes it will print in color, and sometimes only black and greys. Is there some trick to making it work, or is X11 just flaky?

[Natobasso]

Use a font manager to access more fonts. You can currently only see your system fonts (Hard Drive/Library/Fonts). I recommend Linotype Font Explorer: http://www.linotype.com/fontexplorerx

Don't use Font Book.

You could create pdfs of your docs and then print those; could get you around your printing issue.

[cfr]

It sounds as if you're seeing the System fonts from /System/Library/Fonts and not from /Library/Fonts.

Which version of OpenOffice are you using? Font management on OS X has changed, I believe. If you have the latest stable version, when you first opened it you should have been asked two font-related questions: do you want to use the system fonts? and do you want to use fonts you've installed? I answered yes to both and the application opened an empty document with Times New Roman as default. It might be picking up a preference setting from an earlier installation, but the main point is that I seem to have access to fonts from /Library/Fonts as well as /System/Library/Fonts though not, I think from my user collection of fonts.

I'm not sure a font manager would help with this, but I've never used Linotype so perhaps it has special integration functions. The main problem here is that OpenOffice runs under X11 which has quite different font setup, installation and management than Mac OS X. Not the least problem involved concerns the types of font each can work with. Usually, you'd have to convert a Mac font for use under X11 (with some exceptions). Things are improving generally, but OpenOffice 2.0 is supposed to manage fonts differently than most X11 applications would on Mac OS X. I can't yet say if the new management is an improvement over the old, but I assume it is meant to be.

If you are thinking of a font management application, make sure it integrates with X11 as well as Mac OS X. I just looked at Linotype's "features" and nothing there suggests it would help your situation or work with X11 applications. This is not to say it would not, but only that it does not appear it would, so be sure to ask lots of questions - or just poke around with a trial version if they have one - before you buy.

Hope this is helpful. If you're running an earlier version of OpenOffice and don't want to update, let me know and I'll try to remember what I did to install fonts in previous versions. I certainly didn't convert fonts for it, but I did have to do something special, I believe.

- cfr

[John Varela]

I am running OpenOffice 2.0 under Mac OS 10.4.8. I believe those are both the latest versions.

You are correct that Linotype FontExplorer X was no help. But it did make one thing clear to me. With the exception of Courier, none of the fonts listed by FontExplorer is available in OpenOffice. It appears that OpenOffice installs its own fonts and doesn't use OS X's.

I don't recall having been offered an option about fonts when I installed OO, but I may have been.

Do you have any suggestions regarding getting OO to recognize my printer driver? Tonight I wanted to print a letter, but all OO offered was a generic printer, which failed to print correctly. After closing and reopening OO and X11, the HP driver was available and printed correctly.

[Natobasso]

You can set FontExplorer to auto-activate fonts for any application.

[John Varela]

Can you tell me how to do that? I see a checkbox for that in FontExplorer Preferences/General, but the implication is that there must be a request from the application. That would seem to cover the case where an HTTP email arrives using a font that Mail doesn't recognize, but how to I get OpenOffice to request a font that's not listed in the pull-down menu? Or am I missing something here?

I see that it's possible using FontExplorer to export fonts, but to do so it's necessary to designate a directory and I have no idea where OpenOffice (or is it X11?) stores its fonts, and anyway I'm not sure that's what I want to do.

[Natobasso]

Here's the help article from FontExplorer regarding auto-activation. Looks like you need a cocoa app with a plug in (supplied by the app creator). It's possible OO doesn't have the appropriate plug in, and I couldn't discover how to add any app I wanted, just the ones FE can detect:

"FontExplorer X Help
Index
Font Requests Preferences

Define rules for the behavior of Linotype FontExplorer X in case a font request occurs.

Please note: Font requests do not work for all installed applications. Supported are all Cocoa applications and a number of other programs with an adequate Plug-In.
▪ Enable interception of font requests: If selected, Linotype FontExplorer X will intercept and process the requests according to definied rules.
▪ Automatically activate requested font if possible: If selected, Linotype FontExplorer X will activate the font if only one match is found. If several fonts are found that match the request, you need to choose which one has to be activated.
▪ Ignore all requests if not explicitly allow below: If selected, all requests will be ignored by Linotype FontExplorer X except for those that are explicitly listed in the rule list.

To add a rule, click the "+" button below the table.

Set the appropriate values in the dialog which appears.

Click "Save" in order to save the rule.

To enable or disable a rule, select or deselect the checkbox left to the application name.

To remove a rule, select it an click the "-" button below the table.

To edit a rule, select it and click "Edit" or double-click it.

To restore all rules to the default rules, click "Load default rules".
▪ Plug-In Manager: Opens the Plug-In Manager to help you install additional Plug-Ins.
See also
Plug-In Manager"

[Natobasso]

Can you tell Open Office where your desired fonts are located instead of it defaulting to your system fonts?