I'm having some trouble with fonts in Inkscape. If I select Arial and enter some text, it shows up fine. If I select Helvetica and enter text, it converts to Sans (the default). Selecting the text and choosing a different font works, except for Helvetica.

I have the same trouble when importing an EPS/PDF file that contains Helvetica fonts. The fonts in the image will be converted to Sans.

Anyone have any ideas? Is there a way I can resolve this by adding my own TTF or pointing to the mac system fonts?

Inkscape v0.48.2 r9819 running on Mac OSX 10.6.8

Thanks!

-Jason

If it helps, I've confirmed that this does not happen on my Windows 7 machine.

Please help, people... I can't use Inkscape to modify my EPS figures until this issue is resolved.

How can I get Helvetica to work on my Mac where they are already installed?

Also should mention that an update to OSX 10.8.2 did not fix the problem.

Welcome Jason!

I'm sorry no one has answered your message yet. I don't use a Mac, and I think Macs handle text/fonts differently (somehow) than Windows, and I think especially where Inkscape is concerned. Here is some info about using Inkscape on a Mac: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php ... fic_issues. I don't know if it mentions anything about text/fonts or not, but it might. I guess you've already searched the forum? Oh, well I could at least give you the FAQ link: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2037. There's a section there for using Inkscape on a Mac. And I know there are several to many other topics about specific Inkscape/Mac issues -- a few are quite long. I suspect text/font issues are the subject of some of them....but I'll leave the searchinig to you

I know that in general, if you open a document that uses a particular font, which is not installed on your computer, your computer will substitute a similar font that IS installed. But I have the impression that Macs handle it differently somehow. I assume there could be other reasons for a font substitution, but I don't know what they are -- not even on Windows

When you open the EPS, there's probably a dialog, with a handful of options. And usually this kind of dialog asks how you want to handle text. Since I don't have the proper software installed to be able to open EPS files, I haven't seen that dialog. But I know when opening a PDF, it asks if you want to substitute the closest font. Does that dialog give you any options regarding text/font?

Well, I know I haven't been much help -- that's why I didn't answer earlier. But maybe some Mac users will reply . I've found that there's nothing like a lame (or wrong) answer when it comes to iliciting more replies

I registered on the forum just so that I could answer your question because I was having the same issue and I know how frustrating it is...

Right click on the Inkscape.app and "Show Package Contents"
From there go to: 'Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/etc/fonts/'
Using TextEdit.app, open 'fonts.conf' and edit:


Remove the comments so that it looks like this:


This allows Inkscape to use all the installed system fonts in the FontBook app...

Good on you Ufdah. Thanks for this great tip.

... and I registered on this forum just to say thanks to Ufdah: the world needs this kind of thing! I read your post before I even loaded inkscape, when I was looking for an Illustrator alternative, so when my fonts didn't appear I was able to laugh lightly and fix it in 30 seconds, rather than suffering a load of stress then probably binning a great piece of software. Thanks again.

And I also registered specifically to thank Ufdah for that arcane tip. I recently installed Inkscape on OS X and was dismayed to find that the Arial font in dozens of my existing SVG drawings (generated in WIndows) were replaced with Helvetica, with superscripts and subscripts messed up to boot. A quick web search led me to this thread and saved me a ton of frustration. Thanks Ufdah!

Me too, I also registered specifically to thank Ufdah for his effort to post this great tip.

Thanks all, glad I could be of assistance!

WOW, just WOW (I also just signed up to say thanks!). 5 years into my PhD and I finally find the biggest fix to my Inkscape problems. I had given up on Inkscape for the most part because of the psychological horror of having to redo the fonts on every single axis tick number for each and every figure; I seriously had resorted to using powerpoint for figure editing as much as I could because of this issue. Why does Inkscape comment this line out?!?

Now I'm near the end, and before I write my thesis I figured I'd look for the solution one last time; lo and behold Ufdah has come in and restored my faith in society. Thanks!