Hi all,

I downloaded Inkscape 0.48 about a year ago and had a quick question. At the time of installation, Inkscape automatically downloaded several fonts that have become mixed in with my default system fonts. I would like to distinguish between the two, but am having a hard time doing so. Is there some sort of list that has the font names that are downloaded with Inkscape?

Thanks - I appreciate your help. Josh

Welcome Josh!

My understanding is that Inkscape does not contain, or install any fonts. It strictly uses the fonts that are already installed on the computer (or installed later). I wonder if you may have installed another program around the time you installed Inkscape? Or maybe Inkscape can display a few more fonts than other programs might display. Although that would be surprising considering how fussy Inkscape is about fonts and font stability, lol. Usually the complaint is that Inkscape isn't displaying certain fonts, rather than displaying too many. So it seems the more likely scenario, is that perhaps the other fonts were installed by another program.

As far as distinguishing between original system fonts, and any fonts that are installed later, I'm not sure how identify them. As far as I know, all fonts are installed in one single folder, although I could certainly be wrong about that. I should say that's my experience. Anyway, if you open the Fonts folder (C:\Windows\Fonts in Windows) and depending which version you have, you can either mouseover each font, and see the date it was installed (iir on WinXP), or right-click > Properties (on my Win7) and see some dates. On my Win7 system, I have to use Properties, and that shows dates for Created, Modified, Accessed. I'm not sure exactly what they mean, but it seems reasonable to conclude that dates around the time you either bought the computer, or installed the operating system, or installed any programs which themselves install fonts, could be used as a guideline. Actually those fonts that I know I did not install myself, that I assume to by system fonts, don't even offer a Properties option on right-click. (e.g. Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana, Comic Sans, ...) I have nearly 250 fonts, so I'm not going to go through each an every one. But that might be a way to identify most of them.

Or maybe someone else probably will have a much better idea, lol.

Hey brynn,

I appreciate your response! I'm still not sure what happened as I don't recall installing anything near that time that would have had fonts with it. But it was right when I installed inkscape that I somehow started seeing these fonts. Also, some of the fonts don't look like they were installed with the system because of their names; also, one of my original fonts got additional "types" such as "light" added to it.

Thanks again - Josh

Hi again Josh,
You're welcome
If you don't mind me asking, I'm curious why you need to distinguish between/among which fonts camed from where?

Sure - I'm a graphic designer so I try to be careful to use fonts that I'm legally supposed to own as opposed to pirated fonts. When I got the fonts with Inkscape they all got mixed together with my system fonts, and now I'm not sure which are which...

-Josh

Ooooh, I see. Well if Inkscape did install any fonts (which it doesn't, but if it did) they would have to be in compliance with Inkscape's license, I would think. And Inkscape's license makes Inkscape available for everyone.

But you can find a lot about the fonts by using Properties, which I've previously described. At least for the non system fonts. Example:



I don't know if this is the best way, but here's how I keep track of them. As far as I know they all have to be installed in the same specific folder (although again, I could be wrong about that). But when I download fonts, I keep the download files in separate folders, according to....well, in your case, according to license, I guess. But then if you don't know where some of them came from, I guess you might not know where the download files came from. Or maybe you didn't even download them, but installed them with something else. But Properties should be able to tell you where they came from. If you can't find Properties for a font.....well, my theory is that fonts that came with the system apparently don't offer a Properties dialog.

Hey brynn,

Thanks again for that info. I just realized I updated to Snow Leopard right before I installed Inkscape and never knew the update came with additional fonts. I put two and two together tonight, did a quick google search, and realized my "font problem" was actually not a problem at all.

Thanks again for your help. -Josh

jdraw3 wrote:Thanks again for that info. I just realized I updated to Snow Leopard right before I installed Inkscape and never knew the update came with additional fonts. I put two and two together tonight, did a quick google search, and realized my "font problem" was actually not a problem at all.

Aha - Inkscape on Mac OS X

That's the missing part of information which would have allowed an answer much earlier: Inkscape uses a different font system/backend than native Mac OS X applications. The (default) font configuration file included in the app bundle [1] also lists the path to the fonts provided by X11 (which are not seen by Apple's font services and Font Book). This could explain why in Inkscape you see additional fonts you had not been aware to be installed on your system.

[1] 'Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/etc/fonts/fonts.conf'

Later edit: Note that the current Inkscape.app on Mac OS X does not load the system fonts installed in '/System/Library/Fonts' (only those from '/Library/Fonts' and the user-installed fonts are available). You can add the system font path if needed - the syntax of 'fonts.conf' should be self-explanatory (basically you'd have to uncomment that one entry), or copy those you need into '~/.fonts/' (to avoid duplicates in Font Book - Apple's font service and Font Book ignore that hidden folder).

The (default) font configuration file included in the app bundle [1] also lists the path to the fonts provided by X11 (which are not seen by Apple's font services and Font Book). This could explain why in Inkscape you see additional fonts you had not been aware to be installed on your system.

So... does this mean that the X11 program comes installed with fonts? I tried to follow what you were saying, but a lot of it went over my head...

Thanks for your help - Josh

jdraw3 wrote:So... does this mean that the X11 program comes installed with fonts?

Yes, X11/XQuartz includes default fonts (from X.org) which are used by X11-based applications. This has nothing to do whether you install Inkscape or not. See also an earlier comment I wrote here in the forum (and completely forgot about): Re: More fonts available to Inkscape? OS X

Note 1: not all of those fonts are actually functional in Inkscape (even though listed, inkscape reverts to the default fallback font, if a bitmap font is selected).

Note 2: none of those fonts are available within native Mac OS X applications which use a completely different font service.

Note 3: Apple decided to hide the system files from the Finder. If you want to take a look what fonts are part of X11 (or XQuartz), switch to the Finder, use menu 'Go > Go to Folder…' and enter this path:

Code: Select all

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts