I'm using inkscape 0.48 on ubuntu 12.04

I've got a folder of fonts that I can select from with gimp.

How can I make the fonts available for use with inkscape?

If they are available in The Gimp, they should be available in Inkscape, too. Doesn't the text tool display all the fonts??

The fonts have to be installed. If you simply bought them and put them in a folder (or downloaded, or whatever), that wouldn't make them available for Inkscape. Inkscape will display most installed fonts. (I'm not sure how GIMP handles fonts.)

That said, though, some fonts can't be displayed. Inkscape seems to be fairly particular about text/fonts, especially when importing/exporting documents to/from other formats. And if the font is poorly built or unstable, sometimes Inkscape can't even display it. I happen to enjoy the wing-ding, or graphic type of fonts, where each key "types" a tiny drawing. So I have several of those installed. But Inkscape only offers me some of them. Apparently they sometimes are not very well made, or stable.

Maybe Inkscape can only use some types of fonts? There are several formats, like OpenType, TrueType, and others. Maybe some of the ones you are trying to use are in the bad format.

bobdobbs wrote:I'm using inkscape 0.48 on ubuntu 12.04

I've got a folder of fonts that I can select from with gimp.

How can I make the fonts available for use with inkscape?

Unlike GIMP, Inkscape cannot load and use fonts from arbitrary folders (i.e. not installed in the system). You need to properly install those fonts and then restart Inkscape to have them listed in the font selector dropdown list.

Note also that - AFAIK unlike GIMP - Inkscape does not support using bitmap fonts, even if properly installed on your system (those are listed in Inkscape, but revert to the Fallback font ("Sans") when applied).

~suv wrote:Unlike GIMP, Inkscape cannot load and use fonts from arbitrary folders (i.e. not installed in the system). You need to properly install those fonts and then restart Inkscape to have them listed in the font selector dropdown list.

I didn't know that GIMP could do that, thanks for the tip!

bobdobbs : place your fonts in your ~/.fonts directory, it should work.

In Ubuntu (I'm not running 12.04, but I think it still works this way) you can double-click on a font file to open it in a font preview application. That application has an "Install" button in one corner which you can click to install the font (I suspect it "installs" it by copying it to your ~/.fonts directory, rather than doing a system-wide install into /usr/share/fonts/ but I'm not certain).

If you've got lots of fonts to install, dropping them into ~/.fonts is the quickest solution, but using the preview app is useful when you've only got to deal with one or two, and the preview makes it easier to weed out the rubbish ones before you install them.

Font managers can be handy in these situations.

As less installed fonts as possible is the best solution for any OS, and that`s where font managers are of significant help. I`m using AMP Font Viewer which has preview mode for noninstalled fonts. If started before Inkscape with desired folder already loaded, these fonts will be available. Downside surely is a need for the same to be done before each opening of that document (if you need editable text, not converted to path) since these fonts are "installed" only temporarily (while FViewer is active). I`ve tried couple of font managers and AMP Font Viewer suits me the best (lightweight for OS and customizable). So, it does not have to be your choice but almost all of font managers would make noninstalled fonts available in Inkscape.

p.s.
Depending on how many fonts you use or need, organizing fonts in several folders is advisable. Larger collections or similar bundles of fonts would need more time to load and in some cases would affect the response of your computer.