Chromium refuses to render Helvetica, uses Arial instead

lamnk · 2011-01-30 23:21:05

This problem makes me scratching my head:

I've installed the Helvetica font in /usr/share/fonts/Helvetica/ and ran fc-cache. With that I can use Helvetica in OpenOffice Writer. But when I specify Helvetica in Gimp or Chromium, they render Arial instead.

Maybe this is the reason?

% fc-match Helvetica
arial.ttf: "Arial" "Normal"

However fc-match shows that Helvetica is indeed there.

% fc-match -a | grep Helvetica
Helvetica.otf: "Helvetica" "Medium"
helvR12-ISO8859-1.pcf.gz: "Helvetica" "Regular"
helvR12.pcf.gz: "Helvetica" "Regular"
helvB12-ISO8859-1.pcf.gz: "Helvetica" "Bold"
helvB12.pcf.gz: "Helvetica" "Bold"

So why does my system always use Arial instead of Helvetica ??

Last edited by lamnk (2011-01-30 23:29:19)

frabjous · 2011-01-31 00:55:54

Is there anything in one of these files (especially the first or the last) which looks like it might be the culprit? Try grepping them for Helvetica....

/etc/fonts/fonts.conf
/etc/fonts/fonts.dtd
/etc/fonts/conf.d/30-metric-aliases.conf (especially, and...)
/etc/fonts/conf.d/* (generally)
~/.fonts.conf.d/*
~/.fonts.conf

Last edited by frabjous (2011-01-31 00:58:34)

thisoldman · 2011-01-31 01:26:34

Somewhere in your ~/.fonts.conf or in /etc/fonts.d/ there is a substitution or preference setting, telling fontconfig to use Arial whenever Helvetica is asked for by an application.

I'd search through ~/.fonts.conf first, to see if there is a substitution of Arial for Helvetica; that's commonly done when people are using a customized fonts.conf.

You can search through /etc/fonts.d for the files where "Helvetica" occurs with something like this command:

grep -nTr "Helvetica" /etc/fonts/conf.d

That will print a table with the filename, the line number in the file, and finally the line itself for any matches that occur.

OpenOffice, Java and some versions of Firefox ignore fontconfig. I don't know about Chromium, but I would have thought Gimp would pull the true Helvetica. If you're using Gnome or KDE, I'd check their system font settings too.

lamnk · 2011-01-31 17:10:52

Thank you thisoldman and frabjous, there is a file named 29-replace-bitmap-fonts.conf in /etc/font/confs.d/ with this content:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
    <!-- Replace generic bitmap font names by generic font families.
         These font-families will get replaced by other rules and
         default to scaled ones. -->
    <match target="pattern" name="family">
        <test name="family" qual="any">
            <string>Helvetica</string>
        </test>
        <edit mode="assign" name="family">
            <string>Arial</string>
            <string>Liberation Sans</string>        
            <string>sans-serif</string>
        </edit>
    </match>
    <match target="pattern" name="family">
        <test name="family" qual="any">
            <string>Courier</string>
        </test>
        <edit mode="assign" name="family">
            <string>Courier New</string>
            <string>Liberation Mono</string>
            <string>monospace</string>
        </edit>
    </match>
    <match target="pattern" name="family">
        <test name="family" qual="any">
            <string>Times</string>
        </test>
        <edit mode="assign" name="family">
            <string>Times New Roman</string>
            <string>Liberation Serif</string>
            <string>serif</string>
        </edit>
    </match>
</fontconfig>

I comment out the section relevant to Helvetica, run fc-cache and it works now !

Arch Linux

#1 2011-01-30 23:21:05

Chromium refuses to render Helvetica, uses Arial instead

#2 2011-01-31 00:55:54

Re: Chromium refuses to render Helvetica, uses Arial instead

#3 2011-01-31 01:26:34

Re: Chromium refuses to render Helvetica, uses Arial instead

#4 2011-01-31 17:10:52

Re: Chromium refuses to render Helvetica, uses Arial instead

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