Bug 18855

Red Hat Linux does not ship some of the fonts AbiWord depends on (Arial, Times New Roman) in any other package, so they have to be included with AbiWord.
I'm forwarding the request for a font translation table to the AbiWord developers; I don't think we should just throw a huge change like this one in without their consent.

Since the fonts are not in the standard font directories, the obvious workaround is to add the font path only when AbiWord is started (i.e. modify the AbiWord startup script) and removing it when AbiWord exits.
Unfortunately, that prevents people who don't have other fonts by the same names from using them elsewhere...

Submitted as Bug 1030 in abiword's bugzilla.

*** Bug 17650 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I agree that this needs to be fixed by the AbiWord folks, not by RedHat, though
it is a pitfall other RedHat users could hit, so it would be nice to have a
simple workaround. Unfortunately I haven't found one other than "rpm -e
abiword". I did find out a little more about the problem.

- AbiWord uses only the fonts it installed. It seems to need to know what
directory they are in, but I'm not certain of that.

- AbiWord prints an error message and quits if it can't find a font called
-AbiSource-Times New Roman-...

- If you alias -AbiSource-{Arial,Times New Roman,Courier New}-... to the
corresponding real TrueType fonts (-Monotype-...), AbiWord hangs during startup,
so this is not a workaround.  I don't know the cause of the hang; could be that
it needs to find the fonts in a known directory and thus can't handle aliases,
could be that it can't  handle TrueType, could be that it needs *exactly* the
fonts that come with it in order to work. Oh well, I'm guessing here.

- AbiWord's startup script adds its font directory to the path.  This is
actually not a great idea, since other applications started while AbiWord is
running will see the added fonts.  What's worse, the script does not check
whether the font directory is already on the font path, and the directory is not
removed from the path when AbiWord exits.  So it ends up getting on the path
repeatedly.

(Summary changed)
This still affects BETA3, the public beta.
I did the install and for whatever reason Abiword got installed.
Upon firing up Netscape I was faced with very ugly and slightly
blocky fonts. Some of the glyphs touch.

This is a very visible bug and is going to turn people off
Linux substantially.

Affects Konqueror too!
Attaching screenshot zooming in on fonts with
and without abiword installed. This is viewing
the linuxtoday.com site.
In the bad fonts case notice the lack of symmetry
of many fonts. Also, some fonts "touch", and some
of the glpyhs are whacky (e.g. "r", "3")

Created attachment 14965 [details]
Poor font rendering with Konqueror when abiword installed

See also: bug #31094.
Abiword is not the only source of poor fonts
which uglify your desktop.

What are some of the other packages?  I don't have abiword installed (RH7) but I
still have ugly incorrectly scaled Arial fonts.  I tried to look at bug 31094,
but bugzilla tells me I don't have permission.

Bug 31094 complains about XFree86-ISO8859-7-Type1-fonts.
There may be other culprits. I usually blow away all fonts possible,
leaving the standard 75dpi and 100dpi X fonts. This also has the
side effect of making netscape launch over twice as fast.

Abiword is now accepting votes for which bugs should be fixed for their 0.9 and
1.0 releases. I suggest that people who want this fixed go add their votes at 
http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1030

STILL an issue with RH7.2beta3
i.e.
"OH MY GOD they broke the fonts"
"Oh no, actually I just forgot to rpm -e abiword"

*** Bug 31094 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Just couple of comments; AbiWord does not have to use the fonts that come with 
it, it can handle both Type1 and TrueType (ttf), and the user can reconfigure 
the AW font directory to his/her liking; AW <=0.9.4 does require Times New 
Roman, but that restriction will be lifed at 0.9.5. I works very nice with the 
MS fonts.

The problem which is peculiar to RH, is that on RH the configuration is such 
that xset +fp cannot be used to add the AW font path (because the X server 
Type1 module is by default not loaded). This means that the user has to add the 
AW font directory permanently to the xfs configuration. This does not happen on 
other distros, where the path is only modified whil AW is running.

Two responses to the last comment.

1) When I first filed this bug, AbiWord would crash if I tried to use real
Monotype Times Roman and Arial with it.  If that is fixed now, that's
good to hear.

2) Adding something bogus to the font path while AbiWord is running and removing
it afterwards is a totally wrong approach.  AbiWord should not assume that it is
taking over the computer while it is running.  If it puts something bogus on the
font path while it is running, like an ugly font named "Arial" that is not
really Arial, any application started while AbiWord is running will
see the bogus font and may select it by mistake.

As of RedHat Linux 7.2, this is still a problem.  "rpm -e abiword" is the
easiest solution.
AbiSource is still taking votes on this issue at:
	http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1030
But there are no plans to fix it.

A hacky patch has been applied for AbiWord 1.0.  The fonts will now be installed
with a foundary of "zz_abiword", which places them last.  The Abi fonts will
show up only if no other font of the requested family is installed. 
Better'Nothing.

They oughta call the fonts "abiarial", "abitimes", etc., and map them internally
if no real arial, etc. are found. At least, that's what I think. :)

The Arial font AbiWord installs in the system font path is still actually
Nimbus.  The Courier is actually Nimbus Mono .  Unless correct fonts are
available earlier in the font path, there will still be a problem.

Simply distributing a crappy font is not a crime. Lying about a font's family
is, to me, unforgivable

*** Bug 58476 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

AbiWord does something unforgivable: they designate knock-off fonts from URW
by trademarked names such as Arial and Times New Roman.  And many users are
complaining about it because "Abi" as a foundry precedes Monotype or Adobe.
But the urw-fonts package distributed by RedHat does the same kind of thing! 
For example, URW's Palladio is designated Palatino.  The only reason that this
hasn't caused as many problems is that URW comes after everything else,
alphabetically, and real Palatino et al are not downloadable for free.  I think
RedHat and Abi should both stop this mislabelling of fonts.  Applications can
substitute fonts but should not mislabel them.

Created attachment 43856 [details]
fonts.scale for AbiWord fonts that uses actual font names

This bug still exists. An out-of-box installation of RH7.3 (Laptop, Gnome, no
KDE,  devel, games) gives Mozilla and Galeon horrible blocky unreadable Arial
fonts. 

At minimum, there should be an alias directory for Arial put into the font path, 
as described at http://patriot.net/~scoile/fonts/fixing-3.html

It is absolutely unconsionable that this bug still exists in an out-of-box
installation, well over a year after it was first reported.

Post-1.0 versions of abiword re-namespace their fonts to the zzAbiword foundry
which helps, and 1.0.2-1 and later don't put in aliases for these common fonts
anymore.