Font name not found on Linux

Question

In Java I have code that works well on OSX but not in linux. This code loads a font file and uses Font.createFont(). Here's the code:

log.debug("Loading ttf file AmericanTypewriter.ttf");
InputStream americanTypewriterInputStream = MyClass.class.getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("AmericanTypewriter.ttf");
log.debug("File AmericanTypewriter.ttf loaded");
Font americanTypewriter = Font.createFont(Font.TRUETYPE_FONT, americanTypewriterInputStream);
log.debug("Font created");
americanTypewriter = americanTypewriter.deriveFont(16f); // Font size 16
log.debug("Font sized at 16");

As mentioned, on OSX this works well, but fails on linux. The actual ttf file was extracted by me on a mac using:

fondu /Library/Fonts/AmericanTypewriter.dfont

and grabbing the resulting AmericanTypewriter.ttf file and adding it to the java resource path.

I expected this to work on linux as well, since there's no assumption that the font is pre-installed on the host (I'm adding it programatically), but I might have missed something... Can you help?

The log looks like this:

11:30:59,418 DEBUG MyClass:167 - Loading ttf file AmericanTypewriter.ttf
11:30:59,419 DEBUG MyClass:167 - File AmericanTypewriter.ttf loaded
java.awt.FontFormatException: Font name not found
  at sun.font.TrueTypeFont.init(TrueTypeFont.java:437)
  at sun.font.TrueTypeFont.<init>(TrueTypeFont.java:154)
  at sun.font.FontManager.createFont2D(FontManager.java:1476)
  at java.awt.Font.<init>(Font.java:454)
  at java.awt.Font.createFont(Font.java:761)
  ...

EDIT: There must be something I'm missing here. By telling Java "look, here's the ttf file, it has all information you need in it" doesn't that mean that it's platform independent and it really doesn't matter what fonts are installed and where? Does the ttf file not have all that java needs in it?

Answer 1

Add americanTypewriterInputStream to the log message. Maybe it's null.

If that is not the case, then the file might be corrupt. Try to open it with some other tool (a font installer/viewer like kfontview).

Answer 2

Which version of Linux are we talking about?

The idea of including TTF fonts with Linux is fairly recent.

In Ubuntu, for example, installation of TTF fonts is done after installation of the OS.

You might find useful advice if you search for something about "Things to do AFTER installing Ubuntu"

I'm not sure if this would work with Java, and if 'American Typewriter' would be one of the TTF fonts provided by post-installation steps.

EDIT: It may not be particularly relevant, but this page discusses how missing fonts from the point of view of Emacs were 'recovered' by a fresh install.

Answer 3

Depending on where you put the file, you would need to rebuild the font-cache by executing

sudo fc-cache -f -v

To have ubuntu see the font for sure, you might wanna put it into /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ and then rebuild the font-cache. If I remember correctly, you can put some fonts into ~/.fonts/ as well.

Answer 4

To sort of answer my own question - this is a partial answer - I think the problem is with converting the font from my mac to the linux box. I'm not clear why this is, but I tried the same code on the linux box with other random fonts I downloaded from the web and it worked OK, it's just this font that's giving me hard time. There's no need to actually install fonts on the box. If the font file is handed to the java program like I do, that's all it needs.

What really troubles me is that I expected Java to be self contained and a java program that runs on host x with all resources handed to it should run the same way on host y when the same resources are handed to it. I suppose there's a hidden dependency on the linux box that is just not clear to me.

Can anyone provide a better answer?