Why does Linux change the font of text documents previously saved in Windows?

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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So recently I switched to using a program called Scrivener to help me work on a book I'm writing. Was previously using Word and when I opened the file with Libre Office, the font and some of the formatting was changed.

The same thing is also happening in Scrivener (running in wine (playonlinux) with Windows 10 compatibility selected). The fonts are different by default when opening the same project in Scrivener in Windows vs Linux. Why is this?

Anyone have any ideas? One of the reasons I switched to using Scrivener instead of Word was because of this very issue.

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You might not have the font installed.

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Fonts in the original project are Arial, yet when opened in Linux, they are Courier Prime.

It's the same program, though. Shouldn't it have the same fonts available?

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what program? But again,

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You don't have the font installed, that's just it. Otherwise it'd work.

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6

Nope.

The OS provides the fonts. Not the program.

Windows' fonts are not available in Linux due to licensing issues as far as I know.

I usually just link to my Windows OS drive on a Dual Boot system in the fonts folder (symlink essentially). Or copy/paste them from a windows machine. Then you have to rebuild the font cache.

It should be that simple.

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Scrivener.

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I installed the Microsoft fonts in PlayOnLinux. Shouldn't that work?

I can't do what you suggested to link to the windows OS folders because my laptop isn't dual boot. If I can somehow get the Ariel font in Linux, that would be great.

There has to be an easier way to match fonts between windows and Linux. I need to be able to work on this project on both Linux and Windows machines.

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I mean, it's literally copy/paste then rebuild the font cache.

What distribution of Linux are you on?

I believe PlayOnLinux uses Wine. Wine instances are just that. Instances. Meaning, they are like VMs kinda. The files for them are separate from the host OS I think.

What I mean is, if you were to run Microsoft Office in PlayOnLinux, Wine would point Office to the fonts. If you run a program outside of PlayOnLinux, it won't be pointed to where the Windows fonts are.

The simplest solution is to install the fonts on the Linux OS itself. Which is as simple as copying the .ttf files to /usr/share/fonts (at least on Arch that's true; other distros have other locations I'm sure) then just running the fc-cache command to update the font cache.

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I don't know how to do that, but I could look it up and learn.

Running Ubuntu Gnome 17.04

That's the thing, I am running Scrivener (the program) IN PlayOnLinux. :wink: Not natively on Linux.

Thanks, I will give that a try.

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That did the trick! Thank you @Vitalius :slight_smile:

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Glad to hear it.

Honestly, I'm not sure why that'd happen unless the Microsoft fonts that PlayOnLinux installs don't include the Arial font. Then it'd make sense when the program couldn't find the font that it used a default instead.

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Why use Play on Linux? Scrivener is on Linux !

https://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=20489&sid=ac241249bead548be2a6a8c812bc56e4

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In the future, why not just use a font that is available equally on both OS?

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Because it's not official and I need full functionality of the program. I was aware and will probably give that a try though. I just need the best compatibility as possible.

I may do that. Although now that I know, it's easy enough to install the necessary fonts and it primarily defaults to an MS font.