Microsoft fonts

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Related articles
Metric-compatible fonts
Fonts
Font configuration
Java Runtime Environment Fonts
This article explains how to install TrueType Microsoft fonts and emulate Windows' font rendering.
Tip
See
Metric-compatible fonts
for alternatives.
Installation
Automatic installation
Note
These packages automatically fetch the Windows Enterprise 90-day evaluation edition ISO and extract the required fonts from it at build time.
The easiest way to install the fonts is by installing one of the following:
ttf-ms-win11-auto
AUR
— Windows 11 fonts
ttf-ms-win10-auto
AUR
— Windows 10 fonts
ttf-vista-fonts
AUR
— Vista and Office 2007 fonts
Current packages
Note
These packages require manually acquiring the fonts from either
a Windows partition
or
extracting them from a Windows and/or Office 2007 ISO
beforehand. Consult the corresponding
PKGBUILDs
for details.
ttf-ms-win11
AUR
/
ttf-ms-win11-auto
AUR
— Windows 11 fonts
ttf-ms-win10
AUR
/
ttf-ms-win10-auto
AUR
— Windows 10 fonts
ttf-ms-win8
AUR
— Windows 8.1 fonts
ttf-win7-fonts
AUR
— Windows 7 fonts
ttf-ms-office365
AUR
— Office 365 fonts
ttf-office-2007-fonts
AUR
— Office 2007 fonts
Using fonts from a Windows partition
If there is a Windows partition mounted, its fonts can be used directly. There are a few options on how to do this (assuming the Windows
C:\
drive is mounted at
/windows
):
Using a symlink:
# ln -s /windows/Windows/Fonts /usr/local/share/fonts/WindowsFonts
Note
Users of
google-chrome
AUR
should opt to not use this method, because symlinked fonts can cause Chrome to crash.
Copying the files to
/usr/local/share/fonts/
:
# mkdir -p /usr/local/share/fonts/WindowsFonts
# cp -r /windows/Windows/Fonts/* /usr/local/share/fonts/WindowsFonts/
# chmod -R 644 /usr/local/share/fonts/WindowsFonts/*
Using a bind mount:
# mount --bind /windows/Windows/Fonts /usr/local/share/fonts/WindowsFonts
To make this permanent, edit the
fstab
file like so:
/etc/fstab
/windows/Windows/Fonts    /usr/local/share/fonts/WindowsFonts    none    bind    0    0
See
mount(8) § Bind mount operation
for more details.
Keep in mind that it may be necessary to apply a workaround for
system compressed files
in order to read the font files.
After choosing one of these options, regenerate the fontconfig cache:
# fc-cache --force
# fc-cache-32 --force
Extracting fonts from a Windows ISO
The fonts can also be found in a Windows ISO file. The format of the image file containing the fonts in the ISO is either WIM (
Windows Imaging Format
) if the ISO is downloaded online or ESD (
Windows Electronic Software Download
) if it is built with Windows'
Media Creation Tool
. Extract the
sources/install.esd
or the
sources/install.wim
file from the
.iso
and look for a
Windows/Fonts
directory within this file. It can be extracted using
7z
or
wimextract
(in
wimlib
). See an example below using
7z
:
$ 7z e
WinXY_YYMM_English_x64.iso
sources/install.wim
$ 7z e install.wim 1/Windows/{Fonts/"*".{ttf,ttc},System32/Licenses/neutral/"*"/"*"/license.rtf} -ofonts/
The fonts and the license will be located in the
fonts
directory.
Legacy packages
Note
The fonts provided by these packages are out-of-date and are missing modern hinting instructions and the full character sets, but has the benefit of not needing user provided font files.  It is recommended to use the packages from
#Current packages
instead.
ttf-ms-fonts
AUR
includes:
Andalé Mono
Arial
Arial Black
Comic Sans
Courier New
Georgia
Impact
Lucida Sans
Lucida Console
Microsoft Sans Serif
Times New Roman
Trebuchet
Verdana
Webdings
Warning
According to
original Microsoft's End User License Agreement
, there are
some
legal limitations when using the above fonts.
You can also obtain
ttf-tahoma
AUR
which, as you might expect, contains
Tahoma
.
ttf-vista-fonts
AUR
includes:
Calibri
Cambria
Candara
Consolas
Constantia
Corbel
Fontconfig rules useful for MS Fonts
Rule mapping for similar fonts
Often websites specify the fonts using generic names (helvetica, courier, times or times new roman) and a rule in fontconfig maps these names to free fonts (Liberation, Google CrOS, GUST TeX Gyre...). The substitutions are defined in
/etc/fonts/conf.d/30-metric-aliases.conf
.
To make full use of the Ms Windows fonts it is necessary to create a rule mapping those generic names to the Ms Windows specific fonts contained in the various packages above:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
       <alias binding="same">
         <family>Helvetica</family>
         <accept>
         <family>Arial</family>
         </accept>
       </alias>
       <alias binding="same">
         <family>Times</family>
         <accept>
         <family>Times New Roman</family>
         </accept>
       </alias>
       <alias binding="same">
         <family>Courier</family>
         <accept>
         <family>Courier New</family>
         </accept>
       </alias>
</fontconfig>
It is also useful to associate serif,sans-serif,monospace fonts in your favourite browser to MS fonts.
Disable embedded bitmap fonts
Some Microsoft TTF fonts such as Calibri and Cambria contain embedded bitmap fonts for specific font sizes, which are not anti-aliased. If embedded bitmaps are enabled, the fonts are not anti-aliased at those specific sizes. Embedded bitmap fonts can be
disabled in the font configuration
.
Known issues
Symbols not displaying properly with Poppler-based PDF readers
The TrueType Microsoft font for Symbol (
Wikipedia:Symbol (typeface)
) are buggy with Poppler, math symbols may not display correctly in Poppler-based PDF readers.