Font management with current office suites
Conclusions
Under Linux, almost all office suites have a sophisticated font management system that can handle even the most demanding creative tasks (see Table 1). Weaknesses are only revealed in the details: For example, not all office suites can cope with non-Roman font systems. The installation of additional fonts can be problematic if you do not want to make them available globally on the system.
Table 1
Font Management for Office Suites
| Calligra Office | LibreOffice/OpenOffice | OnlyOffice | SoftMaker Office | WPS Office |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Font selection possible |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Preview function |
Yes |
Yes |
Limited |
Yes |
Yes |
Integrated font management |
No |
No |
No |
Yes |
No |
Activate/deactivate fonts |
No |
No |
No |
Yes |
No |
External writing systems |
No |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Replacement tables |
No |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Manual selection of font directory |
No |
No |
No |
Yes |
No |
Deactivating unnecessary fonts that automatically end up on the mass storage device during the operating system's installation does not affect any of the candidates except SoftMaker Office. Therefore, it is recommended that you also use a program for professional font management, such as Fontmatrix. This is the only way to exploit the possibilities of creative design fully.
Infos
- fontconfig: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/fontconfig/
- PostScript: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript
- Ghostscript: https://www.ghostscript.com
- Fontmatrix: https://github.com/fontmatrix/fontmatrix
- SCIM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Common_Input_Method
- IBus: https://github.com/ibus/ibus/wiki
- Calligra Office: https://www.calligra.org
- LibreOffice: https://www.libreoffice.org
- OpenOffice: https://www.openoffice.org/?redirect=soft/
- FreeType: https://freetype.org
- Replacement table documentation: https://help.libreoffice.org/5.4/en-US/text/shared/optionen/01010700.html
- OnlyOffice Desktop Editors: https://www.onlyoffice.com/apps.aspx
- SoftMaker Office: http://www.softmaker.com/en/
- WPS Office for Linux: https://www.wps.com/linux
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