Calibri and Cambria fonts in LibreOffice

Is it possible to get these two fonts in LibreOffice? I just recently adopted Ubuntu as one of my OS and I am using LibreOffice for my school work… But I am still using Microsoft Office with my other laptop so I need the documents created in LibreOffice to work well with Microsoft Office. I save my files in docx format

SOLVED

If you have a Windows 7 computer, go to /windows/fonts and copy the Calibri font to a USB stick or SDHC card. Insert the card or disk into the Linux computer. Click on the Calibri file - you will be given the option to “install”. Click on “install” - “install” will change to “installed”. Repeat for all versions of the font. Job done and LibreOffice will recognize the font. Any files with this font will open with the correct font. This works on Ubuntu 13.1 and LibreOffice 4.1.3.2

I would not advice that. In addition to be a license problem, it will impose additional problems. IMHO it is far better to use google’s crosextra-carlito and crosextra-caladea fonts and make some substitutions in libreoffice/oo. See wiki.debian.org/SubstitutingCalibriAndCambriaFonts for the complete details.

Just like the Liberation fonts are metrically-compatible with Times New Roman (Liberation Serif), Arial (Liberation Sans), and Courier (Liberation Mono), the Carlito and Caladea fonts (both now provided with LO) are metrically-compatible with Calibri and Cambria respectively. This means that if you use Carlito instead of Calibri, your document will have the same layout as if you used Calibri.

Another alternative is to pay for the fonts.

Excellent news! I see you’ve mentioned this before but I was blissfully unaware of them. Btw - your font links are off. :slight_smile: “Carlito [2] and Caladea [3]” = [1] and [2] as provided. Thanks! | For any interested: Sample ODT and Sample PDF. Enjoy!

You might have grabbed MS’s Powerpoint Viewer which includes the fonts (for “free”), although the terms of use include:

You may use the fonts that accompany the PowerPoint Viewer only to display and print content from a device running a Microsoft Windows operating system.

My hunch is that MS won’t know that you’ve installed them under Ubuntu (or is your machine dual-booting?), but…

… If you’re forced to use alternatives, these would be my recommendations:

Calibri alternatives: either Asap or Gandhi Sans would do. The differences from Calibri are more pronounced in the italics.

Cambria alternatives are trickier: but either Droid Serif or PT Serif would get you most of the way there. Droid and Cambria share a designer in Steve Matteson, so that accounts for some “family feel”.

Or just go with new choices altogether! :slight_smile: (PT Serif + PT Sans? Linux Libertine + Biolinum? Gentium Book + Source Sans Pro?) The problem in that case is that you can’t be sure that they’re installed on other people’s systems if you’re sharing files.

No doubt about it: it’s a pain.

Do not choose Gandhi Sans (note the correct spelling as well). It is clearly stated in the license that “You may not: -Modify the fonts in a font editor software [sic]”. These fonts are not free software.

@Uglyface200 - thanks for the typo alert. As for the “not free software” comment, well, that strikes me as somewhat ideological and I’m sure OP will make up his own mind on that. Thanks!

Asap (again, note the proper capitalization) is the better aesthetic alternative anyways; it mimics Calibri’s idea of subtly rounded corners visible only at larger sizes (Gandhi Sans doesn’t do this). Additionally, it has the nice characteristic that all four styles take up exactly the same space.

Option 1

Many Microsoft fonts are part of the mscorefonts package. Install:

sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer

However, it seems that the two fonts in question are not part of the msttcorefonts package, so you are left only with:

Option 2

Since you have MS Office installed on your second computer, you already have properly licensed copies of those fonts.

Make a backup copy of them and bring those to your Ubuntu machine.

You can:

  1. either double-click on each file (Calibri consists of 6 files and Cambria 4) and click the Install font button, or

  1. copy all files to the .fonts folder. It is a hidden folder (it’s name starts with a point). If it does not exist, just create it running the following command:

     mkdir .fonts

Modern Ubuntu uses ~/.local/share/fonts instead of ~/.fonts.

You can also have a look for a free font similar to Calibri and Cambria, otherwise you may run into a legal issue of using non-licensed font.

e.g. OpenFonts, but there should be more out in the web.