Basic fonts question

[richardg]

Hi, I'm using ImageMagick as part of "tovid menu" to create a DVD menu on SLES10.2. I'm getting all kinds of errors with tovid, so I'm trying to work out the cause, and the first warning I get is that ImageMagick can't find the Helvetica font.

I just wanted to ask, is Helvetica included as part of ImageMagick (and can I therefore ignore this warning), or do I need to install Helvetica (it doesn't seem to be installed on my box).

Alternatively, I tried another font (Vera.ttf). I pointed $MAGIC_FONT_PATH at the directory containing Vera.ttf but it couldn't find "Vera":

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Font: "Vera" does not appear to be either a font file or registered with ImageMagick.
A similarly-named font was not found. Sorry!
The font "Helvetica" will be used instead.

Can anyone help please?

Thanks

[Bonzo]

Depending on your version either of the commands below will list the fonts Imagickmagick knows about.

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convert -list type
convert -list font

I can not remember how to add a font to Imagemagick but you should be able to add the path to the font in the command e.g. -font C:\Windows\Fonts\arial.ttf

[richardg]

Ah, thanks for the quick reply. Those commands showed that I dont have any fonts registered to ImageMagick. I hadn't been supplying the full path to the ttf file as you do, but once I did supply it the warnings went. I still get these though:

convert: delegate library support not built-in `/home/richard/dvdexport/input/Vera.ttf' (Freetype) @ annotate.c/RenderFreetype/1416

Do you think these can be ignored? I'm trying to understand if the font problem would be causing my bigger problems i.e. without fonts the rest of the resulting menu (which should be an mpg file) cannot be generated.

[Bonzo]

Have you installed Ghostscript? I think that is required for any text functions not just pdf manipulation.

[richardg]

Hmm, I think it is installed. If I do 'whereis ghostscript' I get

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ghostscript: /etc/ghostscript /usr/share/ghostscript

[Bonzo]

I think your problem is a bit beyond me. This should show you what deligates you have:

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convert -list Delegate

I have in my output:

TTC* TTF r-- TrueType font collection (Freetype 2.1.5)
TTF* TTF r-- TrueType font (Freetype 2.1.5)

[richardg]

No worries, I know nothing about ImageMagick so very grateful for the help you have given me.

I have a lot more output from that command, but nothing about TTF. I'll keep digging around. I'm not even 100% sure if it's ImageMagick thats causing my problems to be honest, just trying to get to the root cause.