How to add Fonts to a Qubes VM

Hi,

This is a cosmetic and utilitarian problem. I wanted to install MS Office/Windows fonts into a VM so I can make documents that have compatible fonts for Windows10 applications.

i.e. The fonts would be the same across different OS and applications.

Currently, there is a readability issue with LibreOffice documents and Adobe due to missing fonts.

The most talked about opiton is to import MS Office/windows fonts into the Linux Distribution to be shared across all applications in that distro.

https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/17479/how-do-i-install-new-fonts-to-libreoffice-writer/

However, when using a Qubes system. It’s not that easy for security reasons. This topic was slightly discussing in the past with no apparent solution.

Now fast forward a few years. Has this issue been resolved? Or how can a someone override the permission issue to install more font’s ?

The fall back, test would be to see if the Libreoffice fonts can be added to a Window’s OS. Which is not the best solution.

Any thoughts?

thanks,

I am unaware of any issue and have copied the TTF fonts from my windows
HVM to the respective template (precisely to allow documents shared by
colleagues to be rendered correctly in LibreOffice).

There might be a security issue, but since this template is only used
for an AppVM, which itself is the template for disposable qubes and I
only ever view/edit documents in offline disposable qubes, I consider
this to be a fair trade off for my thread model.

@sven Yes, the security issue is always a limiting factor for most configurations. However, this brings up a bug in applications that are outside of our scope. In my particular case, i wanted to make a form filable pdf to be used in Linux or Windows. I recently found that by copying the fonts from linux to Windows appears to work. However, I did not test all the fonts. Cantarell doesn’t not work, However, dejaVu does. Ultimately, the fastest way to manage a form fillable pdf Is to not make it a form-fillalble and suggest respondents complete the form with Adobe with the sign & fill feature and then print it.

Ultimately, the issue could be resolved if more fonts were included in Linux distributions so as to have compatibility among the OS. I am not sure if there are other use cases that would encourage this practice but in my particular case in made sense to try. Or at least, allow Qubes users to add fonts to their system.

Thanks for the confirmation,