I just downloaded all the DejaVu fonts and put them into my own user
fonts folder (/home/sob/.fonts). Only the basic ones show up: no
condensed. I also cleared font caches (fc-cache -rv), but there was no
difference.
Next I opened one of the fonts, DejaVuSansCondensed, in Fontforge, and
now I see where the problem is. In the font, “family name” is given as
“DejaVu Sans Condensed.” This means (if I’m not mistaken) that
applications are expected to treat the condensed version as a variant of
DejaVu Sans, not as a different typeface. But applications don’t––at
least Ubuntu doesn’t (and I don’t know of any that do). For these fonts
to show up in a font menu, therefore, you have to rename them.
So . . . Install Fontforge. Go to the folder where your DejaVu condensed
fonts are, and open one of them with Fontforge. Element > Font info >
Names > Family name . . . Change the name here by getting rid of the
spaces, either gluing the terms together (DejaVuSansCondensed) or with
hyphens (DejaVu-Sans-Condensed). Now font menus will see your condensed
version as a different typeface. You should probably change the next
panel, “Name for humans,” in the same way: this is because the font menu
may truncate the name to DejaVu Sans, and there’s no way of seeing which
version this is.)
But first you’ll have to compile a new font. Still in Fontforge: File >
Generate fonts ... and select Truetype in the roll-down menu. Save it
somewhere obvious, such as on your desktop. Install it. Quit Openoffice.
There’s one other possible problem, connected to possible conflicts
between Postscript and Truetype names. If the steps outlined above don’t
work, let me know and I’ll see if I can fix it.
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