inconsolata font doesn't show up on terminal preferences

Question

I'm on 16.04 running the i3 window manager.

I recently installed the inconsolata font using:

$ sudo apt-get install fonts-inconsolata

I updated the cache:

$ sudo fc-cache -fv

The font appears to be installed:

$ fc-list | grep -i inconsol
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/inconsolata/Inconsolata.otf: Inconsolata:style=Medium

Yet, when I try to use in my terminal (by trying to set the font from the terminal's menu options Edit and then "Profile Preferences", it is not listed among the available fonts.

I've also launched the Unity tweak tool using:

$ unity-tweak-tool

… and I was able to set "inconsolata medium" as the "monospace font" but nothing changed. It's not really clear to me how the monospace font configured in the Unity tweak tool relates to the font used in the terminal, but like I said, nothing changed.

Finally, as another data point, here's what I see under /usr/share/fonts:

$ find /usr/share/fonts | grep -i  incons
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/inconsolata
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/inconsolata/Inconsolata.otf

update

Based on a suggestion, I got the .ttf version from Google fonts and installed it in my system (and updated the fonts cache too). So now I see:

$ find /usr/share/fonts | grep -i incons
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/inconsolata
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/inconsolata/Inconsolata.otf
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/inconsolata/Inconsolata-Regular.ttf
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/inconsolata/Inconsolata-Bold.ttf

… and:

$ fc-list | grep -i incons
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/inconsolata/Inconsolata-Bold.ttf: Inconsolata:style=Bold
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/inconsolata/Inconsolata-Regular.ttf: Inconsolata:style=Regular
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/inconsolata/Inconsolata.otf: Inconsolata:style=Medium

The situation remains the same: I can't select "inconsolata" in my terminal's profile preferences.

Possibly you need to run fc-cache as yourself also, i.e. without sudo. — Gunnar Hjalmarsson, Dec 20 '17 at 17:49
@Anwar did that. Then run fc-cache -fv (both with and without sudo), closed the terminal, and opened an new terminal. Same thing. — Marcus Junius Brutus, Dec 26 '17 at 14:45
Which terminal it is? And do you have font-manager installed? — Anwar, Dec 26 '17 at 15:36
echo $TERM says: xterm-256color. The Inconsolata font shows up on the font-manager application, but not on Edit->Profile Preferences on the terminal menu. — Marcus Junius Brutus, Dec 26 '17 at 16:33
Did you ever solve this? I am having the same issue on fresh installs of Ubuntu 18 on multiple different machines... — Bill, May 10 '18 at 23:42
@MarcusJuniusBrutus I found a way to work around this by dumping the configs with dconf, editing manually and then loading them back in. See this Q/A which helped me: https://askubuntu.com/questions/967517/backup-gnome-terminal — Bill, Aug 28 '18 at 09:29
@Bill I believe the issue is Inconsolata identifies as a "Decorative" font, instead of "Monospace". Editing with FontForge may correct the issue. — xiota, Sep 18 '20 at 22:51

xiota · Answer 1 · 2020-09-18T22:52:20.433

0

Inconsolata identifies itself as a "Decorative" font, instead of "Monospace". I am opening an issue on GitHub. In the meantime, you can edit the files in FontForge. (Element | Font Info | OS/2 | PFM Family)

FontForge settings for Inconsolata

edited Sep 18 '20 at 22:52

answered Sep 18 '20 at 19:38

xiota

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inconsolata font doesn't show up on terminal preferences

update

1 Answers1