You may want to use “Computer Modern” fonts with OpenOffice.org on Linux for several reasons: * to have a latex look’n’feel * to produce PDF files that only contain Type1 fonts (see [[http://cadlab.cs.ucla.edu/~kohcc/sigdacdrom/instruct/fonts.html]])

[[http://www.monperrus.net/martin/fonts-test.pdf|This test document produced with OpenOffice shows how type1 font “CM-super/Computer Modern” looks like]].

However this font is “too rich” for OpenOffice, it contains too many different styles (up to 30, cf. below). Actually OpenOffice (at least until 2009-06-25 and v3.0.1) can not handle more than 4 different styles (cf [[http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=79878]]). The resulting problems range from random font syles to small caps instead of regular characters!

Since the OpenOffice relies on fontconfig to manage fonts, the solution is to tweak fontconfig. There are several things to do: 1) install package ‘’cm-super’’ (’‘$ sudo apt–get install cm-super’‘) 2) install package’‘cm-super-x11’’ (’‘$ sudo apt–get install cm-super-x11’‘) 3) edit the file’‘~/.fonts.conf’’ 4) add to it the following lines:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<fontconfig>
 <selectfont>
<!-- we only accept the fonts that we are interested in --> 
  <acceptfont>  
    <pattern> 
    <patelt name="family"><string>Computer Modern</string></patelt> 
    <patelt name="style"><string>Roman</string></patelt> 
    </pattern>  

    <pattern>  
    <patelt name="family"><string>Computer Modern</string></patelt> 
    <patelt name="style"><string>Roman Bold</string></patelt> 
    </pattern>  

    <pattern>  
    <patelt name="family"><string>Computer Modern</string></patelt> 
    <patelt name="style"><string>Italic</string></patelt> 
    </pattern>  
  </acceptfont> 

<!-- we reject all the others, including Computer Modern Concrete and Computer Modern Bright --> 
  <rejectfont> 
    <pattern>  
    <patelt name="family"><string>Computer Modern Bright</string></patelt> 
    </pattern>  
    
    <pattern>  
    <patelt name="family"><string>Computer Modern Concrete</string></patelt> 
    </pattern>  

    <pattern>  
    <patelt name="family"><string>Computer Modern</string></patelt> 
    </pattern>  
  </rejectfont> 
 </selectfont>
</fontconfig>

5. regenerate the fontconfig cache: ’‘$ fc-cache -f’’

PS: They are several versions of “Computer Modern” (CM-super / Latin Modern (lmodern) / Bluesky). However, the Bluesky version contains only US-ASCII characters and can not be used with fontconfig. For lmodern (font name in OO: LMRoman10), I noticed that some chararacters are not correct in the pdf files produced by openoffice (e.g. ê).

Styles of Computer Modern from cm-super : # before: 30 styles! $ fc-list “Computer Modern” Computer Modern:style=Sans Serif Slanted Computer Modern:style=Roman Computer Modern:style=Fibonacci Slanted Computer Modern:style=Slanted Computer Modern:style=Sans Serif Bold Extended Slanted Computer Modern:style=Sans Serif Computer Modern:style=Sans Serif Bold Extended Computer Modern:style=Bold Extended Caps and Small Caps Computer Modern:style=Bold Extended Computer Modern:style=Classical Serif Italic Computer Modern:style=Slanted Caps and Small Caps Computer Modern:style=Italic Computer Modern:style=Roman Bold Variant Computer Modern:style=Dunhill Roman Computer Modern:style=Roman Bold Computer Modern:style=Typewriter Caps and Small Caps Computer Modern:style=Bold Extended Slanted Caps and Small Caps Computer Modern:style=Sans Serif Demi Condensed Computer Modern:style=Variable Width Typewriter Italic Computer Modern:style=Typewriter Computer Modern:style=Typewriter Slanted Computer Modern:style=Typewriter Italic Computer Modern:style=Variable Width Typewriter Computer Modern:style=Caps and Small Caps Computer Modern:style=Bold Extended Italic Computer Modern:style=Unslanted Italic Computer Modern:style=Funny Italic Computer Modern:style=Bold Extended Slanted Computer Modern:style=Funny Roman Computer Modern:style=Fibonacci Medium

after: 3 styles

$ fc-list “Computer Modern” Computer Modern:style=Roman Computer Modern:style=Italic Computer Modern:style=Roman Bold