Dear Community!

I am trying to get my company´s logo-font (Mistral italic) done in Inkscape 0.48. I´m using Windows Vista Business 32bit - Service Pack 2.

I have seen some similare topics but the problem was usualy solved with the workaround mentioned below.

Using the workaround Ctrl+I changes the look of Mistral into Arial but the font-name still says "Mistral".
Using Ctrl+b for bold doesn´t change anything at all.
The same happens with 3 other randomly tested fonts

Arial Black, Batang, Calibri, Tahoma and others for example let me use Bold and Italic without any problem.
Times New Roman only works with the workaround (Ctrl+b/i)

I hope you can help me on this one.

Best

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

I've also noticed that some fonts don't respond to the bold or italic options. I think it has to do with the way the font is made. I don't think there is anything you can do to change it. I think you just have to find a similar font which does allow bolding and italics.

In the case of italics, I suppose you might be able to fake it using Selection tool and skew. But personally I would just look for another font. Maybe someone else might know a way to force the bold/italic to happen?

hmmm... this would be easy if it´s not yet a font the company is using since over 10 years. But thanks though.
Anyone who knows a workaround? Btw: In Word etc. it´s no problem to make "Mistral" italic/bold.
I appriciate your efforts.

Btw: In Word etc. it´s no problem to make "Mistral" italic/bold.

Interesting!
I'll be interested to learn why/how this happens.

Btw, have you searched Launchpad for potential reported bugs? https://launchpad.net/inkscape

I have a recommendation on how to make a font "bold" that doesn't accept the bold feature.

• Create the text you're after.
• Select it.
• From the menu: Path > Dynamic Offset.
• The text should now have a single diamond-shaped control handle. Moving it upward will "fatten" the text and make it appear to be "bold".

While it is not exactly precise, it is a work-around. Give that a try.

To have a better response from your PC, from the menu: View > Display mode > Outline. You will be able to see the text fatten but it won't be so hard on your processor. Once done, View > Display mode > Normal.

Thanks for your replies.
In the meanwhile I gave up on Inkscape and tried Scribus. That worked a little bit better but still not really.
I was able to make the font italic in the preview of the settings within the font-settings, but it didn´t change it to italic in the actual document.

I've learned in another topic, that Inkscape (for some reason that's not given) requires very stable fonts. If there's something a little "hinky" about a font, Inkscape doesn't try to render it. I don't know why, and I don't know exactly what "hinky" means. I just know that Inkscape is really particular about fonts, lol.

So I'm wondering if you acquired the font elsewhere, and installed it, whether it would override the existing Mistral? Or installed it alongside the existing, like as Mistral2 or something. Maybe it's something about the Windows-installed version of Mistral, that's causing the problem? Maybe a freshly installed copy of Mistral would work? I have no idea whether it could be found for free, or how much it might cost. But just a thought

BobSongs wrote:I have a recommendation on how to make a font "bold" that doesn't accept the bold feature.
...
From the menu: Path > Dynamic Offset.

The biggest problem with that approach is that it implicitly converts the text to a path, so it can't be subsequently edited. An alternative approach is to apply a dilation filter to the text:

• Create your text object and select it
• Filters=>Filter Editor
• In the left pane click the "New" button to create a new filter. Ensure that the checkbox is enabled to make it apply to your selected text object
• In the right pane pick "Morphology" from the popup menu list, then click "Add Effect"
• In the bottom pane pick "Dilate" from the popup list
• Adjust the "Radius" slider until you get the desired effect - you should see the text in the main Inkscape window update in real time. If you click the "Link" button to de-select it, you can adjust the horizontal/vertical sliders independently

Of course, it's still no substitute for a proper bold font, but might be useful to someone. Plus the text remains editable, as does the amount of dilation, should you need to change things in future.

That was an incredibly useful hint, thanks Xav!

Thank you for your hint, Xav! I got exact the effect that I wanted.

That's a shame that Inkscape have not many fonts with bold style, probably it's financial thing for Inkscape.

Inkscape uses the fonts installed on your computer. It doesn't come with any fonts.

Note that this topic was started years ago by now. Please start a new topic if you questions about bold or italic fonts (because Inkscape has changed significantly since then).