A few years back, I bought a bunch of Macintosh fonts on a CD-ROM. Recently, I decided I wanted to use them with Ubuntu. Since the Mac CD was HPFS only and very scratched, here’s what I ended up doing.
First, I installed the Ubuntu utilities for Mac HPFS: sudo aptitude install macutils hfs
Then I tried just mounting the file system: sudo mount -thfs /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom/
That probably would have worked, but my CD was so scratched that it kept dying. (Also, I don’t know if copying from a mounted HFS file system copies both forks of the Apple file.)
Luckily, I was able to use the mounted file system to get a ls -lR listing of the files on the disk. That made it easier to use the excellent hfs utils:
sudo aptitude install hftutils
Then I could: hmount /dev/cdrom hcd TRUETYPE hcopy -b MyFont.suit /tmp/MyFont.hqx
I wrote a script to copy the files over. Once I had the files over, I could convert them manually using fontforge (from fontforge.sourceforge.net). Basically, you do: sudo aptitude install fontforge fontforge MyFont.hqx and then File -> Generate Fonts -> Save (after making sure TTF is selected).
It turns out fontforge is overkill - and also harder to script - than fondu.
sudo aptitude install fondu fondu *.hqx
Here are some useful sources of information:
A discussion of font utilities: ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=314837
The easy way: using fondu: ubuntu-tutorials.com/2006/12/13/convert-mac-based-fonts-for-use-on-ubuntu-ubuntu-6061-610/
Converting from one outline font (e.g. PostScript) to another (e.g. TrueType): fontforge.sourceforge.net/faq.html#outline-conversion
Once you have the fonts in TTF format, you can copy them to ~/.fonts/ (or use the File Browser to open the Font Viewer and then press the Install button if you’re GUI) to install on Ubuntu.
For Windows, just drag & drop the font to C:\WINNT\Fonts or C:\WINDOWS\Fonts depending on your system.
Incidentally, if you’re looking for a particular font or lookalike, you’ll probably find it here: www.fonts101.com