or perhaps the right question to ask is ``why not ?'' The typical Linux user has experienced a migration from Windows, and probably has an enormous collection of TrueType fonts. Many of these fonts ( eg those that ship with MS Word and Corel's products ) are of fairly good quality. However, some Linux applications, such as Star Office and LaTeX do not support TrueType fonts, but do support Type1 fonts. update: it looks like Star Office can handle TrueType fonts, but I'm still trying to work out the details. At best, it involves some fairly gruesome hacks. This is a pity, because with ghostscript support for TrueType, and TrueType font servers, Linux has the infrastructure it needs to handle TrueType.
To convert your TrueType fonts into Type1 fonts, go to http://quadrant.netspace.net.au/ttf2pt1/ and get ttf2pt1. To convert a TrueType to a Type1 font, use the following syntax:
ttf2pt1 -b file.ttf name
Where name is the name of the file corresponding to the new Type1 font ( ie it's arbitrary. It's a good idea to make it the same as the ttf file. eg ttf2pt1 -b foo.ttf foo.
Well, that worked fine for one font. If we have a lot, we need a smarter way to do it. One can just just use a loop:
for X in *.ttf; do ttf2pt1 -b $X ${X%%.ttf}; done
Alternatively, you can download the ttfutils package and use ttf2type1 for the conversions.
ttf2type1 *.ttf