If we spend just a few minutes and install FontForge and make a very small script it becomes almost trivial to do.
sudo apt-get install fontforge
Now we should make the scripts, well it is two actually but one is a small config script for FontForge and the other is just a script to convert many OTF files in one go, rather than individually. First the FontForge settings file.
cd ~/bin
touch otf2ttf.conf
Then open otf2ttf.conf in your favourite text editor and paste the following into it.
#!/usr/local/bin/fontforge
# Quick and dirty hack: converts a font to truetype (.ttf)
Print("Opening "+$1);
Open($1);
Print("Saving "+$1:r+".ttf");
Generate($1:r+".ttf");
Quit(0);
Save the file, and now lets make the script to convert many fonts in one swoop.
cd ~/bin
touch otf2ttf
chmod +x otf2ttf
Again, open this file with your prefered text editor and paste the following in.
#!/bin/bash
#
# had to enable extglob
shopt -s extglob
# this uses globbing to match fiels ending in otf/OTF
for i in +(*.otf|*.OTF)
do fontforge -script /home/subbass/bin/otf2ttf.conf $i
done
To use this now (provided that your ~/bin folder is in your path) just open a terminal where your OTF files are, and issue the command otf2ttf. It will convert 20 files in just a couple of seconds to give you an idea of speed, you can then move all the resulting TTF files into ~/.fonts
Credit to http://www.stuermer.ch/blog/convert-otf-to-ttf-font-on-ubuntu.html where I found the script before re-typing the instructions. I put it here so I don't lose it next time I need it.
