Ric Tibbetts wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">Ah.. the new generation of Linux users... Y'all can't do anything
without a GUI.
Want to know what's going on "under the covers"? Then when you want to
add fonts, you can.. any time, any type. :)
Ok... Here goes:
Off in the land of daemons is one called "xfs" (for X Font Server). It,
as it's name suggests, serves fonts to the X server, which in turn puts
them on your dsplay. For average fonts, it's not even required, as X is
capable of rendering it's own fonts. X only falls short in the realm of
True Type fonts. That is "one" of the places that xfs is needed. Another
place that xfs finds use is to serve fonts out to network devices
(remote X-Terminals & such. But that is beyond where I care to go with
this discussion.
So. Knowing the above, how does one import Windows (or any other) fonts
into X?
Simple.
First, take a look at the directory: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts
There you will fin d the font directories. You should have a sub
directrory something like the following.
.../100dpi
.../75dpi
.../encodings
.../mdk
.../misc
.../PEX
.../Speedo
.../Type1
There are additional fonts in /usr/share, but we'll get to those later.
Within each of these directories are the font files, and two very
important files:
fonts.dir (the fonts definition file), and
fonts.alias (an alias file, as the name would suggest).
There may additionaly be a fonts.scale file for scaleable fonts.
The first step in adding a large number of fonts is find a place to put
them. If you want to bring the windows fonts over, then I'd suggest
creating a new directory for them. I've done that on mine, and named it
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Windows
Create that directory, then copy the contents of your windows fonts
directory into it.
Then cd into the directory, and issue:
ttmkfdir > fonts.dir
This will create the fonts.dir file.
NOTE: This only works for TT fonts. For conventional fonts use:
mkfontdir > fonts.dir (the non true-type version).
Now. With the fonts.dir file created, we need to tell xfs about this new
directory.
Go to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fs
There is a file there named "config". Open it with your favorite editor.
Look for the section that has the font directrories in it (it's really
easy to find, it's a small file).
You'll want to add your .../Windows fonts directrory to this list. Mine
looks like:
catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/mdk:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Windows, <- This on e!
/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1,
/usr/share/fonts/ttf/decoratives,
/usr/share/fonts/ttf/western
NOTE: You can also add external fonts to /usr/share. And in retrospect,
this would have been a more appropriate place to add the Windows fonts.
With the .../Windows directory added to this list, comes the really
distasteful part. You'll need to reboot your PC. yeah, I know. But every
time I've tried to ge around it, I've gotten hung up.
One possible way:
After you've completed the above:
Drop out of X, and kill it (go to a console, and type "init 3", to
totally shutdown X. Then run "service xfs restart" to stop & start xfs
so it will pick up the new fonts.
Then restart X, by running init 5, OR startx.
This MIGHT get you back up without hanging. I've generally found it best
to restart the computer.
Before everyone jumps on this, YES, I know, there are ways to add font
paths withou t killing xfs & X. I did not do this in this example because
it's best to be sure that xfs is still funcitoning properly after having
it's config file futz with. And this method supplies a lasting font
path, by building it in.
You should now however have your new (old) windows fonts available.
to summarize the steps:
1) Create & populate the new font directory (in either
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts, or /usr/share/fonts).
2) Create the fonts.dir file (by running ttmkfdir > fonts.dir from
within the new font directory).
3) Add the new font directory to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fs/config
4) Kill X, restart xfs, and restart X.
Broken down, it's really very simple.
Want to add more truetype fonts? Pay a visit to fontfreak
(http://www.fontfreak.com), and get something interesting. Then add the
file to which-ever truetype fonts directory suits your fanc y,and seems
appropriate. Then just re-run ttmkfdir > fonts.dir, and restart. And
you'll have your new font. NOTE: There's no need to change the xfs
config file if you've not added a new directory.
So. Now you know how to do fonts basics by hand. Knowing this, when
things go awry (as things GUI powered will form time to time), you'll
have a clue as to where to look, and how to fix it.
"Give a hungry man a fish, and you've fed him for one meal.
Teach him to catch his own, and you've fed him for a lifetime."
Happy fishing!
Ric
By the way: Be very careful copying windows fonts onto a Linux box. You
may very well be violating a very strict copyright license. Yes,
comercial fonts are very often copyrighted, and yes, if you did this in
an enterprise environment, they (M$) could very well start legal action
against your employer, and ultimately you.
Just a word of caution.
Enjoy!
robin wrote :The import fonts utility does hang sometimes - it usually means there
are some weird fonts in Windows. I've never known it affect any
programs, though. The only thing I can think of is that you have
imported a font with the same name but different properties over one of
your X-fonts, though this seems unlikely. All I can suggest is
1. Uninstall any fonts that were successfully imported.
2. Move any Windows fonts that were installed later into a temporary
directory. Repeat font import.
3. Try any of the moved fonts that you really want, one at a time.
4. Move Windows fonts back.
A tedious alternative is to convert Windows fonts to type 2 fonts.
Robin
Noah Stacy wrote:Hi all.
A couple of nights ago, I tried to import my windows fonts over to linux,
using the Mandrake Control Center, under fonts. I used strong verification,
just to be on the safe side. However, it never actually finished importing
them. I left it running for a good hour or more, and it still wasn't done, so
I finally went out to a console and killed it and everything associated with
it. (Just the font thing, not DrakConf as well.)
After this, mozilla wouldn't load up--it did give an error message, which I
didn't write down (unfortunately) but it was a highly uninformative one...
not in the sense of being technical mumbo-jumbo, but just in providing no
information whatsoever. I logged out and in a little while later and found
mozilla working just fine, but there were peculiarities in the text--things
were overlapping each other, and the underlines for links weren't going all
the way over to the end of the lin k text. Tonight I tried to start up
mozilla again, and find it broken again; the first time I tried to run it it
gave no message at all... just hung. The second (and subsequent) tries it's
hanging at Registering plugin 0 for: "*","All types",".*" It's possible that
this Mozilla problem may be unrelated as I did try to download a plugin and
had it fail, but given that it's affecting text (and in Konqueror also; it
doesn't seem to be affecting Netscape), I feel it might be.
Any possible fix for any of this?
N. Stacy
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