TrueType Fonts with XFree86 4.x mini-HOWTO
Bartek Kostrzewa, bartek_at_spillkescht.lu
1.5, 2004-06-28
This mini-HOWTO describes how to use TrueType (*.ttf) fonts with
XFree86 4.x.
______________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1 Copyright
1.2 Disclaimer
1.3 News
1.4 Credits
1.5 Translations
2. Procedure
______________________________________________________________________
1. Introduction
1.1. Copyright
Download, copy and redistribute this text freely. If you do any
changes, please submit them to me, and I will pass them to the LDP, of
course, credit will be given.
Copyright (c) 2001 by Bartek Kostrzewa
1.2. Disclaimer
Use the information in this document at your own risk. I disavow any
potential liability for the contents of this document. Use of the
concepts, examples, and/or other content of this document is entirely
at your own risk.
All copyrights are owned by their owners, unless specifically noted
otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as
affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.
Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as
endorsements.
You are strongly recommended to take a backup of your system before
major installation and backups at regular intervals.
1.3. News
· 1.5: Change my e-mail adress and modified some X-Free versioning
numbers.
· 0.0.4: Some content added, explaining how to add fontpath's to the
XF86Config.
· 0.0.3: Due to possible legal problems some modifications were done.
· 0.0.2: This release cleans up some errors I wrote about Netscape
font scaling.
· 0.0.1: Initial release.
This document can be found at: <http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/TT-
XFree86.html>
1.4. Credits
I'd like to thank Bear Giles for his Debian TTF howto which brought me
on the right path :o).
Of course, credit should also go to the XFree86 crew for the enormous
effort of maintaining XFree86, and Joerg Pommnitz for writing
ttmkfdir.
Also I'd like to pass a BIG big thank you to the LDP for building and
maintaining a network of helping hands which already guided many
people through the hard to overcome the learning curve Linux has.
Thanks to Joe Meadows for notifying me that this howto probably
described an illegal act in version 0.0.2 and earlier.
1.5. Translations
Apparently some translations of this document have been written but I
don't know where to find them since the authors did not contact me,
(no wonder, I did not update since 2001). Please do continue to
translate.
Any comments or suggestions can be mailed to my mail address:
bartek_at_spillkescht.lu
2. Procedure
Since my last update a lot has happened but the procedure is still the
same even for X.org. Just adjust the filename if necessary.
Get a set of TrueType fonts (for example from one of the many sites
making fonts availiable for download) and do the following as root at
the command line:
· mkdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Truetype
· cp /home/joeuser/your-download-directory/*.ttf
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Truetype
· cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Truetype
· ttmkfdir > fonts.scale
· mkfontdir
Now if you have a working installation of Windows on one of your
partitions, you must use the fonts directly from there, copying them
to a directory of your Linux partition is considered *illegal*. First
read up on how to get your windows partition detected and working in
Linux (most distributions do that at installation time, and by
default), then as root do the following:
· cd /etc/X11
· your-favourite-editor XF86Config In some X distributions this file
is used with a number added to it (for example: XF86Config.4)]. You
will have to find out which file your X11R6 uses. You can do this
by typing: cat /var/log/XFree* | grep "Using config file:" and then
instead edit the file stated in the log.
· Now, in the editor find the section Files and the lines with
FontPath, just add FontPath "/yourwinpartition/windows/fonts/" at
the bottom of this list. (yourwinpartition must be replaced with
the mount point of your windows partition)
· cd /winpartition/windows/fonts
· ttmkfdir > fonts.scale
· mkfontdir
This will make all the fonts on your Windows partition work correctly
in X.
There you go. You will now have all of your TrueType fonts working. If
you want to add fonts, just move/copy those [*.ttf files] into the
aforementioned directory, and repeat the process.
Netscape has problems with these fonts, you have to check the "Allow
Scaling" setting in the Fonts dialog, don't feel distracted by the
fact that it only shows font sizes 0 and 12. Mozilla has no such
problems. Opera neither.
The mkfontdir executable should be included with your XFree 4.x
distribution.
If you are missing ttmkfdir, you can obtain it here:
<http://www.joerg-pommnitz.de/TrueType/ttmkfdir.tar.gz>
The latest version of XFree86 (currently 4.4.0) can be found at:
<http://www.xfree86.org>
The latest version of X.org can be found here:
<http://freedesktop.org/XOrg>
