2. Fonts

2.2.1. Type1 Font Installation

The following steps describe manual installation of Type1 fonts:

2.2.2. Creating fonts.scale

The fonts.scale file contains various information about the fonts in a directory where that fonts.scale itself is placed. This means every directory which has any font file can have its own fonts.scale (non-scalable fonts like Bitmap fonts do not need a fonts.scale file). The information that every line of a fonts.scale contains (preceded by the name of the font file itself) is called XLFD (X Logical Font Definition). An example line from a fonts.scale file is:

sutonny.pfa -altsys-SutonnyMJ-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-adobe-fontspecific

The only difference is the very first line of fonts.scale, which has only a number instead of the usual font-file name followed by the corresponding XLFD. This number is the total number of XLFDs listed in that fonts.scale file.

The structure of a fonts.scale is like this:

 Line 1: Total number of XLFD
 Line 2: FontFileName1 XLFD
 Line 3: FontFileName2 XLFD
 ....
 ....
 ....
        

The following is a suitable XLFD for Type1 Bijoy fonts:

-altsys-SutonnyMJ-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-adobe-fontspecific

Please note that in the above string, "SutonnyMJ" is the actual fontname. This name needs to be changed accordingly for other fonts.

An example fonts.scale file for two Type1 Bijoy fonts can be like this (Where sutonnymj.pfa and rinkymj.pfa are the actual Type1 font files for the fonts Sutonnymj and Rinkymj respectively):

2
sutonnymj.pfa -altsys-SutonnyMJ-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-adobe-fontspecific
rinkymj.pfa -altsys-RinkyMJ-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-adobe-fontspecific

        

It's better not to press Return after writing the XLFD in the last line. This sometimes create problem with the total number of XLFD lines and the file is taken as having bad structure by mkfontdir. If fonts.scale is not created properly, the mkfontdir command will give error message. Otherwise fonts.dir will be created.

The "adobe-fontspecific" substring found at the end of every XLFD for Type1 Bijoy fonts is the encoding of that font. If "iso8859-1" encoding is required, this can be done too by creating another file fonts.alias. Every line of fonts.alias contains two XLFDs. The first XLFD is the alias and the second one is the original. Unlike fonts.scale and fonts.dir, there is no number at the first line of fonts.alias. An example fonts.alias's structure looks like this:

Line 1: -altsys-SutonnyMJ-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
 -altsys-SutonnyMJ-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-adobe-fontspecific
Line 2: -altsys-RinkyMJ-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
 -altsys-RinkyMJ-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-adobe-fontspecific

        

Generally, some subdirectories under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ contain many font files and some fonts.scale files, fonts.dir and fonts.alias as well. A browse through these files can make it easier to create new ones. One thing to notice is that the content of both fonts.scale and fonts.dir are same but both are still needed.

2.2.3. TrueType Font Installation

The Bijoy font's TrueType installation method is quite similar to that of Type1. Just keep a separate directory for the fonts, like,

/usr/local/share/fonts/ttfonts/bijoy/

and change the XLFD to:

-altsys-SutonnyMJ-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-apple-roman

In the example, the font encoding is "apple-roman" instead of "adobe-fontspecific." Also to use these fonts anti-aliasing must be stopped, and this is where "Xft" comes into business.In your $HOME directory, create a hidden file ~/.xftconfig and write the following lines in it ( the file may be already present, in that case just add these lines):

dir "/usr/local/share/fonts/ttfonts/bijoy/"

match any family == "sutonnymj"
edit antialias = false; encoding = "apple-roman";

        

The match any family == "sutonnymj" and the next line prevents anti-aliasing for sutonnymj only. If there are other Bijoy fonts in use, more similar lines must be added.

The presence of only ~/.xftconfig is enough to make a TrueType font available to KWord. There is no need to create fonts.scale and fonts.dir. Even the fontpath needs not be added in XF86Config. So these steps can be skipped if wished.

Newer systems(like RH 8.0) use Xft 2.0 instead of Xft 1.0 . Xft 2.0 doesn't use ~/xftconfig. Instead it uses ~/.fonts . This file can be modified by fontconfig . Here also, "antialias" must be stopped and "encoding" remains "apple-roman" .