System :: Extension Request: Install arbitrary Truetype font



I think it would be great to have an extension which creates the control files and does postinstall for 'just any' Truetype font.  This way people could use whatever fonts they own under DSL.  Or as in my case, they could just use a single font which they really need.
 
My situation:
I'm trying to get the gvim text editor usable with one of the DejaVu fonts (free extensions on the Bitstream vera fonts, with the addition of a lot more glyphs).  I need a fairly obscure unicode range (Extended Greek) only available in very few monospaced fonts, and none of the microsoft ones.  I can get the right font (DejaVu Sans Mono) working under OpenOffice and GTK2 apps, but not under gvim, which I complied (including the unicode option for gtk1).  Would be find to rebuild vim for gtk2, but I haven't managed it yet.  It looks like the gtk2 devel lib has a lot of dependencies, so I expect to have some pain trying to install it with apt-get.

I have the full xfree86 loaded, and can manage to get dsl apps to see regular x-fonts (from, say the mydsl extensions)

I think I could be helped by any of these:

(1) If I could build the control files and get dsl apps to recognize the ttf fonts. (Hence the extension request)

(2) If I could get my system able to compile gtk2 apps, since the gtk2 apps extensions can all recognize my ttf fonts as they are.

(3) If I could somehow get a gvim binary compiled using gtk2 and the 'big' features option, which would work under dsl.

I do have ubuntu 6.06 installed as well, but the fonts.dir and fonts.scale files I created under it (for my dsl ~/.fonts directory)  don't seem to work) xset +fp /fontpath gives me an error "bad path or no fonts.dir, etc." I can give you the whole thing if you like.

Thanks for any advice.

Scot
Add the FontPath to your xconfig
you may also possibly need to run fc-cache (or similar? again)

Use/update fontconfig and freetype?  Not sure what comes with the xf86 package...
Quote
I do have ubuntu 6.06 installed as well, but the fonts.dir and fonts.scale files I created under it (for my dsl ~/.fonts directory)  don't seem to work) xset +fp /fontpath gives me an error "bad path or no fonts.dir, etc."

You can create these files in DSL by running "mkfontdir" in the chosen directory...at least i think that command is part of Xfree
Has anyone gotten 'just any' truetype font to work?  (aside, that is from the microsoft core fonts, which many seem to have been able to install with help from the post-install stuff in the related debian package?  I'd love to hear how you did it.  Especially if you are making use of wider unicode ranges.

It's true I didn't try adding the FontPath to my xconfig.  The standard advice on the forums was to use the xset +fp /fontpath, from the command line and later in .xinit, which I couldn't get to work.  I'll trying the FontPath route and see if I can do it.  I suspect, however that I haven't gotten the control files (fonts.dir, fonts.scale and whatever else is needed) to work yet.

I'm nearly positive that mkfontdir isn't included in DSL's XFree, but I'll check again.

Does anyone know about the control files for Truetype fonts?  Are they at all system dependant, or should I be able to create them under Ubuntu (for a given directory) and import them to DSL.  I thought that that should work, so I installed the package containing mkttfdir (or was it ttfmkdir?) to my Ububntu system and created some fonts.dir and fonts.scale files.  But still, they don't' work under DSL.

Thanks for any advice you have.
Can you use the fonts under the dsl's default/gtk1 firefox?

I don't know if I used any ttf fonts, but theres many encodings and fonts available.  I was using freetype2 (w/ fontconfig) and it says it also supports ttf.  The fonts.dir stuff should be portable since it only contains data relevant to the usable stuff in that current dir, but you could always remake them to be sure.  Not that I tried gvim though (I'm a terminal+vim fan :P).  Perhaps you can statically compile the font (or use of) in.
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