non US fonts??

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: non US fonts??
started by: anaconda

Posted by anaconda on Mar. 08 2006,21:29

I have a Finnish keyboard, and would like to use finnish fonts ie. US fonts plus "a" and "o" with 2 dots above them.

DSL supports finnish keyboard, so everything else works fine. I suspect that the problem is: DSL doesn't have any fonts with "a" and "o" with dots in them

How can I add such fonts to DSL

anybody??

Posted by hs7sv on Mar. 09 2006,02:04

You can download dsl-artwiz.tar.gz from DSL Download/System and use it as a template. I made dsl-thai.dsl for Thai bitmap fonts adding.
You can search bitmap fonts from debian packages website. Good luck

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 09 2006,03:16

You can probably get some fonts that will work from XFree86 (the official download...not the mydsl package). I couldn't say what fonts will work for you, though.

What I've done to get bitmap fonts into DSL:
1) Put the desired *.pcf fonts into a directory and run mkfontdir in that directory. This will create a fonts.dir file.
2) Create a fonts.scale file with the command echo "0" > fonts.scale (bitmap fonts don't scale, so the file is just a zero). I'm not sure this is a vital step, but it doesn't hurt.
2b) Optional: Create a fonts.alias file containing short names for your most-used fonts. The syntax is <short_name><space><actual_font_name>
3) Add the fonts directory to your font path with the command xset +fp /path/to/fonts

4) Test your fonts. Sometimes font names aren't written properly in a fonts.dir or fonts.alias file (such as font names that include spaces), so it's a good idea to open up aterm with the command aterm -fn <font_name> to check it out. You could also load up Firefox and play around with different fonts in Firefox preferences...changes are immediate in currently loaded pages, and it gives a good idea of what non-scalable fonts can look like when they're forced to scale.

Posted by Anaconda on Mar. 10 2006,14:36

Thanks for help!

I found instructions how to do it in debian, so I tried following:

from /apps/tools
upgrade to GNU utils
enable apt

apt-get install xfonts-base-transcoded

And now I have scandinavian fonts everywhere, terminal, firefox, dillo etc..

so this is the way to do it atleast in HD-install

Will try to do it to LiveCd also.

ana

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 10 2006,15:04

I would have been willing to package them in mydsl format if I had any clue how to test them (I know english only, and us keyboard only). It should be a fairly simple task, since X fonts theoretically can be installed anywhere as long as you tell X where to find them.

Posted by anaconda on Mar. 13 2006,17:23

Ooops!
I just noticed that DSL already had skandinavian fonts!!
Stupid of me

I had chosen Keyboard map "fi" and not "fi-latin1" as I should have...

But euro-sign is still missing..