[email protected]
http://www.dimensional.com/~bgiles/debian-tt.html
X
and the font servers)xfs
Font Server
xfstt
Font Server and installing TrueType fonts
ghostscript
)
AFM
font metrics
font.map
files
GIMP
enscript
groff
TeX
A Linux installation typically contains several independent sets of fonts or font metrics. A quick glance at my system shows fonts or font metrics spread across the following directories:
XFree86
stores its fonts in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/
Ghostscript
stores its fonts in /usr/lib/ghostscript/fonts/
TeX
stores its fonts in /usr/lib/texmf/fonts/
kbd
package stores its fonts in /usr/share/consolefonts/
Groff
stores its metrics in /usr/share/font/devps/
Enscript
(ASCII to PostScript converter) stores its metrics
in /usr/share/enscript/*.afm
Needless to say, these fonts are not coordinated.
TrueType fonts are designed to eliminate this problem by allowing the same font files to be used for both display and printing. This HOW-TO attempts to show how to use TrueType fonts for display, printing, and document preparation on Debian GNU/Linux systems.
The information in this document is, to the best of my knowledge, correct. However this HOWTO is still in preliminary versions and what works for me may not work for you. Even if it does work for you, I am not a professional technical writer and I have been known to gloss over critical details.
So have fun, but play it safe and keep backups.
Created by Bear Giles,
<[email protected]>
Thanks go to:
<[email protected]>
, who
wrote the
(preliminary) TrueType HOW-TO (http://pobox.com/~brion/linux/TrueType-HOWTO.html)
<[email protected]>
,
who wrote the
XFree86 Font Deuglification HOW-TO (http://www.frii.com/~meldroc/Font-Deuglification.html)
These links don't directly discuss Debian systems or packages, but they may still be interesting to readers of this mini-HOWTO.
(http://www.kegel.com/linux/tt.html)
(http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/xfonts.html)
(http://king.ccrc.wustl.edu/~zubin/fonts.html)
(http://www.mindspring.net/~john_mcl/adding_fonts.html)
Comments, corrections, additions and critiques are always welcome. You can reach me at [email protected].
The FreeType engine is a free and portable TrueType font rendering engine. The code is a clean-room implementation that is totally independent of the Apple and Microsoft implementations. (A question has recently been raised about a possible Apple patent, however.) FreeType is a library, not a font server or a complete text rendering library.
This is the first draft and I expect it to change significantly
after publication, I ask that you refer to the latest version
at
http://www.dimensional.com/~bgiles/debian-tt.html
.
The permanent home for this document will eventually be at
http://www.coyotesong.com/
Before we dive into setting up TrueType fonts under X, we should review the difference between points and pixels... and why we care.
All displayed fonts are measured in points. One inch is exactly 72 points. Why 72? Partly because of the limitations of mechanical typesetting machines and partly because it's evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 18 and 24. It's also worth noting that the default unit in PostScript is one point.
(Historical note: I lied. Until the introduction of PostScript an inch was exactly 72.27 points, but that point size was set in the era of mechanical printers with metal stamps in a handful of standard sizes. With computer displays and laser printers, it's easy to get fonts in any size and 72 makes much more sense for the reason mentioned above.)
As a general rule, most text should be between 7 and 12 points. Anything smaller than 6 points is literally "the fine print." Line printers used 9 or 12 point type (for 8 or 6 lines/inch, respectively).
In contrast, all video drivers must ultimately measure fonts in pixels. To your video driver, your screen is 1024x800 pixels, not 10 by 8 inches (or 720 by 576 points).
To map from points (which we use to specify a font size) to pixels
(which we use to blit the video memory) we must know our screen's
resolution. This is usually measured in "dots per inch (dpi),"
although it's really pixels per inch. These are the units used in
the two sets of bitmap fonts included with XFree86: fonts-75
is
intended for use on low-end displays with a resolution of approximately
75 dpi, fonts-100
is intended for use on mid-range displays with
a resolution of approximately 100 dpi. There are no bitmap fonts
intended for use on high-end displays with a resolution of over 120 dpi.
As a concrete example, a 13" diagonal screen (11.1" usable) displaying a 640x480 pixel image has a resolution of 72.0 dpi. This Is Not A Coincidence. In fact, most web pages (and Microsoft applications) are designed around a canonical display with a resolution of exactly 72 dpi. XFree86's default configuration assumes a display with a resolution of 75 dpi.
Back in the real world, nobody runs 640x480 video anymore. Nobody uses 13" diagonal screens anymore. Since video cards have improved faster than video monitors it's not uncommon to have a configuration like mine: 19" diagonal screen, (17+" usable), 1600x1200 pixels, 117 dpi resolution.
If I run a stock X configuration, all of my fonts are approximately 2/3 of the intended size. It's not an exaggeration to say that all fonts are cut down by a full size: large fonts (12 pts) appear medium (9). Medium fonts (9 pts) appear small (6).
There are three things we can do to fix this. First, We should tell the X server our actual screen resolution:
/etc/X11/xdm/Xservers
#:0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X -bpp 16
:0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X -bpp 16 -dpi 120
Second, we should ensure that we use the 100 dpi bitmapped fonts in preference to the 75 dpi fonts.
/etc/X11/XF86Config
Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"
EndSection
Finally, if one of our bitmapped fonts isn't an exact match the
X
server will attempt to "scale" a similar font via pixel
replication. The results are rarely pleasant to use. Assuming we
have a reasonably powerful system, we can tell the server to
use scaled fonts by default, then bitmaps which are exact matches,
and scaled bitmaps as a last resort.
/etc/X11/XF86Config
Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
EndSection
I've just been informed that XFree86 will support DDC communications, if the video card and monitor both support it. This will allow the X server to query the monitor for its physical dimensions and the server will automatically compute the correct DPI setting.
You will still need to make the appropriate changes to your font path, since the server should not second guess your explicit configuration.
X
configuration files.
Any time we make changes to the X11 configuration files, it's an
excellent idea to disable XDM
by putting exit 0
somewhere
near the top of the file. If you don't do this and X
is unable
to start for some reason, XDM
will put your system into a nasty
busy loop that is an unspeakable pain to correct. You Have Been Warned.
X
and the font servers)Strictly speaking, it is not absolutely necessary to set up font servers
to use TrueType fonts with X
servers. If you wish to use
static files instead of a font server, please see the instructions for
setting up TrueType fonts for ghostscript
.
xfs
Font Server
At this point I assume you have a working /etc/X11/XF86Config
file that loads explicitly specifies each directory in the FontPath
.
We will convert it to use the xfs
Font Server.
XFS
If you have not already done so, install main/binary-*/x11/xfs_*.deb
.
XFS
Edit /etc/X11/xfs/config
and change the catalogue
to
contain the contents of your FontList
. You may also wish to
change the default-resolutions
value.
/etc/X11/xfs/config
# paths to search for fonts
catalogue =
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/
# x1,y1,x2,y2,...
default-resolutions = 100,100,75,75
XFS
Restart XFS
in the usual Debian manner:
root shell
# /etc/init.d/xfs restart
XFS
is working
Before we change our XF86Config
file, we should verify that the xfs
server is working by listing them through the font server:
user shell
$ fslsfonts -server unix/:7100
-adobe-courier-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1
-adobe-courier-bold-o-normal--0-0-100-100-m-0-iso8859-1
-adobe-courier-bold-o-normal--0-0-75-75-m-0-iso8859-1
....
/etc/X11/XF86Config
to use xfs
We're now ready to tell the X server to use the xfs
font server.
We keep one static font path as a fallback position in case of a problem
with xfs
. (We keep "misc" since it contains fixed
, the
default font.)
/etc/X11/XF86Config
Section "Files"
FontPath "unix/:7100"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
EndSection
X
Restart X
with startx
, unless you like living life dangerously.
If that's the case, name me the beneficiary of your unusually large life
insurance policy and restart xdm
.
XFS
fonts are visible
Once we have an X session established, we can verify that our server
sees all of the xfs
fonts by listing them through the X
server.
user shell
$ xlsfonts
-adobe-courier-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1
-adobe-courier-bold-o-normal--0-0-100-100-m-0-iso8859-1
-adobe-courier-bold-o-normal--0-0-75-75-m-0-iso8859-1
....
xfstt
Font Server and installing TrueType fonts
At this point I assume you have a working xfs
font server and wish
to add TrueType support via xfstt
.
XFSTT
If you have not already done so, install main/binary-*/x11/xfstt_*.deb
.
Copy your TrueType fonts into the /usr/share/fonts/truetype
directory. These files usually have a .ttf
extension, and they
should have 0444
permissions.
XFSTT
Font Server
Restart the xfstt
server with the force-reload
flag
root shell
# /etc/init.d/xfstt force-reload
XFSTT
is working
Before we change our XF86Config
file, we should verify that the xfstt
server is working.
Important: the Debian xfstt
server listens to
port 7101, not 7100. Also, the default permissions will require you
to run this query as root.
user and root shells
$ fslsfonts -server unix/:7101
_FSTransSocketUNIXConnect: Can't connect: errno = 111
fslsfonts: unable to open server "unix/:7101"
# fslsfonts -server unix/:7101
-ttf-arial black-medium-r-normal-regular-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
-ttf-arial mt black-medium-r-normal-regular-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
-ttf-arial narrow-bold-i-normal-bold italic-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
/etc/X11/XF86Config
to use xfstt
We're now ready to tell the X server to use the xfstt
font server.
We want it to use TrueType fonts in preference to all others.
/etc/X11/XF86Config
Section "Files"
FontPath "unix/:7101"
FontPath "unix/:7100"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
EndSection
XFSTT
fonts are visible
Once we have an X session established, we can verify that our server sees all of the TrueType fonts by listing them.
$ xlsfonts | grep ttf
-ttf-arial black-medium-r-normal-regular-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
-ttf-arial mt black-medium-r-normal-regular-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
-ttf-arial narrow-bold-i-normal-bold italic-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
....
At this point it should be possible to use a TrueType font in
applications like GIMP
, Netscape
or StarOffice
.
Since most TrueType fonts aren't monospaced you probably don't want
to use one of them with xterm
- these programs use monospacing
the size of the largest character cell.
If you are using the xfstt
font server, it's trivial to install
additional TrueType fonts.
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/
xfs
with /etc/init.d/xfs restart
xfstt
has the ability to generate multiple font encodings,
provided that the TrueType font contains the necessary glyphs.
To enable fonts other than iso8859-1/unicode-1, you must manually
edit the /etc/init.d/xfstt
script:
/etc/init.d/xfstt
- start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exec $XFSTT -- \
--port $portno --daemon
+ start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exec $XFSTT -- \
--port $portno --encoding iso8859-1,koi8-r,windows-1252,symbol-0 \
--daemon
The recognized encodings in Debian 2.1 are:
The first 128 characters in the iso8859-x
encodings is always ASCII.
The windows-
fonts embrace and extend iso8859-1
with additional
characters such as "smart quotes." (Since these extensions, such as "smart
quotes" are undefined in iso8859-1
, they are usually rendered as
question marks.)
Excellent source for additional information on character set encodings are at
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/%7Eflavell/iso8859/iso8859-pointers.html
,
http://anubis.dkuug.dk/i18n/
and
http://czyborra.com/charsets/iso8859.html
.
I used Unix sockets above, but the standard Debian packages also
configure xfs
and xfstt
to listen to TCP/IP ports 7100 and
7101, respectively. Access to these ports should be controlled
by the trusted-clients
field in /etc/X11/xfs/config
,
but this option is not implemented in XFree86 3.3.2.3a.
This means that anyone, anywhere, can connect to your font server.
Since xfs
(and presumably xfsts
) "clone" to support
more users there's a trivial denial-of-service attack against these
systems. It's probably safe to use the font servers on dialup
lines (since you're present to handle problems), but DSL and cable
modem users should use a firewall.
ghostscript
)Starting with version 4, ghostscript
has supported TrueType
fonts as a compile-time option. Two Debian packages provide ghostscript
:
main/binary-*/text/gs_*.deb
is DFSG-compliant version 5.10,non-free/binary-*/gs-aladdin_*.deb
is non-DFSG-compliant
version 5.50.
Ghostscript
to use TrueType fonts
If you have a working xfstt
server, it is easy to configure
ghostscript
to use TrueType fonts. We simply execute the
following command:
# xfstt --gslist --sync >> /etc/gs.Fontmap
In practice, I've found it beneficial to make several small changes
to the font definitions generated by xfstt
. First, if a font name
does not contain any spaces, I change the name to the usual notation.
If a font name does contain spaces, I replace all spaces with dashes
and the original name is added as an alias to the new name.
Finally, I prepend TTF-
(or MS-
) to all font names to
minimize problems caused by a TrueType font having an identical
name to an preexisting font.
Thus
(Arial) (/usr/share/fonts/truetype/arial.ttf) ;
(Arial Bold Italic) (/usr/share/fonts/truetype/arialbi.ttf) ;
becomes
/MS-Arial (/usr/share/fonts/truetype/arial.ttf) ;
/MS-Arial-Bold-Italic (/usr/share/fonts/truetype/arialbi.ttf) ;
(Arial Bold Italic) /MS-Arial-Bold-Italic ;
/Arial /MS-Arial ;
The aliases ensure that ghostscript
and xfstt
can still
specify the same font by a common name.
Much more significantly, with the change in the font names it's possible
to instruct ghostscript
to use TrueType fonts instead of the
standard fonts. The documentation claims that this is also possible with
parenthetical notation, but I could not get it to work.
For instance, we can instruct ghostscript
to replace Helvetica fonts
with Microsoft's free Arial fonts by appending the following lines to the
/etc/gs.Fontmap
file:
/Helvetica /MS-Arial ;
/Helvetica-Oblique /MS-Arial-Italic ;
/Helvetica-Bold /MS-Arial-Bold ;
/Helvetica-BoldOblique /MS-Arial-Bold-Italic ;
Similar aliases can be defined for the other standard fonts.
These aliases would be most useful on samba
printers serving
Windows clients.
The best way to verify that ghostscript
is properly configured to use
TrueType fonts is to print font specimen pages. Assuming that you're
running ghostscript
5.50 and that it is your default print queue,
you can print all TrueType fonts with the following command:
# xfstt --gslist --sync | printfont
where printfont
is the following shell script
#!/bin/sh
set -e
IFS= ')'
while read fontname rest
do
cat << EOM | lpr
%!PS
(/usr/lib/ghostscript/5.50/prfont.ps) run
$fontname) DoFont
EOM
done
If you wish to print only a few fonts, the following script will be easier to use:
#!/bin/sh
set -e
while read -p "Font name, or ^D to exit: " fontname
do
cat << EOM | lpr
%!PS
(/usr/lib/ghostscript/5.50/prfont.ps) run
$fontname DoFont
EOM
done
AFM
font metrics
AFM
font metrics files are not required for display existing
files with TrueType fonts, but they are necessary to create new files.
The ghostscript program /usr/lib/ghostscript/5.50/printafm.ps
could be used to generate these metric files, but I have found
the ttf2afm
program from the tetex-bin
package to be easier
to use.
The following script will generate an afm
file for all TrueType
fonts in a directory:
#!/bin/sh
set -e
for i in *.TTF
do
/usr/bin/ttf2afm $i > ${i%TTF}afm
done
for i in *.ttf
do
/usr/bin/ttf2afm $i > ${i%ttf}afm
done
One minor problem with ttf2afm
is that some applications expect
afm
files to start with the StartFontMetrics
tag, but
files created by ttf2afm
start with a comment. This "problem"
is easily fixed by hitting each file with a text editor.
font.map
files
Once we have our afm
files, we need to tell the system how to
find them. This is often done via the font.map
file.
I have been unable to find documentation on this file format, unlike
fonts.dir
, fonts.scale
, and fonts.alias
, all created by
the mkfontdir
program. However the minimum format appears to
be quite simple:
AFM
filename, without extensionAliases appear to be implemented via multiple entries, and the filename extension must be in lowercase.
GIMP
GIMP
is the Gnu image manipulation and paint program. I did not
have to make any additional changes to use TrueType fonts in gimp
.
enscript
Enscript
is a program that converts ASCII to PostScript. Other
programs which serve a similiar purpose are a2ps
and mpage
.
Enscript
allows two-up rotation, watermarks, headers, and
keyword-based syntax coloring. It does not reformat text and is
commonly used to print source listing.
To use TrueType fonts with enscript
, you must do two things:
/usr/share/fonts/truetype
to your AFMPath
.For details, see the enscript
documentation.
Once I had made these changes, I had no problem using TrueType fonts.
groff
Groff
is the Gnu front end of the groff/troff document
formatting system. The power of Groff
is best seen with
man
pages.
user shell
$ zcat /usr/man/man1/groff.1.gz | groff -man | lpr
Besides man pages, an incredible amount of Unix documentation
uses troff
formatting with ms
(and occasionally me
)
macros. The Debian xbooks
package, for example, has 43
files using troff
with ms
macros. With groff
, this
material can be attractively printed.
Groff
is a very powerful system, but it's the grandchild (or
great-grandchild) of a program used to typeset 1960's era printing
presses. Font support in groff
reflects that heritage.
Groff
, in contrast to its predecessors, uses PostScript as
the default output format so our earlier work with ghostscript
takes care of half of the problem -- groff
does not have to
deal with reading TrueType font files. It does need to have
accurate font metrics, and this section describes how to regenerate
the necessary groff
files:
Groff PostScript description files
/usr/share/groff/font/devps/DESC
Device description file
/usr/share/groff/font/devps/text.enc
Encoding used for text fonts
/usr/share/groff/font/devps/generate/textmap
Standard mapping.
/usr/share/groff/font/devps/generate/Makefile
Standard makefile
We must edit the Makefile,
/usr/share/groff/font/devps/generate/Makefile
- afmdir=/usr/local/afm
+ afmdir=/usr/share/fonts/truetype
change the name of the fonts to their TrueType equivalent (e.g.,
if we're using Microsoft's free TrueType fonts we would replace
Helvetica
with Arial
), and change TEXTFONTS
and the like to only include those fonts we are redefining.
We must also edit /usr/share/groff/font/devps/generate/afmname
to use the TrueType font names and afm
files, and to remove an
"-e"
flag from awk
.
After all of this, we can rebuild the groff
tables with
user shell
$ cd /usr/share/groff/font/devps
$ make -f generate/Makefile
As usual, the best way to verify the changes is to use a visually
distinctive font. E.g., if you are using the Microsoft free TrueType
fonts you can use Mistral
for TR
.
(I expect royalties from everyone who reconfigures their system to print manual pages in Old English fonts next April First!)
TeX
TeX
is the other common set of text formatting and typesetting
programs on most GNU/Linux systems.
TeX
fonts can created with mktexmf
, but I have little
information on the exact process. More details will be provided shortly.
The biggest unanswered question is why netscape communicator
can use TrueType fonts, ghostscript
can use the same
TrueType fonts, yet pages printed by netscape
look nothing
like the screen.
The short answer is that netscape
generates PostScript output
with standard fonts (Helvetica and Times-Roman) instead of the
user-specified or HTML-specified fonts. The long answer is that I
have absolutely no idea why it forces this behavior, or if there is
a way to override it.
If you're looking for TrueType fonts, here are several places where you can start looking:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/
http://www.acidcool.com/
http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=fontring&list
No article on TrueType support under Linux would be complete without a comment about Microsoft's free TrueType fonts. First the legality of using Microsoft's free core fonts:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/faq/faq8.htm
Q. What can I do with these fonts? · Anyone can download and install these fonts for their own use. · [Web page] designers can specify the fonts within their own Web pages. ...
Clearly, it is legal and reasonable for Linux users to download and install these fonts, and I would like to thank Microsoft for making them available.
Since another clause restricts their redistribution "in any form
that adds value to commercial products" I don't expect to see
these fonts packaged in main
anytime soon. (Could they be
packaged in non-free
, perhaps as an installer package...?)
Now that that's out of the way, I redirect your attention to the second statement. Microsoft actively encourages web page developers to specify their fonts on web pages, and many HTML editors explicitly name fonts.
Many web sites, when viewed by standard Netscape/Linux, can best be described as... legible. Some aren't even that. Not coincidentally the sites which are, um, legible are also usually the sites that explicitly state all font information in their web pages.
After I installed these fonts I noticed that most of these problematic sites became significantly more attractive. Many were still highly Windows-centric, but at least I didn't flinch every time I loaded their pages.
My recommendation is to install Microsoft's free TrueType fonts
for your browser. You are not required to create web pages that
use these fonts, nor do you have to configure ghostscript
to
use them.
Copyright © 1999 by Bear Giles.
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