Adding Truetype fonts

Ian Pilcher ian.pilcher at home.com
Sat May 12 20:32:32 CDT 2001


David MacBanay wrote:
> 
> I need to be able to use a special truetype font and I need to know
> how to install it so that  an application running through WINE will
> see it.  When I install the program it gives a message that it failed
> to install the fonts although I do have the ttf files in the system
> directory.   How do I get the application to see it?
> 

Do you need to display the font, print it, or both?

To display it, you need to make the font known to your X server.  Most
recent distributions support TrueType "out of the box", either directly
or through a font server.  Check the 'FontPath' entry in your XFree86
configuration file (XF86Config or XF86Config-4).  It will either contain
a list of directories or something weird like "unix/:7100".  If it's
the latter, your X server is using a separate font server, and you'll
need to look at *its* configuration file (possibly /etc/X11/fs/config)
for the 'catalogue' entry.

Regardless of which way your X server/font server is configured, you
will need to either put the TrueType font into one of the directories
that is already configured or add the directory in which the font
resides to your configuration.  Then, run 'ttmkfdir > fonts.scale' in
that directory, followed by 'mkfontdir'.  Finally, restart your font
server (if you're running one) and your X server.

At this point, any X application, including Wine, should be able to
display the font.  (This does not include applications that do RENDER-
based text antialiasing; see /etc/X11/XftConfig for them.)

Now to printing.  First, get basic PostScript printing with the WINEPS
driver set up, as described in the Wine documentation.  (The
documentation on the web site may not be up to date.  If you have
problems building the documentation included with the source, I can
send it to you.)

Second, wait a little bit.  I've been working on getting TrueType
support into the Wine PostScript driver, and the intial patch is set to
be submitted when WineHQ comes back up.  This patch allows the driver to
read font metrics out of TrueType fonts,  It does not actually embed
them into print jobs, so your best bet is to install the TrueType font
in Ghostscript (use the GS_FONTPATH environment variable).  The current
version of the patch also requires that you edit your PPD file to "fool"
the driver into working as if the font were installed in your printer,
but this should change RSN.

Wasn't that fun!

-- 
========================================================================
Ian Pilcher                                         ian.pilcher at home.com
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