Re: Unicode fonts on Debian

[Jungshik Shin <jshin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 13 Dec 2003, Jan Willem Stumpel wrote:

> Does anyone have a step-by-step description of how to install
> Bitstream Cyberbit in Debian Sid? And similarly for (MS) Arialuni?

Well, you're not supposed to install MS Arial Unicode on Linux at
least in some countries.  If you want to install a Pan-Unicode font,
you'd better install James Kass' Code2000(BMP) and Code2001(non-BMP).
They're available at http://home.att.net/~jameskass.  It'd be nice of you
to pay him $5. He's done a great service by making his fonts available
and deserves some monetary compensation, IMHO. You have to note that
for a good quality rendering, you'd better get fonts specifically
made for a subset of Unicode repertoire instead of pan-Unicode fonts.
Google 'alan wood unicode fonts' and you'll get Alan Wood's Unicode font
site. For Latin, you definitely need to install Bitstream Vera series
(donated by Bitstream). If you're also interested in Greek and Cyrillic,
a set of fonts made available by SIL (Gentium) are good to have.

> I am still puzzled on when exactly what font is used for display
> and for printing in the various Mozilla versions. Each time I
> think 'I got it' it turns out that 'I didn't get it'...

  Mozilla's international release notes is your friend although
we didn't give gory details in the document. In Mozilla, goto 'Help'
and 'Release Notes'. In the release notes web page, follow the link to
'international known issues'.  Basically, there are two different versions
of Mozilla for Linux and three different ways for printing.

  1. X11core font build(with gtk or gtk2 widget) :
     This is what's available by default
     at www.mozilla.org. It renders text using server-side
     X11core fonts, which can be bitmap (bdf), Speedo,
     type1, truetype, CID-keyed fonts, etc. However, all of them
     are 'presented' clients (in this case, Mozilla) as
     a set of glyphs with a certain char. to glyph mapping
     and metrics expressed in XLFD.

  1'  The X11core font build also can take advantage of truetype
      fonts available on the client side if freetype is
      enabled (font.FreeTyp2.enable has to be set to 'true'
      in prefs.js). By default, it's enabled. You have to add
      directories with truetype fonts by editing prefs.js
      in your profile directory (usually,
      ~/.mozilla/${PROFILE_NAME}/${SALTED_NAME}/prefs.js).
      The preference entries for truetype fonts are
      "font.directory.truetype.1", "font.directory.truetype.2", and
      so forth (Mozilla takes a look at the directory explicitly
      specified and does not look inside subdirectories.)
      Alternatively, you can add them in 'about:config' (type
      'about:config' in the location bar). In addition, you
      have to specify the location of your freetype2 shared
      library.

  2. Xft-based build (with gtk or gtk2 widget). This builds
     take advantage of  new client-side font libraries,
     Xft and fontconfig that in turn rely on freetype2 library.
     RedHat rpms available at ftp.mozilla.org are Xft + gtk2
     builds. I guess you can install one of them on debian
     with alien or similar tools. Usually, this builds gives
     faster and better rendering results especially if you're
     interested in viewing non-Western European web pages.

Now for printing.

  1. Postscript printing module : this is the oldest. Some people
     regard this as totally broken and demanded that it be
     removed. Western European users may not have much trouble,
     but if you go beyond that, it begins to show its limitation.
     Even for Western European text, its PS output is far from
     'WYSWYG'. That is, fonts used on the screen rendering have
     nothing to do with fonts used in print-out. It can be used
     with both builds listed above.

  2. PS + freetype2 : You have to enable both freetype (mentioned
     above) and freetype printing. This can be used with both kinds of
     builds. However, old rpms (Xft+gtk2 build) used to come with freetype
     disabled, but recent Xft+gtk2 at mozilla.org seem to have been built
     with freetype enabled.  This gives a reasonable (not very faithful)
     WYSWYG. It's not faithful because the font selection mechanism is
     different for printing and screen rendering. Combined with
     CUPS and other modern Linux print servers, this works rather
     well.

  3. Xprint (http://xprint.mozdev.org). With this, Mozilla
     is an Xprint client (X11) to an Xprint server. You need
     to have an Xprint server running for Mozilla to talk to.
     The font selection mechanism is XLFD-based. Xprint (client-side)
     is enabled in X11core build at mozilla.org, but is disabled
     in Xft+gtk2 build.  Xprint server is available at
     http://xprint.mozdev.org

 More can be found at the aforementioned international known issues
page and links therein.

  Hope this helps,

  Jungshik

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