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Re: Unicode fonts on Debian
On Sunday 2003.12.14 07:57:52 +0900, Jungshik Shin wrote:
> 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.
Why not? If one has a valid license to an MS product containing MS Arial Unicode,
then why couldn't one install it on both their Windoze and Linux installations?
If you want to install a Pan-Unicode font,
> you'd better install James Kass' Code2000(BMP) and Code2001(non-BMP).
With no offense to Mr. Kass' admirable efforts, but I think the Code 2000 Hanzi/Kanji
glyphs are particularly unsatisfactory in appearance -- and there definitely aren't enough of them
for reading a web page written in Chinese. As pan-Unicode fonts go, Bitstream Cyberbit and
Monotype Corporation's MS Arial Unicode (if you have a license to the latter) are IMHO
much better choices for reading web pages without eye strain for many Asian scripts. Of course
others will have their own opinions.
> 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
>
> --
> Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels
> Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
>
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