tlug: Putting TrueType fonts in Windows--Oops, Linux.

[Matt Gushee <matt@example.com>]

Jonathan Byrne--3Web writes:
 > Rumor has it that Windows TrueType fonts can be installed in Linux. Since
 > the Japanese fonts that I have make for pretty ugly-looking mail in
 > Netscape, I'd love to be able to install some Japanese fonts from Windows
 > and put them in Linux.

First of all, have you tried playing around with the font sizes? If
you have the same Kanji fonts for X that I do (which are distributed
w/ XFree86), then there are 2 main font families at "normal" text size 
(the 10-14pt range, let's say). One of them is hideous, but the other
one is quite acceptable (IMHO). By playing around with the
preferences, I've been able to get Netscape to almost never display
the horrible one.

But if you really want to do the TrueType thing, I can give you a few
hints. Before you do this, it wouldn't hurt to carefully read your
Windows license to check for possible violations. I've never heard of
anyone being prosecuted for "misuse" of Microsoft fonts, but who knows?

There is no generic installation method for a Linux
system. You'll want to start by just putting the fonts in some
appropriate directory. Which directory is appropriate, and what you do 
after that, depend on how you plan to use the fonts.

If you want to use TrueType fonts as display fonts (which is what you
need for Netscape), there is a program called 'xfstt,' which is a TrueType font
server for X. It's in an early stage of development and only available 
in source code (as of a few weeks ago), but I've tried it and it does
indeed let you display TrueType fonts in an X session. I don't know if 
it works for Japanese fonts, or whether Netscape can understand the
xfstt font names (for some reason having to do with the TrueType
format, xfstt can't or doesn't use the X Logical Font Descriptors that 
are used for regular X fonts).

If you want to print w/ TrueType, VFlib (mentioned by Andy Howell) is
probably the easiest way to go. It is designed to work w/ ASCII
Nihongo-TeX (or pTeX) and Ghostscript, and VFlib-ified Ghostscript binaries are
available. If you use RPM, you can get the packages from the JRPM archives, e.g.:

	ftp://ftp.lab.kdd.co.jp/.../jrpm

(sorry, don't remember the full path)

ApplixWare also supports TrueType fonts, though it's rather poorly
documented. E-mail me if you're interested in that.

 > And/or where to get nice, free Japanese fonts for Linux?

*Nice* free fonts? Maybe you'd like to volunteer your time to design
the glyphs? It's only about 60,000 characters or so ;-)

Hope this has been fun and educational 8^)

Matt Gushee
Oshamanbe, Hokkaido

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