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This document is out of date and contains very little relevant information.



////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

  AbiSource Font Installer, Copyright (C) 1999 AbiSource, Inc.
  
  Version 1.0.0 (1999/04/13)

  This document is licenced under the GNU General Public License,
  version 2.

  This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; this software is
  free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under
  certain conditions.  Read the file called COPYING in the archive 
  in which this program arrived for more details.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 CHAPTER 0 -- INTRODUCTIONS
------------------------------------------------------------------------

0.0 TABLE OF CONTENTS
---------------------

    CHAPTER 0 -- INTRODUCTIONS

        0.0 ........................................ TABLE OF CONTENTS
        0.1 ............................ INTRODUCTION TO THIS DOCUMENT
        0.2 .................................... INTRODUCTION TO FONTS
        0.3 .................................... WHO WROTE THIS STUFF?
        0.4 ................................ WHERE DO I GET MORE INFO?

    CHAPTER 1 -- DOING STUFF (GOT A BETTER TITLE?)

        1.0 ............................ WHERE DO I GET THIS DOCUMENT?
        1.1 ........................ WHERE DO I GET THE FONT ARCHIVES?
        1.2 ................. REQUIREMENTS FOR SUCCESSFUL INSTALLATION
        1.3 .................................... THE AUTOMATED PROCESS
        1.4 ....................................... THE MANUAL PROCESS
        1.5 .............................. X DISPLAY SERVER FONT PATHS
        1.6 ................................... NETWORK FONT RESOURCES

    CHAPTER 2 -- FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

        2.0 ................................................. F. A. Q.

0.1 INTRODUCTION TO THIS DOCUMENT
---------------------------------

    No, you don't have to read it all.  Most people can just read the
sections INTRODUCTION TO FONTS, THE AUTOMATED PROCESS, and X DISPLAY
SERVER FONT PATHS and have everything working.  If you want to read
the whole thing from top to bottom, you'll probably learn much more
about X's font model than you ever thought you need to know.  This
document is not intended to be the ultimate X font documentation 
resource, but instead just to get AbiSuite applications working with
scalable, printable Type 1 fonts, and perhaps other formats in the 
future.

0.2 INTRODUCTION TO FONTS
-------------------------

    AbiWord, and presumably future AbiSuite applications, needs a
set of scalable, printable, viewable fonts for its X Window System
front-end.  A standard set of Adobe Type 1 fonts in ASCII (*.pfa) or 
binary (*.pfb) format with accompanying printer metric files (*.afm) 
are in this package.  Installation is fairly straight-forward; a shell 
script is provided and is the recommended method of installation.  You 
can also manually copy the font, metrics, and X font index files to the
font library subdirectory of the AbiSuite installation path.  This 
directory is probably "lib/fonts", but might change in the future.  A 
careful look at the shell script will reveal any updates.  Read the
sections THE AUTOMATED PROCESS and THE MANUAL PROCESS for details
about this process.

0.3 WHO WROTE THIS STUFF?
-------------------------

    This document is maintained by Shaw Terwilliger, who can be
questioned, prodded, scolded, suggested, or corrected at 
sterwill@abisource.com.  If you have any font questions you'd
like added to future releases of this document (perhaps in the
FAQ near the end), send them to the AbiWord developer mailing 
list (read the next section) or directly to me.  The list is a better
source of general information, and your question might be answered
more quickly there.

0.4 WHERE DO I GET MORE INFO?
-----------------------------

    Besides AbiSource central, http://www.abisource.com/, the 
developer's page at http://www.abisource.com/developer.phtml would be
an excellent place to look for more information.  You can get
recent versions of the program source code, pointers to development
and user mailing lists where you can ask questions (even those not
even closely related to fonts!).

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 CHAPTER 1 -- DOING STUFF (GOT A BETTER TITLE?)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.0 WHERE DO I GET THIS DOCUMENT?
---------------------------------

    You can find recent releases of this document at:

  http://www.abisource.com/dev_unixfonts.phtml

1.1 WHERE DO I GET THE FONT ARCHIVES?
-------------------------------------

TAR ARCHIVES:

    The actual font archives are released and stored at the same
location the AbiSuite application releases are stored.  You can find
recent versions of the Unix font archives at:

  http://www.abisource.com/downloads/

Where the archive file names take the form:

  "unixfonts-[version].tar.gz"

Where "[version]" is the numbered version of the AbiSuite application
which most recently requires that file.  You should pick the Unix
font archive with a version as close as possible to the application
version you wish to use with it, but not newer.  For example,
for "abi-0.5.4-src.tar.gz", you would pick "unixfonts-0.5.4.tar.gz".
If "abi-0.5.8-src.tar.gz" is released, but no new font archive is
released, you should choose "unixfonts-0.5.4.tar.gz" still.

CVS ARCHIVES:

    You can also retrieve the latest font archives via CVS.
Instructions for setting up your environment to use our anonymous
CVS repository can be fount at:

  http://www.abisource.com/dev_download.phtml#cvs

   To check out a copy of the Unix font archives, specify the CVS
module "unixfonts".  Sample commands would be:

  "cvs checkout unixfonts" 
  "cvs co unixfonts"

  An advantage to CVS access to the font archives is that incremental
changes to the font configuration (via the font.dir font index file)
or installer changes can be had without retrieval of the entire 
font archive.  You can use CVS's "update" command to accomplish this.

    
1.2 REQUIREMENTS FOR SUCCESSFUL INSTALLATION
--------------------------------------------

    An installation is considered successful when the font, metric,
and X font index files are installed in a location where AbiSuite
applications and your X display server can find them.  These fonts can
presumably be installed anywhere you want to put them--in 
/usr/local/AbiSuite, in /opt/AbiSuite, or even /home/jschmoe/blammo!!!,
if you want to continue to escape shell references to this directory.
This will most often work fine if your X display server is running
on the same machine the AbiSuite program process occupies, and this
is true for most users.

    Notice that both AbiSuite applications and your X display server 
need to be able to find these fonts, and both follow separate and
different paths to get to them.  In fact, it's possible that your
X display server and AbiSuite application processes are on two
physically separate machines!  The X display server has a notion of 
a font path, where it looks for fonts of many different formats: 
bitmaps, scalable Type 1, PEX, network font resources, and perhaps 
TrueType or a vendor-specific format.  In order for your X display 
server to find the AbiSource fonts, they need to be either on a disk 
local to the display server process or available through a network font
server in the X display server's font path.  More about setting the 
font path is covered later in this document.

    A special installation case is one where the X display server
process is on a machine with no fixed disk drive (where the fonts
would normally be stored) or on a machine where local copies
of the font archives would not be preferable (perhaps when the
application is run on a central server and displayed to dozens or
hundreds of "thin" X terminal machines).  Such a configuration often
simplifies system administration and user education.  Such a 
configuration will also often require a font server to be running on
the central server machine so that the client machines (running the
X display server) can fetch them as needed.


1.3 THE AUTOMATED PROCESS
-------------------------

    Provided with this font archive is a simple shell script to
handle the local font installation task.  This script does nothing
more than copy the fonts and their index file to a user specified
location, suggesting default locations on the way.

    Simply run the program "install.sh".  We really recommend you use
the default value supplied, "/usr/local/AbiSuite".  If this 
directory does not exist, you will be prompted to create it (you'll
need sufficient permission to do this; if you'd like to install the
fonts in some other location, like "/home/jschmoe/AbiSuite", enter
that here and read the section "THE MANUAL PROCESS").  Inside this 
prefix, the directory "lib/" will be created (if it doesn't already 
exist), and inside that directory, the directory "fonts/" will be 
created (if it doesn't already exist).  Fonts and the index file will
be copied there, over any existing files.

    If you use the default location of "/usr/local/AbiSuite" for your
prefix, AbiWord will find your fonts automatically.  You will still,
however, need to tell your X display server where to find them.  Read 
the section "X DISPLAY SERVER FONT PATHS" for more information about 
doing this.

1.4 THE MANUAL PROCESS
----------------------

    This is the section for people who don't trust scripts and are
pretty comfortable moving around their Unix systems.  In short, just
copy all the fonts (*.pfa, *.pfb), metrics (*.afm) and index files 
(fonts.dir) anywhere you want, and make sure X can find them.  
Modifying your X display server font path is explained in the
section "X DISPLAY SERVER FONT PATHS" below.

    If you've put your fonts in a location other than the default,
the startup profiles AbiSuite applications (notably AbiWord) read
will require some editing.  Currently there are no graphical facilities 
to do this for you, but since you're reading this section, you have
a favorite editor and are perfectly willing to do the changes yourself,
right?  Yeah, the file says "do not edit this file" at the top,
but there's no other way to do this as of current releases.

    Run AbiWord once, and it will create a ~/.AbiSuite/AbiWord.Profile
full of user settings for you.  Copy the "_builtin_" scheme block (all
the settings inside the tag) to somewhere else in the file, like 
somewhere immediately after the original.  Rename it to something other
than "_builtin_".  "foo" would be a fine choice.  Edit the "Select" 
block at the top of the file to reference your new scheme "foo".  
Change the "UnixFontPath" key in the "foo" scheme to be the directory
you put your fonts in.  Save this file and start AbiWord.

    You're half way to making things work.  Your X display server needs
to find these fonts too, read the section "X DISPLAY SERVER FONT PATHS"
for information about getting this working.

1.5 X DISPLAY SERVER FONT PATHS
-------------------------------

    There are two approaches to including these fonts in your X 
server's font path.  The first is a temporary modifications requiring
only user-level permissions.  This change is temporary in that it will
only last until your X session ends; changes done using this method 
will not persist until the next session unless you either manually 
effect  these changes during each session or add them to your session 
startup scripts (like an ~/.xsession or ~/.xinitrc).  The second 
approach persists throughout invocations of the X display server,
but also requires system administrator permissions on most systems.

    The first method:  Your X Window System implementation should
have an "xset" command or equivalent, used to set run-time X display
server configuration options (like font path).  You can use this command
like "xset fp+ " to append to the existing path,
like "xset +fp " to prepend to the existing path,
like "xset fp " to replace the current path 
entirely, or like "xset rehash" to re-read the font index files from 
existing locations.  Your xset commands may provide extra functionality;
read your vendor supplied documentation for details.  For use with
AbiSuite applications, you can usually just issue a command like:
"xset fp+ /path/to/my/installed/fonts" to append an entry to the
X display server's list of paths.  Of course you should supply the
directory into which your fonts are installed as the second
argument to xset ("/usr/local/AbiSuite/lib/fonts" by default).
If you're using a network font server, read the section "NETWORK
FONT RESOURCES" for information about how to supply the correct
location to your X server via xset.

    The second method:  Your X display server will have some sort
of "permanent" configuration stored somewhere.  For most people, this 
is a simple configuration file or database on the machine on which 
the X display server runs.  For the XFree86 X Window System 
implementation, this is often the file "XF86Config", and you can
probably find it in either "/etc" or "/etc/X11".  For an X display
terminal without a fixed disk, this configuration may be stored
in system ROM or read off a central network server at boot time.
For either scenario, simply add an entry to your list of paths
to point to where you put the fonts.  If you're configuring a
machine without fixed disk storage, you will most likely be reading
fonts from a network font server, in which case you should read
the section "NETWORK FONT RESOURCES".

1.6 NETWORK FONT RESOURCES
--------------------------

    Most X display server implementations allow for the network
retrieval of font resources.  X display servers based on The X Window
System Version 11, Revision 5 (X11R5) or newer code base will most 
likely work well with the supplied Type 1 fonts and font index.  Older
X display servers will most likely not work correctly.  

    Like setting local font paths, the process of setting network
font paths for your X display server is specific to your vendor's
implementation.  Instead of a standard full path to a Unix
directory (in the form "/foo/bar/baz"), network resources are often
expressed to the server in the form "protocol/host:port", where a
sample might look like "unix/localhost:7100" for Unix domain
socket communication to the local machine, where a font server 
resides on port 7100.  Another example might be
"tcp/fontserver.company.com:7000" where the X display server is
looking for fonts on a machine named "fontserver" on port 7000.
Simply substitute this path for the X display server font path
entry string examples used elsewhere in this document.

    The steps in setting up a local X font server is beyond the
scope of this document, but using the AbiSource supplied fonts 
should be relatively straight-forward.  Refer to your vendor
documentation for details.  Most often this server is called 
"xfs" and is installed with the rest of the X Window System.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 CHAPTER 2 -- FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
------------------------------------------------------------------------

2.0 F. A. Q.
____________

Q. What version of The X Window System do I need to use Type 1 fonts?

A. The X Window System Version 11, Revision 5 (X11R5) and newer 
    include support for Type 1 fonts.  Certain vendors' 
    implementations of X11R5 may not be capable of Type 1 font 
    support, but all implementations based on Revision 6 (X11R6) 
    should have few problems.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Why can't I get any fonts to work with Solaris 2.7 under
    OpenWindows?  They all look like the default font!

A. I have no idea.  I've seen this problem under the latest
    release of OpenWindows.  The fonts are available in the
    font path, the XLoadFont() calls succeed, but the bitmaps
    returned are always of the same font.  If anyone knows
    the solution to this, please tell me.  I suspect it's a
    problem with the way we have our XLFDs in the fonts.dir.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Why are my Netscape fonts screwed up?  All my documents are
    hard to read!

A. Many HTML documents request specific fonts to be used when
    rendered.  Often these requests take the form of a list like
    "Arial,Helvetica".  Most X distributions install a default
    Helvetica font, which Netscape Navigator and Communicator
    use for sans-serif text.  However, this AbiSuite font package
    includes some fonts named Arial, Times New Roman, and 
    Courier.  These are commonly referred fonts, but are included
    here so documents written with the Windows version of 
    AbiWord will look similar on Unix. 
    
    The font problems with Netscape should only happen when the
    X display server font path contains the AbiSuite fonts.
    Use "xset fp- " to remove them temporarily,
    or conversely, use "xset fp+ " to include them
    temporarily.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Can I use my own fonts with AbiSuite applications?

A. Yes, if you have the font files (*.pfa or *.pfb) AND the 
    printing metrics files (*.afm) for them.  Both are required,
    since Type 1 fonts are unprintable without the metrics.
    To install them, either edit an existing fonts.dir index file
    in a recognized font path (known both by the applications 
    and the X display server) or create a new place for custom
    fonts, and copy the X Logical Font Descriptors (XLFDs) from
    the supplied fonts.dir and customize them for yourself.  

    In the future, we may add some graphical mechanism to do
    this.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Where did your fonts come from?
Q. Why are many of your fonts unreadable at 10 points?
    
A. These two questions are both somewhat related.  Our fonts
    are from a recent GhostScript distribution, and our fonts
    are covered by the GNU General Public License and can be
    redistributed as such.  GhostScript being an application 
    to rasterize PostScript output, most often to high resolution
    devices, the fonts are made to match this environment.
    
    Many of these fonts appear to lack sufficient "hints" (small
    corrections in the definitions of the curves that make up
    a glyph to look better at certain point sizes) to look nice
    at 10 points high on a 75 DPI device (your monitor).  
    A Zoom of 100% in AbiWord currently maps the view to a 100
    DPI device.  Higher zooms mean higher resolutions, and
    larger renderings of fonts of the same point size, and smoother
    presentation of fonts.

Copyright 1998-2001 SourceGear Corporation, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt and others. All rights reserved. Send comments to webmaster@abisource.com.
AbiSource, AbiSuite, AbiWord, and the AbiSource logo are trademarks of SourceGear Corporation. All other product names, company names, or logos cited herein are the property of their respective owners.