Spionic font on linux redux

Here you can discuss all things Ancient Greek. Use this board to ask questions about grammar, discuss learning strategies, get help with a difficult passage of Greek, and more.
Post Reply
psilord
Textkit Member
Posts: 184
Joined: Fri Dec 24, 2004 9:38 pm
Location: Madison, WI

Spionic font on linux redux

Post by psilord »

Ok. After installing fedora core 3 on my machine at home, I've had to figure out (again) how to get spionic working with firefox. Surprisingly, it was fantastically simple this time since now I understand some more things about how fonts under linux--like the basics of FontConfig/XFT and the usual default configurations of where the font config system looks for new fonts.

Here you go:

0. Download the raw SPIONIC_.TTF file found in William's sticky post.

1. If this directory does not exist, make it:
mkdir $HOME/.fonts

2. mv SPIONIC_.TTF $HOME/.fonts/spionic.ttf

3. Put this shell script into the $HOME/.fonts dir. You can give
it any name, I called mine 'update-fonts'.

---------------------------------------------------------------
#! /bin/sh

FD=$HOME/.fonts

mkfontdir $FD
mkfontscale $FD
xset fp+ $FD
xset fp rehash
fc-cache $FD
----------------------------------------------------------------

4. chmod 700 $HOME/.fonts/update-fonts

5. cd $HOME/.fonts

6. ./update-fonts

7. restart firefox.

8. enjoy your polytonic goodness.

9. Now if you want, put as many true type fonts as you want into $HOME/.fonts and rerun ./update-fonts while in that directory. Everything, firefox, gedit, KDE programs, etc will have access to the new fonts.

Hope it all works.

See ya.

edonnelly
Administrator
Posts: 989
Joined: Sun Jan 16, 2005 2:47 am
Location: Music City, USA
Contact:

Post by edonnelly »

A simpler way...

I am using Mandrake Linux (v. 10.0) which should be fairly similar to Fedora. Anyway, all I did was save the file spionic_.ttf (from the sticky post) to the following directory:

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/

and it all works perfectly, in both firefox and any other applications. I didn't need to make or run any scripts. I hope this helps someone.

psilord
Textkit Member
Posts: 184
Joined: Fri Dec 24, 2004 9:38 pm
Location: Madison, WI

Post by psilord »

Yours is a decent method, but it requires root. On many of the machines where I might read textkit, I do not have root. Usually if I install my own browser into my home directory, I install all of the fonts I want to go with it locally as well.

edonnelly
Administrator
Posts: 989
Joined: Sun Jan 16, 2005 2:47 am
Location: Music City, USA
Contact:

Post by edonnelly »

Yes, you must have root privileges to do it my way, but it will also have the advantage of making the font available to all users.

When you said you were doing this on your computer at home I assumed you would have superuser capability. But, as you say, it is not uncommon to be on a shared system where my way will not be possible.

psilord
Textkit Member
Posts: 184
Joined: Fri Dec 24, 2004 9:38 pm
Location: Madison, WI

Post by psilord »

Either way, thanks for posting it, now whoever needs either method can find the answer in one thread. :)

Post Reply