Anyone else using Linux, and wanting SPIonic to work?

[annis]

Pete Keller (psilord) has come up with a way to make SPIonic work on Linux. The recipe has several stages. Anyone else want to give that a try? If it works for someone else, I’ll add it to the “how to display Greek” sticky post.

@psilord

Ok. I set it up when I was not paying attention so I kinda didn’t keep track of what it was I did. I reconstructed the steps the best I could. YMMV:

This was for firefox 1.0 on a redhat 9 box. I assume it is very similar for other distros.

0. download http://www.monachos.net/other/fonts/SPIONIC_.TTF
1. exit all running copies of firefox
2. as root, mkdir /usr/share/fonts/TTF
3. as root, chmod 755 /usr/share/fonts/TTF
4. as root, mv SPIONIC_.TTF /usr/share/fonts/TTF/SPIONIC.TTF ← notice no ‘_’
5. as root, chmod 644 /usr/share/fonts/TTF/SPIONIC.TTF
6. edit $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/.default/prefs.js and add this to the bottom:

// TrueType
user_pref (“font.FreeType2.enable”, true);
user_pref (“font.freetype2.shared-library”, “libfreetype.so.6”);
// if libfreetype was built without hinting compiled in
// it is best to leave hinting off
user_pref (“font.FreeType2.autohinted”, false);
user_pref (“font.FreeType2.unhinted”, true);
// below a certian pixel size anti-aliased fonts produce poor results
user_pref (“font.antialias.min”, 0);
user_pref (“font.embedded_bitmaps.max”, 1000000);
user_pref (“font.scale.tt_bitmap.dark_text.min”, 0);
user_pref (“font.scale.tt_bitmap.dark_text.gain”, “0.0”);
// setup font dirs for TrueType fonts
user_pref (“font.directory.truetype.1”, “/usr/share/fonts/ttf-bitstream-vera”);
user_pref (“font.directory.truetype.2”, “/usr/share/fonts/TTF”);
user_pref (“font.directory.truetype.3”, “/usr/share/fonts/corefonts”);
user_pref (“font.directory.truetype.4”, “/usr/share/fonts/freetype”);
user_pref (“font.FreeType2.printing”, true);

7. stop editing the prefs.js file (don’t have it open/in a buffer/etc.)
8. restart firefox
9. visit Textkit and stare in awe at the correct fonts.
10. I assume that one you do this, many other TrueType fonts can be added at will simply by sticking them into /usr/share/fonts/TTF and selecting the correct fonts in the HTML.

I performed the above steps on my install to test it, and it seemed to work. You should probably find one person to test the steps on who doesn’t have it working before you make it public. It would suck to give out wrong information that just generates inquisitional traffic. If it is wrong somehow, I’ll figure it out and give you the right answer.

[GlottalGreekGeek]

My father also got this to work (which was really nice, because he hates fonts and is not studying Ancient Greek himself). I use Mozilla (Build ID : 2004060712) with Linux from Scratch (the customize-your-own-Linux distro which only computer pros like my father can get to work), and when convinient I will test this font with Redhat as well. My father said he made a few adjustments for the differences of system, but my computer lingo is not good enough to understand it.

My dad thinks the ‘perfs’ should be ‘prefs’.

Thank you.

[annis]

@GlottalGreekGeek

My father also got this to work (which was really nice, because he hates fonts and is not studying Ancient Greek himself).

Cool.

My father said he made a few adjustments for the differences of system, but my computer lingo is not good enough to understand it.

That’s fine. This is an operation for someone comfortable with Unix anyway, and used to making that sort of adjustment.

My dad thinks the ‘perfs’ should be ‘prefs’.

Yep. I’ll fix that.

[psilord]

You can get rid of the root part if you make the truetype font directories relative to your home directory or something and adjust the font directories mentioned in my additions to prefs.js. That would work nice for a singularly personal install of firefox or something.

[GlottalGreekGeek]

By the way, even before this, Ghostviewer was able to read spionic font in PDF files (on the other hand, it can only handle PDF files which are text-based, not bitmap-heavy).