Mozilla fonts suck big time. Especially if you visit a page with Trebuchet MS font like I’ve recently started using on mahmood.tv. True to my promise of using Linux exclusively over the next couple of weeks, I thought I’d better do something about the font display on my linux laptop.
In order to do that, I needed to copy the fonts I use for Windows XP Pro to Linux, that started the journey, however I must say that there is a wealth of information in this regard on the net, all you have to do is search for it. Here are the steps I did to get my fonts over to Linux and how I activated them:- if you don’t have a /usr/share/fonts/TrueType directory, create one make sure that all the font files you’re copying have lower-case extensions, so if you have files like font.TTF, rename that to font.ttf copy the fonts to /usr/share/fonts/TrueType change into that directory: cd /usr/share/fonts/TrueType issue the following commands to build the necessary fonts.scale and fonts.dir:
this should have now created the fonts.scale and fonts.dir files now go to you /etc/X11 directory so that you can add the new font directory to the search path of your X server by adding it to the fonts section of XF86Config edit XF86Configttmkfdir -o fonts.scale
mkfontdir
go to the �Files� section and add the FontPath there, mine looks like the following after editing:
Now for the Mozilla part! Go to the directory you installed Mozilla in, mine is located at /usr/local/mozilla. Change into /usr/local/mozilla/defaults/prefs backup the �unix.js� preference file so that you can get back to it if anything screws up: cp unix.js unix.js.bak edit the unix.js file and look for the �TrueType� section and change it to look like the following snippet:RgbPath “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb”
FontPath “unix/:7100”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/TrueType”
pref(“font.FreeType2.enable”, true);
pref(“font.freetype2.shared-library”, “libfreetype.so.6”);
pref(“font.FreeType2.autohinted”, false);
pref(“font.FreeType2.unhinted”, false);
pref(“font.antialias.min”, 8);
pref(“font.embedded_bitmaps.max”, 1000000);
pref(“font.scale.tt_bitmap.dark_text.min”, 0);
pref(“font.scale.tt_bitmap.dark_text.gain”, “0.7”);
pref(“font.directory.truetype.1”, “/usr/share/fonts/TrueType”);
pref(“font.directory.truetype.2”, “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF”);
pref(“font.FreeType2.printing”, true);
Now you’ll enjoy a MUCH clearer veiw of websites you visit!
I’m still not very happy as the fonts are not kerned properly and look a bit spaced out on my laptop. I’ll have a look at that next and let you know if I get better display. For OpenOffice.org, you can simply run the �spadmin� program and add your fonts by pointing to the TrueType directory and �add all�, close the panel and start up OpenOffice and you’ll be happy to see that you now have all the fonts to play with in your documents! Version history:created: 16 June 2003
Mahmood Al-Yousif
Comments
Turn OFF TrueType2 for best results
Since installing Mozilla 1.4rc2, here are the changes I did to the unix.js file. It is [b]MUCH[/b] better by disabling TrueType2, great big difference!
[Modified by: Mahmood Al-Yousif (mahmood) on June 18, 2003 07:17 AM]
Awesome!!
Mahmood, you’re a star! This is exactly what I needed! Thanks for collecting the information in one place for me!
Leitchy
biggles@lythia.com
FreeType failed to open, error=0?
When I launched Mozilla 1.4 after making the changes you suggested i got this error FreeType failed to open, error=0 for fonts.scale and fonts.dir?
Can you please help me with the error? Thank you.
Samir
Installing fonts in Linux and Mozilla
“spadmin†running this program and pointing to the /usr/share/fonts/TrueType/fonts will create a ‘Segmentation fault’ error what could tthis be?
Installing fonts in Linux and Mozilla
Assalamualaikum Mahmood, i really apreciate your effort.. i really like the tutorial..
thanks ..
Abdul Hamid
Installing fonts in Linux and Mozilla
Thanks very much – very helpful indeed!
The only thing that threw me for a second was that I needed to do a “whereis” on “ttmkfdir” and “mkfontdir” to find them, since for some reason they aren’t in my path.
Anyway, running Mozilla Firebird under Gentoo, and your tips worked great! Thanks! 🙂
conver to lowercase
(in the directory you just copied the *.ttf files) use this perl mini-script to convert the filenames to lowercase:
find . | perl -ne ‘chomp; next unless -e; $new=lc($_); rename $_,$new’
Installing fonts in Linux and Mozilla
Thanks, Mahmood – I just installed Mozilla 1.6 and your info helped a lot. What a pain that Mozilla doesn’t ask about or autodetect the TTF path during installation 🙁
– Kevin Finn (too lazy to make an account)
Installing fonts in Linux and Mozilla
i’m emah….from m’sia..thanks 4 the tutorial
Installing fonts in Linux and Mozilla
Just Great. Just That.
Exactly what I was looking for, right to the point.
Installing fonts in Linux and Mozilla
i do not have root to my machine
now how can i install my font
Installing fonts in Linux and Mozilla
Thanks!
One note — it looks like your “font.antialias.min” value got turned into a smiley face (red, with sunglasses) by the blogging software.
Joe
[url]http://www.joegrossberg.com[/url]
Installing fonts in Linux and Mozilla
I’m new to Linux, I chnaged all what ever you said. I can not restart the system. Shall I have to restart any services to get the fonts in mozilla?. I’m opening a Tamil language website “http://vikatan.com”. It is not working. – Sasi
Installing fonts in Linux and Mozilla
Does anybody know or have tried the above mentioned steps for Firefox browser. I tried it for firefox, but it didnot work. Can somebody tell the equivalent of unix.js for firefox..
Thanks,
Ejaz