Installing Profont and installing New Fonts into YDL

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Installing Profont and installing New Fonts into YDL

Postby aguilarojo » 02 Nov 2010, 06:12

Years ago when Apple was producing PowerPC Macs there existed this really nice and unusually clearly readable font produced by and for programmers.

Oddly enough Profont runs not only on those old Macs. Profont is available to run in Windows (not as well - too bad), Linux which includes YDL, and given that Linux runs Android, Profont can probably be run within Android systems as well!! So what I'll share here are the directions regarding how to find, install and have Profont (and other fonts you install) run well and quickly within YDL. The strategy I share here should work with Android and Google's (or anyone else's) Linux based smart phone technologies.

An image of the standard system font (size 12) used within the Linux terminal, which you can use for comparison is here:

Image

For comparison the version of Profont which works within YDL called Profont for Windows (size 12) is visible in the next shot. Notice that within the XFCE desktop environment I'm using Profont is the default system font for everything including gkrellm. Here it is:

Image

Of course, as with other things involving Linux understanding computer programming principles and languages can only help. A good reference on Linux System Administration and C programming which one feels comfortable reading are good places to begin,

It is understood that files ending in the .ttf suffix are known as truetype fonts.
Truetype fonts in YDL are stored within the following directory tree:

/usr/share/fonts/truetype

If I was in my home directory, let's imagine it is called gandalf. Then moving from there to where truetype fonts are would be done by:

$cd /usr/share/fonts/truetype

Once within the truetype directory I recommend creating a new directory called myfonts into which new fonts may be placed. Once it is created it will be the storage of all new fonts which you may find in the future.

$sudo mkdir myfonts

The sudo command assumes you have created a separate password for root and user accounts. You'll be asked for the user account, not root, password.

The directory into which new fonts have been placed into must be identified by YDL to be a valid font directory, otherwise Linux will relegate it to be a normal directory. The command mkfontdir is a special command. Here is how to make the directory become a recognized (by YDL) font directory:

$sudo mkfontdir


Explanation: This command creates an index of X font files within a directory, according to man. It is understood that in the above example newly installed fonts will be placed into the newly created directory myfonts. The command mkfontdir can be executed within myfonts and then one executes:

$sudo fc-cache

Explanation: According to man this command scans font directories within YDL exclusively building font information cache files for applications to reference for their use. The command fc-cache also may be executed within myfonts.

The above can be executed within # or root but either approach achieves the same result. Also there are multiple ways to execute any Linux/Unix command; even so the procedure represented here is the most straightforward.

If a newly installed font doesn't appear within applications such as OpenOffice.org, then:

$sudo chown root.root *.ttf

Note: The wildcard symbol (*) is being used to represent the name of the truetype font.

Everything on the Earth has a purpose.
Every disease an herb to cure it.
And every person has a mission.
This is the Indian Theory of Existence.
-- Morning Dove, Salish (1888-1936)
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