I am a newbie to linux. Recently installed suse 10.1. tried with installing the tamil ttf fonts. copied the fonts to usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype. inspite of this i am unale to view the tamil newspapers like dinamalar etc. through opera or firefox. please tell what else i have to do.

If you did not do these, you need to (as root or su):

• In /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype execute mkfontscale then execute mkfontdir (there are no arguments to these, just execute them.
• Edit your xorg.conf file (probably in /etc/X11) and add a line in the "Files" section for the directory your fonts are installed in; e.g.,

  FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype/"

• Execute

  fc-cache /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype

It wouldn't hurt to stop and restart the X server and you'll have the fonts available to your browsers and any other applications that may need them.

Thank u tronayne, I tried the way as written by you, but my problem is still there.

Try executing xlsfonts something like this

xlsfonts | grep -i tamil

That will show you that the font is actually installed and that your X server knows about it.

If you don't see the font, double-check in your font directory that there are these files:

• Fontmap
• fonts.cache-1
• fonts.dir
• fonts.scale

Those are created by mkfontscale, mkfontdir and fc-cache (if they're not there, just re execute mkfontscale, mkfontdir and fc-cache and look again).

Make sure that the font files are readable system-wide; in your truetype directory, do ls -l, the permission mask should be -rw-r--r-- for every file in that directory (and they should be owner/group root/root. If it's not, do

• chmod 644 *
• chown root.root *

Go up one directory and do a long list. Your truetype directory must be

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 23064 2005-11-26 13:27 truetype

(it won't have this size or this date). If it's not, do

• chmod 755 truetype
• chown root.root truetype

If all that is correct, double check /etc/X11/xorg.conf and make sure that you have the font directory correctly listed in the Files section; you should be able to list the path in xorg.conf and see the font files; e.g., ls -l /usr/X11R6/lib/fonts/truetype should show you the font files you installed.

If all that is they way it should be, you may just have to reboot the machine (particularly if you have a graphic log in rather than manually starting the X server with startx when you log in).

Hope this helps.

Hi tronayne,

Your reply is very useful thanks.
But am not still getting the fonts displayed in firefox
i have executed the command fc-cache,i didn't get the fontmap file in the truetype directory...

please Reply me..
Thanks,
lgraji.

First off, try this: in Firefox, click Edit, Options, Content, then, in the section Fonts & Colors, click Advanced and make sure there is a check in "Allow pages to choose their own fonts instead of my selections above" box. If that wasn't checked, that may be your problem.

Then, if you still have a problem, make sure you've done all the following.

You must have the files fonts.dir and fonts.scale in your font directory (in /usr/X11R6/lib/fonts/truetype [or whatever you named it]). Those are created by executing, as root, mkfontscale followed by mkfontdir in that directory (where the TTF files are) -- if they don't exist, it ain't gonna work no matter what.

After you've done that, in the same directory, execute fc-cache ${PWD}. That will (re)create a file fonts.cache (maybe fonts.cache-1 or -2 or some other number). Open fonts.cache* in an editor and look for the font name you're looking for (the file has a lot of gobbledygook in it, but you should be able to recognize the name(s) you're looking for). The format of the file is the name of the TTF file followed by a recognizable name; e.g., "jupitern.ttf" 0 "Jupiter," "timnreb.ttf" 0 "Times New Roman MT Extra Bold" and things like that.

Again, you must have these three files in your directory, they should have content, and you should be able to recognize font names.

Then, for the X server to know about their existence, there must be an entry in /etc/X11/xorg.conf that looks like this:
I have TTF files in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF, if you have them in a directory named "truetype," just change "TTF" to "truetype."

Finally, you must restart the X server. If you're using a graphic log in, you'll need to reboot the machine. If you boot to run level 3; i.e., you have to log in and then type startx, then just shut down the server and startx.

After all that, you should see those fonts and you should be able to see them in applications; OpenOffice should have them all available, Firefox should be able to use them too, but... Firefox is going to use the fonts the web site you're visiting is specifying most of the time. You should be able to fiddle around with Firefox's settings and set the default font to one you want but far too many web sites are going to display in Arial (it's a Windows World after all). You also need to make sure that the fonts the sites you're visiting are the ones you actually have installed -- open a new OpenOffice document and scan down the list in the font drop down and see.

Hope this helps!

good tronayne

ur info is abosultely useful .. congrats .. keep going.