zeeff@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us (Jon Zeeff) (07/31/90)
I recently decided to switch to iso8859/1 fonts in my xterm wiindows. These comments might help someone who hasn't done something similar. Some of this might be Sun specific. Almost all of the X11R4 fonts that are labeled iso8859/1 aren't - they only have 127 chars. You can ftp X/fixed-fixed.bdf.Z from 132.206.1.1 (courtesy der Mouse). Uncompress and then run bdftosnf on it to create 6x13.snf. Replace /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/6x13.snf with this new one. cd to /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc and run mkfontdir. You should be able to run xterms with xterm -fn "-Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-SemiCondensed--13-120-75-75-C-60-ISO8859-1" that will display the iso8859/1 char set. You can use xfd to look at the character set. Anyone know of a source for more iso8859/1 fonts? -- Jon Zeeff (NIC handle JZ) zeeff@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us
guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) (08/09/90)
>Almost all of the X11R4 fonts that are labeled iso8859/1 aren't - they only >have 127 chars. Oh, really? Almost all the X11R4 fonts that are labeled ISO 8859/1 - as defined by "all those fonts whose '.bdf' files have the string ISO8859 in them" are in the ".../mit/fonts/bdf/75dpi" and ".../mit/fonts/bdf/100dpi" directories. I checked out the first few in "75dpi", and they all had a full complement of characters; I then checked all of them to see if they had an entry for the character with encoding 170 ("ordmasculine", or "little tiny 'o' with an underline under it), and they all did. (No way am I going to run "xfd" on all 395 or so fonts that have ISO8859 in their ".bdf" files.) Most of the ones *in the ".../mit/fonts/bdf/misc" directory* that have ISO8859 in their ".bdf" file don't have a character with the encoding 170 in them, but only 47 of them have ISO8859 in them, so "most of the X11R4 fonts that are labeled iso8859/1" are in the "75dpi" and "100dpi" directories, and *are* ISO 8859/1 fonts (or, at least, have an encoding for the character in question; I doubt they are missing encoding for other characters, though). And yes, there are fixed-width fonts amongst the ones in "75dpi" and "100dpi"; in "75dpi", 38 out of 192 are fixed-width (at least as defined by "the font name has '-M-' in it"), and in "100dpi", 38 out of 193 are fixed-width.
john@acorn.co.uk (John Bowler) (08/13/90)
In article <3854@auspex.auspex.com> guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes: >>Almost all of the X11R4 fonts that are labeled iso8859/1 aren't - they only >>have 127 chars. > >Oh, really? Almost all the X11R4 fonts that are labeled ISO 8859/1 - as >defined by "all those fonts whose '.bdf' files have the string ISO8859 >in them" are in the ".../mit/fonts/bdf/75dpi" and >".../mit/fonts/bdf/100dpi" directories. I checked out the first few in >"75dpi", and they all had a full complement of characters; I then >checked all of them to see if they had an entry for the character with >encoding 170 ("ordmasculine", or "little tiny 'o' with an underline >under it), and they all did. (No way am I going to run "xfd" on all 395 >or so fonts that have ISO8859 in their ".bdf" files.) You didn't check for the character encoded as 0xa0 (the ISO8859-1/2/3/4 non-breaking space character) did you? If you had you might have to the conclusion that very few of the fonts in the MIT distribution have an ISO 8859-1 encoding - to be precise the charter fonts and 7x14 (in the misc directory) are the only ones which seem to satisfy all the requirements. >Most of the ones *in the ".../mit/fonts/bdf/misc" directory* that have >ISO8859 in their ".bdf" file don't have a character with the encoding >170 in them, but only 47 of them have ISO8859 in them, so "most of the >X11R4 fonts that are labeled iso8859/1" are in the "75dpi" and "100dpi" >directories, and *are* ISO 8859/1 fonts (or, at least, have an encoding >for the character in question; I doubt they are missing encoding for >other characters, though). But they do :-). Of those 47 misc fonts only three seem to have any of the upper half of ISO8859-1, and only one (7x14) has character 160 (0xa0). >And yes, there are fixed-width fonts amongst the ones in "75dpi" and >"100dpi"; in "75dpi", 38 out of 192 are fixed-width (at least as defined >by "the font name has '-M-' in it"), and in "100dpi", 38 out of 193 are >fixed-width. Depending on the application (I have forgotten the precise context of the original message) this may or may not meet the requirements. Mono-spaced fonts are not necessarily sufficient for use in (for example) xterm - for this purpose fonts marked as ``C'' rather than ``M'' are better, because these fonts have characters entirely within their bounding boxes and are such that the background will tile an area (with no gaps and no overlap) if text is drawn in lines the correct distance apart (font ascent+font descent). Additionally an application may require both bold and normal (eg) fonts with the same metrics. Currently there is no set of fonts which meets all these requirements. Indeed, the only C or M ISO8859-1 font seems to be 7x14! John Bowler (jbowler@acorn.co.uk)