FontForge install procedures for unix/linux based systems

# FontForge install procedures
for unix/linux based systems

I no longer provide pre-built packages. You may either compile from source or download a package from another site (most linux distributors will have a fontforge package).

- Installing on a Mac
- Installing on MS/Windows
- Installing on VMS
- Building and installing from source
- Dependencies (external libraries/helper programs)
- Installing documentation
- Running FontForge
- Uninstalling

## Installing from a pre-built package

### Obtaining one of my pre-built packages

I used to post pre-built packages for i386 linux systems and for Sparc Solaris systems. These can still be found on sourceforge's file release system. But they are out of date now. There's a certain amount of pother involved in using this system, but you get the file eventually.

- If you follow the link above you will end up on a page showing many releases of FontForge for many systems
  in most cases you will want the most recent release.
- Then click on the executable package you want to download:
  - For i386 linux you will want the rpm file for the i386 (This happens to have been built on RedHat 9, but it should work on any i386 linux system that supports rpm -- RedHat, Fedora, Suse, Mandrake, etc.)
  - For Sparc Solaris you will want the tar.bz2 file for sparc.
- Then you have the joy of choosing a mirror site (pick one that's on the same continent you are) and click on the little icon in the download column
- Then you wait. After a bit you get another copy of this same page. After an even longer time your browser notices that you've started a download.

#### Obtaining a package from another source

Most of the linux distributions have packages for fontforge. These will often be a little older than my packages, but perhaps more stable. I shall not try to provide a complete list, but I am aware of the following sites:

- debian -- has builds for (alpha, amd64, arm, hppa, hurd-i386, i386, ia64, m68k, mips, mipsel, ppc, s390, sparc)
- netbsd -- has builds for (alpha, i386, ppc, sparc, x86_64)
- rpmfind -- will point you toward builds for Fedora, Suse, Mandrake, and others
- Apostolos Syropoulos has a Solaris x86 package at his site
- Mac OS/X -- Although the Mac is now a unix system its install procedure is sufficiently different that I have a page devoted to it specifically.

### Installing from an rpm

The i386 package I provide, and many of the linux packages others provide are "rpm" files.

Installing an rpm package is relatively straight forward. You will need to be root. Move to the directory containing the downloaded rpm, and then type (do not type the "$" or "#"):

>     # rpm -i fontforge-*.rpm

If you've already installed fontforge and are updating an earlier version then you should type:

>     # rpm -U fontforge-*.rpm

### Installing from an executable tarball

The solaris package I provide is a bzipped tarball (that is, it has an extension of ".tar.bz2"). You will probably need to be root for some of this process. Move to the directory containing the downloaded tarball and type (do not type the "$" or "#"):

>     $ bunzip2 fontforge-*.tar.bz2
>     $ tar xf fontforge-*.tar
>     $ cd fontforge
>     $ su
>     # ./doinstall

(Older versions may have an extension of .tgz. In this case you would replace the first two lines with "`$ tar xfz fontforge-*.tgz`")

Caveat: My packages generally install to /usr/local, and this may not be in your default PATH. You may need to add a line like

>     PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin ; export PATH

to your ~/.bashrc file (or equivalent if you use a different shell).

### What's in a package

Just in case you are interested. My packages contain:

- fontforge -- the executable itself
- libgunicode*.so -- a shared library containing functions for manipulating UCS2 strings, and various data about unicode code points.
- libgdraw*.so -- the graphics and widget library used by fontforge
- pfaedit-ui.{es,fr,it,ja,ru} -- translated strings to provide a user interface for non-English users.
- *.cidmap -- not present in all packages. These are useful when editing CID-keyed Asian fonts.
- README*
- fontforge.1 -- a manual page for fontforge

### Ports that I am aware of

FontForge has been ported to the following systems (at some point in its life)

- Linux (obviously, (redhat, debian, suse, mandrake), 386,spark,arm,alpha,ia64,m68k,mips,mipsel,powerpc,s390)
- Solaris
- Irix
- FreeBsd
- NetBsd
- Mac OS/X
- OpenVMS7.3 for Alpha
- cygwin with X running on top of MS windows.

- Building and installing from source
- Dependencies (external libraries/helper programs)
- Installing documentation
- Running FontForge