FontForge install procedures for unix/linux based systems

# FontForge install procedures
for unix/linux based systems

- Installing from a pre-built unix package
  - Obtaining one of my pre-built packages
    - Obtaining a package from another source
  - Installing from an rpm (linux)
  - Installing from an executable tarball (solaris)
- Building and installing from source
  - Obtaining a source distribution
    - tarball
    - from the cvs tree
  - Building & installing it
  - More complicated installs
- Dependencies (external libraries/helper programs)
- Suggested fonts
- Installing documentation
  - Installing a documentation tarball
- Notes on the PATH variable
- Running FontForge
- Reporting Bugs

## Installing from a pre-built package

### Obtaining one of my pre-built packages

I post pre-built packages for i386 linux systems and for Sparc Solaris systems. These can be found on sourceforge's file release system. 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 (The "$" or "#" are example prompts from the computer. Do not type them yourself):

>     # 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 (The "$" or "#" are example prompts from the computer. Do not type them yourself):

>     $ 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).

## Building and installing from source

### Obtaining a source distribution

There are two basic ways to obtain a source distribution. One is by downloading an entire source tree from the web, and the other is by using the cvs utility to maintain a source tree on your machine which will be as up to date as possible. The former solution provides more stability, the latter provides access to cutting edge bugs.

#### tarball

Sourceforge's file release system will contain a tarball (a file with the extension for .tar.bz2).

After you have downloaded one of these packages, either copy the tarball to where you are, or move to the directory containing the tarball (I can't provide explicit instructions here, because I don't know where your browser put the file) and type (The "$" or "#" are example prompts from the computer. Do not type them yourself):

>     $ bunzip2 fontforge*.tar.bz2
>     $ tar xf fontforge*.tar
>     $ cd fontforge-*

#### from the cvs tree

cvs is a nifty set of utilities which allows concurrent access to a source tree by many users. To set up your own (local) copy of the cvs tree (including documentation), create a new directory, cd into it and type the following (when it asks for a password, just hit return):

>     $ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs1.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge login
>     CVS password:
>     $ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs1.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge checkout fontforge
>     $ cd fontforge

Once you have established a directory you may update it to obtain the most recent version of the source by typing:

>     $ cd fontforge
>     $ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs1.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge login
>     CVS password:
>     $ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs1.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge update

You can also browse the CVS tree online. Or see sourceforge's description for more information (their information is out of date, the correct server is cvs1.sf.net not cvs.sf.net), or read the CVS manual.

### Building & installing it

Now you have the source installed on your system and you should be positioned at the top directory of that tree. You need to configure your package (this is a little program that figures out how to use your system), and then build it:

>     $ ./configure
>     $ make

Having done this you will probably want to install what you have built. This should be done as root:

>     $ su
>     password: ******
>     # make install

### More complicated installs

The configure script allows you to turn off and on various features of fontforge that might not be appropriate for your system. Type

>     $ configure --help

for a complete list of options. Some of the most useful are described below.

#### Building fontforge without X

If you don't want to install X11 on your system, you can use fontforge as a command line tool which can execute scripts to manipulate fonts. FontForge's scripting language is described in detail in the section on scripting.

>     $ configure --without-x

#### Building fontforge to edit type3 fonts

If you do want to edit PostScript type3 fonts, you can configure fontforge to give you access to more drawing modes than are generally available in fonts.

>     $ configure --enable-type3

#### Building fontforge to edit device tables

If you do want to create device tables (which allow you to fix up kerning data at a specific pixel size) in OpenType fonts

>     $ configure --enable-devicetables

#### Installing FontForge somewhere other than `/usr/local`

If you want to install fontforge in a different directory (say in /usr/bin)

>     $ configure --prefix=/usr

#### Installing documentation from the cvs tree

If you have a copy of the cvs tree on your system then you should be able to type

>     # make install_docs

Again you will probably need to be root to do this install too. Use "su".

## Dependencies (external libraries/helper programs)

FontForge tries to avoid hard dependencies. If a library is missing then fontforge will (in most cases) be able to continue to run, it will just lack whatever functionality the library provides. So if you don't need to import tiff images, you don't need libtiff. If you don't need to hand SVG fonts you don't need libxml2, etc.

If you want to do autotracing around character images you should also download either

- Peter Selinger's potrace
- Martin Weber's autotrace program.

If you want to edit CID keyed fonts you need these character set descriptions. (These were last updated 22-Dec-2004)

You might want this addition to FontForge's built in character set encodings. Use FontForge's Encoding->Load Encoding command to add these encodings to the Encoding Menu.

With the appropriate libraries, FontForge can import png, tiff, and gif images to act as character backgrounds for tracing purposes (FontForge can import bmp and xbm formats without external libraries). With libxml2 FontForge can read SVG fonts. With the freetype library FontForge will do a better job making bitmap characters for you. libuninameslist provides standard unicode names and annotations for unicode characters (it has been localized into English and French)

None is required for the proper compilation/execution of FontForge, if the libraries are not present they will not be used. (If the machine on which your executable was build didn't have them, then you must not only install the libraries, but rebuild fontforge from source) If your machine doesn't have them and you want them they are available from:

- Image Libraries (to allow FontForge to import images in those formats)
  - libpng (and required helper zlib)
  - libtiff
  - libungif
  - libjpeg
- libxml2
  To parse SVG files and fonts
- libuninameslist
  To display unicode names and annotations.
- libiconv
  Only important for systems with no built-in iconv(). If not present FontForge contains a minimal version of the library which allows it to work. But if you want to use libiconv you must configure it with `--enable-extra-encodings`, as FontForge requires Shift-JIS.
- freetype
  To do a better job rasterizing bitmaps, and to enable the truetype debugger

  Some of FontForge's commands depend on your compiling freetype with the byte code interpreter enabled. This is disabled by default because it infringes on certain patents granted to Apple. If you have a license from Apple (or live in a country where these patents do not apply) then you may enable the interpreter by setting the appropriate macro in .../include/freetype/config/ftoption.h before you build the library (see the README.UNX file on the top level of the freetype distribution). To enable the truetype debugger, FontForge needs to have the freetype source directories available when it is built (there are some include files there which it depends on)

- cygwin
  To build or run on a MS Windows system you need the cygwin environment and libraries.
- libintl
  Is standard on most unixes. It is part of the fink package on the mac. Handles UI localization.
- libpython
  If present when FontForge is compiled, allows the user to execute python scripts within fontforge (and you can configure fontforge so that fontforge's functionality can be imported into python -- that is fontforge both extends and embeds python)

  This is one library that fontforge does not try to load at run time.

- libX
  Normally FontForge depends on the X11 windowing system, but if you are just interested in the scripting engines (with no user interface), it may be built on systems without X (the configure script should figure this out).
- libcairo
  Cairo handles drawing anti-aliased splines in the outline glyph view. It is dependent on libfontconfig, libXft and perhaps other libraries.
- libpango
  Pango draws text for complex scripts. It depends on glib-2.0, libfontconfig, libfreetype, libXft, and perhaps other libraries.
- Under Mac OS/X these libraries are available from the fink project and from macports.

Normally FontForge depends on the X11 windowing system, but if you are just interested in the scripting engine (with no user interface), it may be built on systems without X (the configure script should figure this out).

Once upon a time, fontforge only used X11 bitmap fonts, on most systems in now uses fontconfig.

There seem plenty of good unicode outline fonts, so I shan't provide any suggestions. To install them you simply create a subdirectory called .fonts in your home directory, and then copy the font file into that subdirectory.

In the old days there weren't many bitmap fonts with good unicode coverage so I provided a list of suggested fonts. That's not nearly as important now. But if fontconfig isn't available for you, you might want to pull down some old unicode bitmap fonts.

- Kanou's fontview fonts
- The unifont
- ClearlyU's font
- The FreeFont project
- X fixed
- Computer Modern Unicode fonts
- Unicode Font Guide for Free/Libre Open Source Operating Systems

- FontForge's conventions for non-BMP unicode bitmap fonts

To install these, put them in a directory, and in that directory type:

>         $ mkfontdir
>         $ xset fp+ `pwd`

You should make sure that the xset line happens whenever X is started on your machine (put it in your .xsession file).

## Documentation

The complete fontforge manual is available online.

- There is a shorter tutorial which
  - Is available online
  - Can be downloaded as pdf
  - example files (to work through the tutorial yourself)
- A documentation tarball can be retrieved from the file release system
- The cvs tree contains a sub-directory called htdocs containing the manual
  - The cvs tree contains a sub-sub-directory called htdocs/ja containing the Japanese translation of the manual
- See the general comments on the cvs tree to see how to access this.
  See the section on installing cvs documentation to see how to install the docs from the cvs tree

### Installing a documentation tarball

Once you have downloaded the documentation tarball as described above, you should move to the directory containing it, and type:

>     $ su
>     password: ******
>     # mkdir -p /usr/local/share/doc/fontforge
>     # mv fontforge_htdocs*.tgz /usr/local/share/doc/fontforge
>     # tar xfz fontforge_htdocs*.tgz
>     # rm fontforge_htdocs*.tgz

After doing this fontforge will be able to find the docs on your system when you press the [F1] (or [Help]) key. If you don't do this fontforge will attempt to find documentation online.

## Starting FontForge

### Notes on the PATH variable

On most systems fontforge will install itself into `/usr/local/bin` (that's the standard place for optional software), and this is not always in the default search path for commands (grrrr). Which means you might have everything properly installed, but nothing actually works. If you see messages like `"fontforge: command not found."` this has (probably) happened to you.

So what do you do?

You need to set the PATH environment variable so that it includes /usr/local/bin. The value of the PATH variable is a set of directories separated by colons.

>     $ echo $PATH
>     /home/gww/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/sbin

Unfortunately there are two ways of doing this because there are two different conventions used by unix shells. Type:

>     $ echo $SHELL
>     /bin/bash

If the name of your shell is `bash` (as above), `ksh` or `sh` then you want to type

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

If the name of your shell is `tcsh` or `csh` then you say

>     $ setenv PATH /usr/local/bin:$PATH

But you'd have to do that every time you logged in. Instead you want this included in the shell's initialization. Again there are two cases, for the `bash` family of shells you want to edit the file `~/.profile` while for the `csh` family you want to edit the file `~/.login`. On a bash system the following command is generally sufficient:

>     $ cat >>~/.profile
>     PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH ; export PATH
>     ^D

(where `^D` represents control-D, obtained by holding down the control key while depressing `d`.
And for the csh family you would type:

>     $ cat >>~/.login
>     setenv PATH /usr/local/bin:$PATH
>     ^D

### Starting fontforge from the command line

> `$ fontforge font.pfa font2.sfd font3.ttf font4.otf`

will start fontforge looking at the fonts you specify on the command line. It can read either pfb or pfa fonts, and some ps fonts (type 0 fonts based on a type 1 dictionary) as well as truetype fonts, open type fonts and many other formats.

> `$ fontforge -new`

will cause fontforge to create a new font (in iso-8859-1 encoding)

> `$ fontforge`

will open up a file picker dialog and allow you to browse till you've found a font file (or have created a new one).

> `$ fontforge -script script.pe fonts...`

This will invoke fontforge in a non-interactive mode, and have it run the named script. Any further arguments on the command line will be passed as arguments to the script and processed (or not) by it.

## Reporting Bugs

Please report bugs by sending an e-mail to fontforge-devel@lists.sourceforge.net