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                  BENGALI WRITER FONT UTILITIES (VERSION 1.1)
                              X11 BITMAP FONTS
                         Last modified: Nov 28 1998
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What are X11 bitmap fonts?

   X11 can read fonts in several formats. These are BDF (Bitmap Distribution
   Format), PCF (Potable Compiled Format) etc. A bdf file is a text file
   that defines the bitmap patterns for the characters of a font.

What fonts are provided?

   This package provides one family of bdf fonts, namely the bengali family.
   Both normal (upright) and slanted versions are supplied at the dpi values
   100, 120, 150, 180, 210, 250, 300 and 360.

How to install these fonts?

   Copy the bdf files (bnr10.*.bdf and bnsl10.*.bdf) to a directory. Let us
   call this directory <bnfontdir>. Now type at the shell prompt

      mkfontdir <bnfontdir>

   to create a file called fonts.dir in <bnfontdir>. Now call xset to add
   <bnfontdir> to the X11 font search path as

      xset fp+ <bnfontdir>

   An alternative strategy is: call the shell-script xaddbnfonts provided
   with the distribution after editing it and changing the line
      $bnfontdir="/usr/X11R6/lib/fonts/barda"
   to indicate the directory where you have installed the bdf files.

How to check correct installation?

   To check whether your installation is complete, use

      xlsfonts

   to see a list of all fonts that X11 can read now. In order to view how
   the Bengali fonts look like, you may call

      xfontsel

   that displays all X11 fonts interactively. Chose the font family
   `bengali' and select the approprate point size to view the Bengali
   fonts at different sizes. Alternatively, run xfd as

      xfd -fn "-*-bengali-medium-o-*-*-*-100-*-*-*-*-*-fontspecific"
      xfd -fn "-*-bengali-medium-r-*-*-*-300-*-*-*-*-*-fontspecific"

   etc. to see one font at a time. Note that o in the first call of xfd
   shows slanted alphabet and r (as in the second call) its non-slanted
   version. The numbers 100, 300 etc are point sizes and can be one of
   100, 120, 150, 180, 210, 250, 300 and 360.

Other font formats

   X11 normally reads bdf files. If you are unable to install the bengali
   fonts following the procedure outlined above, try to convert the bdf
   files to pcf files by the bdftopcf program available in the X11
   distribution and then add the Bengali fonts. For example, type

      bdftopcf bnr10.100.bdf > bnr10.100.pcf

   to generate a file bnr10.100.pcf.

   You may compress the bdf and pcf files (may be to save space). X11
   can read compressed font files. Type

      compress bnr10.100.bdf
      compress bnr10.100.pcf

   etc. to generate bnr10.100.bdf.Z, bnr10.100.pcf.Z etc.

What are the uses of these fonts?

   Important question! Once you correctly install and add the bengali fonts,
   you may load these fonts in any X application you write. Furthermore,
   any pre-compiled X application that can be customized to include user
   defined fonts can be told to load bengali fonts. Two such X applications
   namely xfontsel and xfd are already mentioned. Another example is
   Netscape Navigator 3.0 onwards. You may load bengali fonts to view
   html documents in bengali. For more information on this specific
   example, look at
      http://www2.csa.iisc.ernet.in/~abhij/bwfu/bn2html/index.html

Where to get these fonts?

   You may get these fonts from

      http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/6024/bengali.html
      http://www2.csa.iisc.ernet.in/~abhij/download/
      ftp://144.16.67.96/pub/barda/
      ftp://144.16.67.98/pub/barda/softwares/bw/
      ftp://sunsite.iisc.ernet.in/pub/packages/bengali/

Address for correspondence

   Abhijit Das
   Department of Computer Science and Automation
   Indian Institute of Science
   Bangalore 560 012
   INDIA

   E-mail: abhij@csa.iisc.ernet.in
   URL: http://www2.csa.iisc.ernet.in/~abhij/
     or http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/6024/

