What are X11 bitmap fonts?
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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?
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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?
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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?
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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
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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?
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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. Finally a bengali text editor
bwedit is written based on these fonts.
Where to get these fonts?
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You may get these fonts from
http://www.oocities.org/SiliconValley/Lab/6024/bwfu1_1-X11fonts.tgz.
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