SpiritAndTruth.org Greek and Hebrew Fonts

Greek and Hebrew Fonts

Some of the study aids and documents at SpiritAndTruth.org utilize Greek and Hebrew text. In order to view Greek and Hebrew text on your computer, you must install the appropriate font. Different fonts are used for different operating systems. Download the font which matches your operating system and follow the instructions below. (The BSTHebrew and BSTGreek fonts are in the public domain and may be used freely.)

Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP

To install the BST Fonts onto your Windows 95/98/NT/2000 computer, follow these steps:

Select the BST Font you need and download it to your Desktop.
After you have downloaded the BST Font, double click on the file to start the self extraction. When the dialog box appears, click "Unzip". The Self-extraction program will automatically place the BST Fonts in your "c:\windows\fonts\" directory. If your operating system is in a different location, replace "c:\windows" with the directory where the operating system is located on your machine (for example "c:\winnt\fonts").
Click on the "Start" button in the lower left of your screen.
Click "Settings" and then "Control Panel".
When the Control Panel displays, double-click on the "Fonts" icon. When the Fonts window displays, Windows will automatically initialize them and make them available on your computer.
Close all display windows and restart your browser. (You should not have to restart "Windows".)

Windows 3.1

To install the BST Fonts onto your Windows 3.1 computer, follow these steps:

Select the BST Font you need and download it to your "C:\" directory.
Double click on the file to start the automatic self extraction.
When the dialog box appears click "Unzip". The Self-extraction program will automatically place the BST Fonts in your "c:\windows\fonts\" directory. If your operating system is in a different location, replace "c:\windows" with the directory where the operating system is located on your machine (for example "c:\win\fonts").
Open your Control Panel and double-click on your "Fonts" icon. When the Fonts window displays, Windows will automatically initialize them and make them available.
Close all display windows and restart your browser. (You should not have to restart "Windows".)

Linux

(Instructions obtained from http://www.redhat.com/mirrors/LDP/HOWTO/Font-HOWTO-4.html#ss4.3.)

Adding TrueType fonts is a little more difficult, because you need to have a font server that is capable of serving TrueType fonts. Two font servers that do this are xfstt and xfs.

xfstt is a TrueType font server. While it's easy to configure, and quite useful, it appear that xfs is becoming more popular. The main advantage of xfs over xfstt is that it supports both Type1 and TrueType fonts.

xfstt

To set up xfstt, just download it and install it. If you have an rpm based distribution, there is a well packaged version of xfstt at http://independence.seul.org/. Once you install it, you need to do the following:

install fonts into the appropriate directory ( read the documentation that comes with the package ).
cd to that directory and run xfstt --sync. This causes it to look for the fonts and create the fonts.dir file.
Now add unix/:7100 to your font path.

Your TrueType fonts should now display and be available to applications such as GIMP and Netscape. You may want to configure it to start every time your system starts up. Check to see if there's a startup file included ( if you are using RPM, you can use rpm -ql xfstt |grep init and look for the file with a name something like this: /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfstt ) If you don't have an init script, just put two lines in /etc/rc.local like this:

        /usr/X11R6/bin/xfstt --sync
        /usr/X11R6/bin/xfstt &

xfs

Some of the newer Linux distributions ship with the X font server xfs configured to run as a stand alone program. Notably, Redhat and all the redhat based distributions use this modularised xfs with TrueType compiled in. Debian also ship xfs, but the version they ship doesn't have built in true type support.

Running xfs as a stand alone server has several benefits, especially if it is compiled with TrueType support. The main advantage is that since the font server is no longer attached to the X server, it is possible to serve fonts to remote displays. Also, it makes it much easier to modify the font path.

The `xfs` Path

As a font server, xfs has it's own font path. One might wonder where this fits into the picture. It works like this: you can place the xfs font server in XFree86's font path, by adding unix/:port to the XFree86 font path. Once you do this, any font in the xfs font path automatically becomes available to XFree86.

The xfs font path is determined by the xfs configuration file, which is /etc/X11/fs/config on Redhat, and /etc/X11/xfs/config on Debian. Redhat users do not need to explicitly edit this file, they can use the chkfontpath utility. The syntax is simple:

        chkfontpath --add directory

Users of other distributions can edit the configuration file as follows:

        catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
        ...
        /usr/share/fonts/my_new_fonts/,
        ...
        /usr/share/fonts/some_other_directory
        # in 12 points, decipoints
        default-point-size = 120
        ...

The above would add /usr/share/fonts/my_new_fonts/ to the xfs font path. Note that the last line of the list of directories doesn't have a comma at the end. For these modifications to the font path to become effective, xfs must be restarted. It's also a good idea to restart your X session after restarting xfs.

Installing a Font Into `xfs`

To prepare a font for xfs, you need to follow the following steps:

If you don't have xfs installed, you need to install it.
Put the new fonts in a directory.
If you are installing Type1 fonts, prepare the new directory for the server by running type1inst in the directory.
If you are installing TrueType fonts, ( remember, not all distributions can do TrueType via xfs ! ), prepare the new directory for the server by running
```
        ttmkfdir -o fonts.scale
        mkfontdir
        
```
in the directory containing your new fonts. ttmkfdir is part of the freetype package.
Now you can add the new directory to your xfs search path. Users of Redhat-like distributions can do this with the chkfontpath utility: Other users can do this by editing their xfs configuration file.
if xfs is already installed on your system, you should see which port it is running on. You can do this as follows:
```
        ps ax|grep xfs
        
```
Then check your XFree86 font path.
```
                xset -q
        
```
If your font path includes something like unix:/port_number were port_number is the port which the server is running on, then you already have xfs set up properly. Otherwise, you should add it to your XFree86 font path.
```
                xset fp+ unix/:port_number
                xset fp rehash
        
```
You can add it permanently by editing your .xinitrc as explained previously. To add it system wide, edit your XF86Config file ( probably either /etc/X11/XF86Config, /etc/XF86Config or /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config ), by adding a line FontPath "unix:/port_number" in the Files section. Here's an example:
```
                Section "Files"
                ...
                
                FontPath "unix/:-1" 
                ...
                EndSection
                ...
                
```

If xfs is already properly installed, then you can restart it like this:

                /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs restart

After restarting xfs, it's a good idea to restart your X-session.