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 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 But they are out of date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).
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.