Free font software for linux

Opcion Font Viewer is a free font viewer written in Java that allows you to view both installed and uninstalled TrueType fonts on Windows, Linux, Unix or Mac.
The main focus of Opcion is to allow you to view your uninstalled fonts so that you install only the fonts you want and keep your system memory free of fonts you dont want.
As you may have experienced, installing the brand new 1000 fonts font pack you just bought on your Windows, Linux, Unix or Mac computer can lead to slow-downs when starting the computer and when loading other programs.
The slow down occurs because the Operating System and certain programs (e.g. word-processors, email clients, graphics editors) need to load all system fonts so that they can be made available to you at any time. This is where Opcion comes in.
Opcion was written to handle the viewing of large font collections, therefore only fonts that you are currently viewing are stored in memory. Although the amount of physical memory you have will effect how many fonts you can view at a time, it will no longer be a limitation to you making use of your entire font library.
Another problem with most Operating Systems default font viewers is that while they are capable of viewing fonts, the default Windows/Linux/Unix font viewers only allows you to view fonts that are already installed and one at a time. Opcion allows you to view TrueType fonts located anywhere and allows you to view system fonts as well.
To help you pick the best font for the job, whether it be for your assignment, project logo or webpage, Opcion provides a list view of either system or other/uninstalled fonts so you may see how a font looks compared to other fonts in your collection.
When you see a font that you feel suits your current job you can simply click on it in the list view and it will be added to a favourites list that can then be saved for future reference or used to install only the fonts you want.
For viewing fonts, seeing how they would appear applied to your name/logo/tagline, and keeping track of which fonts best suit the job is the purpose of Opcion Font Viewer. Opcion allows you to view both installed and uninstalled fonts in different views depending on your needs. Written in Java, Opcion will work on all platforms that the Java Runtime Environment supports (which includes Windows, Mac, Solaris & Linux).
Opcion Font Viewer provdies a default view that allows you to view one font at a time, and a list view which allows you to view multiple fonts at a time. By clicking on fonts you like in the list view you are adding fonts to a faviourties list that Opcion keeps for you. The faviourites list can then be saved for future reference or used in finding out the file names of fonts you wish to install.
Main features:
- Viewing of installed/uninstalled fonts.
- List view of installed/uninstalled fonts.
- Adding/removing of favourite fonts.
- Saving of favourite fonts.
- Customizable sample/display text.
- Customizable font size.
- Customizable font properties (bold, italic, etc.) in sample text area.
- Changeable fonts displayed per page in List View.
Execute Opcion Font Viewer
To execute Opcion Font Viewer in Windows, download the EXE version. For Linux users use the command "java -jar Opcion_v1.1.1.jar" in console/terminal/shortcut.
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /usr/java/j2re1.4.1_02/lib/i386/libfontmanager.so: libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
This error occurs due to backwards compatibility issues with the Java Runtime and libstdc. To fix this problem for RedHat 9.0 install the RPM file compat-libstdc++-7.3.2.96.118.i386.rpm, which can be found on disc 1 of the downloadable distro. For other Linux distributions check rpmfind.net for libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 to see what package you need to install.
An unexpected exception has been detected in native code outside the VM.
Unexpected Signal : 11 occurred at PC=0x4CAEE920 Function=(null)+0x4CAEE920 Library=/usr/local/lib/SunJava2-1.4.2/lib/i386/libfontmanager.so
This error appears to be a problem with Sun Microsystems Java implementation for Linux, the real cause for this crash is still being investigated. There are no solutions to this problem yet.
Opcion crashes during execution when using Blackdown Java Virtual Machine.
Opcion Font Viewer was programmed for Sun Microsystems JVM, and it uses Suns Java API extensively. Thus, it is highly recommended that you use the latest Java Runtime Environment instead of other JVMs.
Enhancements:
- Added sorting to other fonts list.

Font Manager is a font manager for GNOME. Font Manager cannot do any font management tasks yet, but is already useful for picking fonts.
Main features:
- List installed fonts
- Add previews for installed fonts
- Open font properties from context menu
- Set system fonts from the font manager
- Make the font manager installable

Font Mate application helps you to see how fonts look on your computer, and it also helps you find symbol characters.

Using Font Mate

There isnt much to it: Font Mate shows you a list of all the fonts installed on your computer. Choose any font from the list and it will show you what all the characters in that font look like. Choose any one of those characters and you will see an enlarged version of it at the bottom of the page (with its ASCII code in decimal and hex, should you be interested). Click the button to copy that character to the clipboard if you want to use it in another application.

Works on...

We wrote Font Mate originally for Mac OS X, but we have included versions for Windows and Linux too. We wrote it using REALbasic, a great tool for cross-platform rapid development. Source is available on request.

How much?

Font Mate is freeware. Download, use, share as you wish. No warranty is offered, and we accept no liability for anything strange or nasty that it might do to your computer.

And another thing

If you like Font Mate, why not have a look at our main site at tellura.co.uk and check out our other products and services?

Gnome Font Sampler lets you browse your installed fonts using whatever color, size, attributes (Bold/Italics/Underline), and example text you like.
Main features:
- Quickly compare your fonts
- Select font size, text color, background color, bold, italics, underline, and example text used
- Preview fonts before adding them to the list
- Pretty good keyboard control
- It costs $0 and is Free software
Enhancements:
- New application icon.
- Improved keyboard control (navigate font lists and choose fonts using just the keyboard).

Font::Scripts::AP is a Perl module for memory representation of a TTFBuilder Attachment Point database (APDB).

SYNOPSIS

use Font::Scripts::AP;
$ap = Font::Scripts::AP->read_font($ttf_file, $ap_file, %opts);
$ap->make_classes();

INSTANCE VARIABLES

cmap

Reference to the Microsoft cmap within the font.

font

Reference to a font structure. read_font will cause at least the post, cmap, loca, and name tables to be read in.

glyphs

An array of references to glyph data structures, indexed by glyphID. Stucture elements are:

uni

Unicode scalar value, if any, as specified in the APDB. (decimal integer)

gnum

Actual glyph ID from font.

post

Actual Postscript name from font.

Note: The uni, gnum and post values are based on the UID, GID, and PSName fields of the APDB. If there are descrepancies between the APDB and the fonts internal tables, then for calcuating the above three values, priority is given first to UID field, then PSName field, and finally GID.

glyph

Reference to glyph structure read from font.

line

Line number in APDB where glyph is defined.

points

A hash of references to attachment point structures for this glyph, keyed by attachment point type (aka name). Each AP structure contains

name

The name (type in TTFBuilder terminology) of the attachment point

x, y

X and Y coordinates for the attachment point

line

Line number in APDB where this point is defined.

components

Present if the glyph is a composite. Is a reference to an array of component structures. Each component structure includes:

bbox

comma separated list of bounding box coordinates, i.e., x1, y1, x2, y2

uni

Unicode scalar value, if any, of the component. (decimal integer)

Note: The following instance variables contain the actual text read from the APDB. If there are descrepancies between the APDB and the font, these values may differ from corresponding values given above. Therefore these values should not be used except for diagnostic purposes.

UID

Unicode scalar value, if any, as specified in the APDB. (string of hex digits)

PSName

Postscript name, if any, as specified in the APDB

GID

Glyph id, if any, as specified in the APDB

classes

Created by "make_classes", this is a hash keyed by class name returning an array of GIDs for glyphs that are in the class. Classes are identified by extensions (part after a .) on the post name of each glyph. For each such extension, two classes are defined. The first is the class of all glyphs that have that extension (class name is the extension). The second is the class of nominal glyphs corresponding to the glyphs with that extension (class name is the extension but with the prefix no_).

lists

Created by "make_classes", this is a hash keyed by attachment point name (as modified by "make_point") returning an array of GIDs for glyphs that have the given attachment point.

vecs

If defined, this variable will be updated by "make_classes". It is a hash, keyed by attachment point name (as modified by "make_point") returning a bit vec bit array, indexed by GID, each bit set to 1 if the corresponding glyph has the given attachment point.

ligclasses

Optionally created by make_classes if ligatures are requested and they exist. The base forms class is no_code while the ligatures are held in code.

WARNINGS

If -errorfh not set, this accumulates any warning or error messages encountered.

WARNINGS

Count of number fo warnings or errors encountered.

Fontconfig is a library for configuring and customizing font access.

Font Configuration Library contains two essential modules, the configuration module which builds an internal configuration from XML files and the matching module which accepts font patterns and returns the nearest matching font.

The configuration module consists of the FcConfig datatype, libexpat and FcConfigParse which walks over an XML tree and ammends a configuration with data found within. From an external perspective, configuration of the library consists of generating a valid XML tree and feeding that to FcConfigParse.

The only other mechanism provided to applications for changing the running configuration is to add fonts and directories to the list of application-provided font files.

The intent is to make font configurations relatively static, and shared by as many applications as possible.

It is hoped that this will lead to more stable font selection when passing names from one application to another. XML was chosen as a configuration file format because it provides a format which is easy for external agents to edit while retaining the correct structure and syntax.

Font configuration is separate from font matching; applications needing to do their own matching can access the available fonts from the library and perform private matching.

The intent is to permit applications to pick and choose appropriate functionality from the library instead of forcing them to choose between this library and a private configuration mechanism.

The hope is that this will ensure that configuration of fonts for all applications can be centralized in one place. Centralizing font configuration will simplify and regularize font installation and customization.

FakeBold Font patches for QT 4.3.x fake a bold font style and output for some fonts without bold support.

It is specially and very useful for CJK fonts. actually it works with all fonts without bold style.

Here I use FT_Glyph_Embolden to get a bold glyph.

These patches is not related to font rendering result, if you want to control font rendering result, please control fontconfig configurations.

Screenshot1: shows bold/bolditalic support with "SOng" and "Hei" Chinese font.

Screenshot1: shows bold/italic support for Chinese,Korean,Yi,Tibetan with Sans fontset(Song,SIL Yi, Tibetan machine uni fonts)

Bit-mapped Japanese font parser is a font parser. Note, this package doesnt include the actual font data. To get the font data you need to download it from the download section in the left.
Then move *.jfr into the directory where you unpacked this parser, and follow with the quick instructions.
Quick instructions:
Complete parse requires about 4 megabytes of free disk space. This is a huge improvement over the original version which required almost 45 megabytes.
1. make
2. make parse
3. watch the progress indicator
4. mv *.pcf.gz /usr/X11R/lib/X11R6/fonts/misc
5. make clean
6. HUP your font server if you use one
7. xset fp rehash
8. xlsfonts | grep kanji
/usr/X11R/lib/X11R6/fonts/misc is the standard location for all sorts of random bit-mapped fonts, but you might have a special location. Substitute that in step 4.
About:
I came across a number of these "raster fonts" a while ago. Quick look inside the files proved that they are bit-mapped fonts, and the format looked pretty straight-forward. I wrote the original parser for these just guessing the values, basically by experimenting and playing around. Later on I came across some docs on the subject - looks like these fonts were used in Windows 3.1 Japanese edition to substitute back-then low quality Japanese TTF fonts at small point sizes. These were designed using full-scale 16 bit programming techniques.
Quick info about the font format, there are some headers, then follows a "segment table" which is basically a table with pointers inside the font file where to locate a particular chunk of data. Because the 16 bit way of accessing memory is by using 65k "segments", each file is virtually split into < 65k segments which get loaded into separate memory areas, and then there is a algorithm how to assemble whatever character by using the segment number and offset. Anyway, with 32 bit access all of that doesnt really matter. In my implementation I just mmap the whole file and read it all out of memory.
Generating table.h was a LOT of work! First, I took the codearea table out of one of the jfr files (this maps shift-jis code to the character number inside the font file), and extracted the number ranges. These were shift-jis, of course, and X uses jis0208. There is no converter from a shift
jis byte into jis0208. So I had to write one. Taking iconv, and some tables from glibc 2.1.93, I hacked together something which converted the shift-jis data into ucs4 (unicode, I guess) and then from that into jis0208. The code to the converter is about 500k thanks to the huge jis->unicode->jis conversion tables, and you wont need it unless you get a jfr font with a different encoding table (unlikely). Anyway. After I got the font format figured out and converted the character table, everything else was pretty easy. Note some bit hackery in the bitmapXX() functions which was necessary to present the font data in a usable format. Also notice cool use of function pointers to select a conversion function at runtime.
Enhancements:
- This version uses correct JISX0208 tables, and is much faster.