Font Set-Up Assistance

Below is a listing of the Ethiopic X-Windows fonts provided for Mule, The Ethiopic-Viewer, and (soon) the new Ethio-Talk. They may also be used as your window font, but you will not have the same entry that Mule provides. Clicking a button will show you the fonts ascii file, save the file with the same name as the underlined word (the word-button).

Various X-Fonts

ethiom16f.bdf Standard 16 point Mule Fixed
ethiot16f.bdf Thin 16 point Mule Fixed
ethiom12.bdf Medium 12 point with kerning (for Eview or Terminals)
ethiot12.bdf Thin 12 point with kerning (for Eview or Terminals)
ethiom10d300.bdf EthioSystems Font For Printing
cmr10d300.bdf 300dpi Latin LaTeX Font For Printing
etl24-latin1.bdf 100dpi Latin Font For Printing

At the Mule archives the Ethiopic and other fonts are kept in ETL subdirectories. You can also find current fonts at ftp.ethiopic.org/pub/fonts/.

To install the fonts you will need to compile them first. We recommend making a directory for them in your home account, say ~/fonts :

        % mkdir ~/fonts
        % cp *.bdf ~/fonts
        % cd ~/fonts
        % bdftopcf ethiom16f.bdf > ethiom16f.pcf
        % bdftopcf ethiom10d300.bdf > ethiom10d300.pcf
        ...
        % mkfontdir
        % xset fp+ `pwd`

Now you can check if you are really able to use these fonts by 'xset q' or the 'xlsfonts' command . If you receive a `bdftopcf: Command not found.' error, try 'bdftosnf' instead and use `.snf' as your output file extension. You must use 'bdftosnf' instead of 'bdftopcf' if you are using X.V11R4. When installed you can view the font immediately with 'xfd -fn FONTNAME'.

If the installation check fails, it is likely then that normal users do not have permission to install fonts on your X-Server. You will have to ask your lab manager for assistance -ask in the nicest way possible :-)

If you have gotten through the above, we will call it Step 1, the following remains to get Mule going for Ethiopic :


2. Next, add the following two lines in your .Xresources (or .Xdefaults):

*FontSetList: 16
*FontSet-16: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-*-iso8859-1


3. Then reload these resources by:

    % xrdb -load ~/.Xresources


4. Start up Mule (if compiled) with 16 point fonts:

    % mule -fn 16

If you want to use different fonts than defaults, you can specify them by command line switch or your X's resource file (try `man mule' or look into the file `mule/etc/mule.1').