4. Fonts and internationalisation

The scalable font backends (Type 1, Speedo and TrueType) can now automatically re-encode fonts to the encoding specified in the XLFD in fonts.dir. For example, a fonts.dir file can contain entries for the Type 1 Courier font such as

cour.pfa -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1 
cour.pfa -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-2

4.1. The fontenc layer

Three of the scalable backends (Type 1, Speedo, and the FreeType TrueType backend) use a common fontenc layer for font re-encoding. This allows these backends to share their encoding data, and allows simple configuration of new locales independently of font type.

Please note: the X-TrueType (X-TT) backend does not use the fontenc layer, but instead uses its own method for font reencoding. If you are only interested in X-TT you may want to skip to Section Using Symbol Fonts, as the intervening information does not apply to X-TT. X-TT itself is described in more detail in Section X-TrueType.

In the fontenc layer, an encoding is defined by a name (such as iso8859-1), possibly a number of aliases (alternate names), and an ordered collection of mappings. A mapping defines the way the encoding can be mapped into one of the target encodings known to fontenc; currently, these consist of Unicode, Adobe glyph names, and arbitrary TrueType ``cmap''s.

A number of encodings are hardwired into fontenc, and are therefore always available; the hardcoded encodings cannot easily be redefined. These include:

• iso10646-1: Unicode;
• iso8859-1: ISO Latin-1 (Western Europe);
• iso8859-2: ISO Latin-2 (Eastern Europe);
• iso8859-3: ISO Latin-3 (Southern Europe);
• iso8859-4: ISO Latin-4 (Northern Europe);
• iso8859-5: ISO Cyrillic;
• iso8859-6: ISO Arabic;
• iso8859-7: ISO Greek;
• iso8859-8: ISO Hebrew;
• iso8859-9: ISO Latin-5 (Turkish);
• iso8859-10: ISO Latin-6 (Nordic);
• iso8859-15: ISO Latin-9, or Latin-0 (Revised Western-European);
• koi8-r: KOI8 Russian;
• koi8-u: KOI8 Ukrainian (see RFC 2319);
• koi8-ru: KOI8 Russian/Ukrainian
• koi8-uni: KOI8 ``Unified'' (Russian, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian);
• koi8-e: KOI8 ``European,'' ISO-IR-111, or ECMA-Cyrillic;
• microsoft-symbol and apple-roman: these are only likely to be useful with TrueType symbol fonts.

Additional encodings can be added by defining encoding files. When a font encoding is requested that the fontenc layer doesn't know about, the backend checks the directory in which the font file resides (not necessarily the directory with fonts.dir!) for a file named `encodings.dir'. If found, this file is scanned for the requested encoding, and the relevant encoding definition file is read in. The `mkfontdir' utility, when invoked with the `-e' option followed by the name of a directory containing encoding files, can be used to automatically build `encodings.dir' files. See the mkfontdir(1) manual page for more details.

A number of encoding files for common encodings are included with XFree86. Information on writing new encoding files can be found in Section Format of encodings directory files and Format of encoding files later in this document.

4.2. Backend-specific notes about fontenc

4.2.1. Type 1

The Type 1 backend first searches for a mapping with a target of PostScript. If one is found, it is used. Otherwise, the backend searches for a mapping with target Unicode, which is then composed with a built-in table mapping codes to glyph names. Note that this table only covers part of the Unicode code points that have been assigned names by Adobe.

If neither a PostScript or Unicode mapping is found, the backend defaults to ISO 8859-1.

Specifying an encoding value of adobe-fontspecific disables the encoding mechanism. This is useful with symbol and incorrectly encoded fonts (see Section Incorrectly encoded fonts below).

The Type 1 backend currently limits all encodings to 8-bit codes.

4.2.2. Speedo

The Speedo backend searches for a mapping with a target of Unicode, and uses it if found. If none is found, the backend defaults to ISO 8859-1.

The Speedo backend limits all encodings to 8-bit codes.

4.2.3. The FreeType TrueType backend

The TrueType backend scans the mappings in order. Mappings with a target of PostScript are ignored; mappings with a TrueType or Unicode target are checked against all the cmaps in the file. The first applicable mapping is used.

If you are writing an encoding file to be used with the TrueType backend, you should ensure that mappings are mentioned in decreasing order of preference.

4.3. Format of encoding directory files

In order to use a font in an encoding that the font backend does not know about, you need to have an `encodings.dir' file in the same directory as the font file used. The `encodings.dir' file has a similar format to `fonts.dir'. Its first line specifies the number of encodings, while every successive line has two columns, the name of the encoding, and the name of the encoding file; this can be relative to the current directory, or absolute. Every encoding name should agree with the encoding name defined in the encoding file. For example,

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mulearabic-0 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/encodings/mulearabic-0.enc
mulearabic-1 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/encodings/mulearabic-1.enc
mulearabic-2 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/encodings/mulearabic-2.enc

The name of an encoding must be specified in the encoding file's `STARTENCODING' or `ALIAS' line. It is not enough to create an `encodings.dir' entry.

If your platform supports it (it probably does), encoding files may be compressed or gzipped.

The `encoding.dir' files are best maintained by the `mkfontdir' utility. Please see the mkfontdir(1) manual page for more information.

4.4. Format of encoding files

The encoding files are ``free form,'' i.e. any string of whitespace is equivalent to a single space. Keywords are parsed in a non-case-sensitive manner, meaning that `size', `SIZE', and `SiZE' all parse as the same keyword; on the other hand, case is significant in glyph names.

Numbers can be written in decimal, as in `256', in hexadecimal, as in `0x100', or in octal, as in `0400'.

Comments are introduced by a hash sign `#'. A `#' may appear at any point in a line, and all characters following the `#' are ignored, up to the end of the line.

The encoding file starts with the definition of the name of the encoding, and possibly its alternate names (aliases):

STARTENCODING mulearabic-0
ALIAS arabic-0
ALIAS something-else

The encoding file may then optionally declare the size of the encoding. For a linear encoding (such as ISO 8859-1), the SIZE line specifies the maximum code plus one:

SIZE 0x2B

SIZE 0x75 0x80

FIRSTINDEX 0x20 0x20

Note that in most font backends inclusion of a `FIRSTINDEX' line has the side effect of disabling default glyph generation, and this keyword should therefore be avoided unless absolutely necessary.

Codes outside the region defined by the `SIZE' and `FIRSTINDEX' lines are understood to be undefined. Encodings default to linear encoding with a size of 256 (0x100). This means that you must declare the size of all 16 bit encodings.

What follows is one or more mapping sections. A mapping section starts with a `STARTMAPPING' line stating the target of the mapping. The target may be one of:

• Unicode (ISO 10646):

  STARTMAPPING unicode
  

• a given TrueType ``cmap'':

  STARTMAPPING cmap 3 1
  

• PostScript glyph names:

  STARTMAPPING postscript
  

0x21 0x0660
0x22 0x0661
...

<it/start/ <it/end/ <it/target/

start target

start+1 target+1

...

end target+end-start

0x2121 0x215F 0x8140

0x2121 0x8140
0x2122 0x8141
...
0x215F 0x817E

UNDEFINE 0x00 0x2A

UNDEFINE 0x1234

PostScript mappings are different. Every line in a PostScript mapping maps a code to a glyph name

0x41 A
0x42 B
...

A mapping section ends with an ENDMAPPING line

ENDMAPPING

ENDENCODING

In order to make future extensions to the format possible, lines starting with an unknown keyword are silently ignored, as are mapping sections with an unknown target.

4.5. Using symbol fonts

Type 1 symbol fonts should be installed using the adobe-fontspecific encoding.

In an ideal world, all TrueType symbol fonts would be installed using one of the microsoft-symbol and apple-roman encodings. A number of symbol fonts, however, are not marked as such; such fonts should be installed using microsoft-cp1252, or, for older fonts, microsoft-win3.1.

In order to guarantee consistent results (especially between Type 1 and TrueType versions of the same font), it is possible to define a special encoding for a given font. This has already been done for the ZapfDingbats font; see the file encodings/adobe-dingbats.enc.

4.6. Hints about using badly encoded fonts

A number of text fonts are incorrectly encoded. Incorrect encoding is sometimes done by design, in order to make a font for an exotic script appear like an ordinary Western text font. It is often the result of the font designer's laziness or incompetence; for some reason, most people seem to find it easier to invent idiosyncratic glyph names rather than follow the Adobe glyph list.

There are two ways of dealing with such fonts: using them with the encoding they were designed for, and creating an ad hoc encoding file.

4.6.1. Using fonts with the designer's encoding

In the case of Type 1 fonts, the font designer can specify a default encoding; this encoding is requested by using the `adobe-fontspecific' encoding in the XLFD name. Sometimes, the font designer omitted to specify a reasonable default encoding, in which case you should experiment with `adobe-standard', `iso8859-1', `microsoft-cp1252', and `microsoft-win3.1'. (The encoding `microsoft-symbol' doesn't make sense for Type 1 fonts).

TrueType fonts do not have a default encoding. However, most TrueType fonts are designed with either Microsoft or Apple platforms in mind, so one of `microsoft-symbol', `microsoft-cp1252', `microsoft-win3.1', or `apple-roman' should yield reasonable results.

4.6.2. Specifying an ad hoc encoding file

It is always possible to define an encoding file to put the glyphs in a font in any desired order. Again, see the `encodings/adobe-dingbats.enc' file to see how this is done.

4.6.3. Specifying font aliases

By following the directions above, you will find yourself with a number of fonts with unusual names --- with encodings such as `adobe-fontspecific', `microsoft-win3.1' etc. In order to use these fonts with standard applications, it may be useful to remap them to their proper names.

This is done by writing a `fonts.alias' file. The format of this file is similar to the format of the `fonts.dir' file, except that it maps XLFD names to XLFD names. A `fonts.alias' file might look as follows:

1
"-ogonki-alamakota-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-2" \
  "-ogonki-alamakota-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-adobe-fontspecific"