| 1 | <HTML>
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| 2 | <HEAD>
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| 3 | <TITLE>
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| 4 | Installing the fonts in Netscape Navigator
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| 5 | </TITLE>
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| 6 | </HEAD>
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| 7 | <BODY>
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| 8 | <H2>
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| 9 | Installing the fonts in Netscape Navigator
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| 10 | </H2>
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| 11 |
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| 12 | <tt>
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| 13 | by Sergey Babkin
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| 14 | <babkin@bellatlantic.net>, <sab123@hotmail.com>
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| 15 | </tt>
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| 16 | <p>
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| 17 |
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| 18 | This is a collection of supplements to Netscape 4.x on
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| 19 | Unix. Probably they will also work with Netscape 3.x,
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| 20 | possilby with minor modifications.
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| 21 | <p>
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| 22 |
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| 23 | <h4><tt>
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| 24 | Makefile<br>
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| 25 | nsfix.c<br>
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| 26 | psfonts.cf
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| 27 | </tt></h4>
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| 28 | <p>
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| 29 |
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| 30 | This is a program that allows to substitute the font metrics
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| 31 | of any PostScript font in Netscape.
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| 32 | <p>
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| 33 |
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| 34 | When Netscape prints the files to PostScript format it uses a
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| 35 | built-in table of character widths. It prints all the fixed-width
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| 36 | characters in the typeface "Courier" and all the variable-width
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| 37 | characters in the typeface "Times". And if the PostScript printer
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| 38 | has these fonts by Adobe then everything goes fine because
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| 39 | the tables inside Netscape are generated from the Adobe fonts.
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| 40 | But if the fonts are different (say, those supplied with Ghostscripts
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| 41 | or the fonts with non-latin characters) then the result is quite
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| 42 | ugly. This program allows to replace the width tables inside
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| 43 | the Netscape executable with the tables for any given font.
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| 44 | The only problem is that Netscape can hold only one set of tables
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| 45 | at once. So if you want to print with different fonts (say,
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| 46 | for different languages or encodings) you will have to make
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| 47 | multiple copies of the executable, tune each of them for its
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| 48 | font and then run them separately.
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| 49 | <p>
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| 50 |
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| 51 | I tried to make the program as machine-independent as possible.
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| 52 | But because it patches the binary files it still has the dependencies
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| 53 | on hardware. The default version as supplied was designed for
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| 54 | Intel x86 machines but it should work OK on any machine
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| 55 | with 32-bit CPU and 4Kbyte (or less) page size. If it can't
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| 56 | find the tables matching the font names on some other architecture
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| 57 | the first thing to try would be reduce the `<tt>PAGEBITS</tt>' definition
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| 58 | in the source code. On the machines with non-page-aligned structure
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| 59 | of executables it won't work at all. I don't know whether would
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| 60 | it work on the 64-bit machines. This may depend on whether the
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| 61 | Netscape executable was compiled in 32-bit or 64-bit mode. For
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| 62 | the 64-bit executables it may be neccessary to change the definition
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| 63 | of the type `<tt>tptr</tt>' to an 8-byte integer type (probably `<tt>long</tt>'
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| 64 | or `<tt>long long</tt>'). Also must be re-compiled for patching of the
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| 65 | Netscape binary for each particular machine architecture because
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| 66 | it assumes the byte order of the current machine.
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| 67 | <p>
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| 68 |
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| 69 | It might be possible to create a program that would patch
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| 70 | a running Netscape binary on the fly, that would allow
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| 71 | changing the printing fonts as neccessary when Netscape is
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| 72 | running. But this would be even more platform-dependent,
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| 73 | so I don't feel any enthusiasm about doing that.
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| 74 | <p>
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| 75 |
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| 76 | I have tested the program on the Intel machines, Netscape
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| 77 | 4.08 and 4.7, OS FreeBSD (both a.out and ELF formats of the
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| 78 | Netscape binary) and UnixWare.
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| 79 | <p>
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| 80 |
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| 81 | After all these scary issues are resolved the compiling
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| 82 | is easy: just run `<tt>make</tt>'.
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| 83 | <p>
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| 84 |
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| 85 | To command to patch the Netscape is:
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| 86 | <p>
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| 87 | <tt>
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| 88 | ./nsfix <i><netscape-binary> <config-file></i>
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| 89 | </tt>
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| 90 | <p>
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| 91 |
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| 92 | Please make a copy of the original Netscape binary before
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| 93 | patching in case anything goes wrong. Patch the copy, test
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| 94 | that it works OK and only then install it. The configuration
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| 95 | file describes the fonts that are to be used. An example
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| 96 | is provided in the file psfonts.cf.
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| 97 | <p>
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| 98 |
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| 99 | Each line in the configuration file consists of 4
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| 100 | columns:
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| 101 | <p>
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| 102 |
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| 103 | <tt><i>
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| 104 | <PS_font_name> <font_base_file> <suffix_afm> <suffix_font>
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| 105 | </i></tt>
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| 106 | <p>
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| 107 |
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| 108 | For example, the following line from my configuration file:
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| 109 | <p>
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| 110 |
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| 111 | <tt>
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| 112 | Courier /usr/lib/X11/fonts/ttf/cokoi8n.koi8-r .afm .pfa
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| 113 | </tt>
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| 114 | <p>
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| 115 |
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| 116 | says that the font `Courier' will be replaced with the
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| 117 | font taken from the file `<tt>/usr/lib/X11/fonts/ttf/cokoi8n.koi8-r.pfa</tt>'
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| 118 | and the metrics for that font will be taken from the file
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| 119 | `<tt>/usr/lib/X11/fonts/ttf/cokoi8n.koi8-r.afm</tt>' .
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| 120 | <p>
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| 121 |
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| 122 | One more caveat: the new font must have a proper encoding
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| 123 | table. Some fonts contain characters for multiple encodings
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| 124 | hoping that the program wil re-encode them as neccessary.
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| 125 | This won't work in this case, only the primary encoding table
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| 126 | of the font will be used.
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| 127 | <p>
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| 128 |
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| 129 | <h4><tt>
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| 130 | nsfilter<br>
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| 131 | nsprint<br>
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| 132 | psfonts.cf
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| 133 | </tt></h4>
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| 134 | <p>
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| 135 |
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| 136 | These are the filters for printing from Netscape.
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| 137 | <p>
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| 138 |
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| 139 | Changing the metrics is not the end of the story. This will
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| 140 | provide proper placement of the characters but not the
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| 141 | characters themselves. There are a few ways to provide
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| 142 | the characters:
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| 143 | <p>
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| 144 |
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| 145 | First, if you use GhostScript you may configure proper
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| 146 | aliases in the GhostScript configuration file. We will
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| 147 | consider this variant trivial and won't discuss it furter
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| 148 | except for one caveat: Netscape tries to re-encode the
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| 149 | fonts per the ISO Latin-1 encoding. If the primary encoding
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| 150 | of the font is different this cause unexpected effects.
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| 151 | So you still may consider using the filters (at least in a
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| 152 | simplified form) to solve this problem.
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| 153 | <p>
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| 154 |
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| 155 | Second, load the fonts right into your printer. This is
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| 156 | very much like configuring GhostScript.
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| 157 | <p>
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| 158 |
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| 159 | Third, use the provided filters. The script `<tt>nsfilter</tt>'
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| 160 | reads the output of Netscape on its standard input and
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| 161 | puts the result to its standard output. It uses the same
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| 162 | configuration file `<tt>psfonts.cf</tt>' as `<tt>nsfix</tt>'. First it
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| 163 | looks for the configuration file in the user's home
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| 164 | directory (<tt>$HOME/.netscape/psfonts.cf</tt>) and if the
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| 165 | file it not there then the second guess is the system-wide
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| 166 | configuration file <tt>/usr/local/etc/psfonts.cf</tt>. The
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| 167 | script inserts the fonts into the output and also
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| 168 | removes the Netscape's experiments with the encodings.
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| 169 | <p>
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| 170 |
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| 171 | `<tt>nsfilter</tt>' is generally intended to be ran by user, not by the
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| 172 | printing subsystem. The reason is that the user may have
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| 173 | changed fonts in his Netscape and the printing subsystem
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| 174 | would have no way to access user's configuration file.
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| 175 | But if all the users are using the same fonts then it
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| 176 | may be incorporated into the printing subsystem and use
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| 177 | the system-wide configuration file.
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| 178 | <p>
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| 179 |
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| 180 | The script `<tt>nsprint</tt>' is purely for convenience, to type it
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| 181 | as a printing command in the Netscape printing window.
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| 182 | It just pipelines the data through `<tt>nsfilter</tt>' to the
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| 183 | printing program which also gets all the arguments. Please
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| 184 | note that the SystemV-style and BSD-style systems use different
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| 185 | printing programs (although they commonly provide compatibility
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| 186 | with the other style too). The script tries to guess the
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| 187 | type of system and use its native print program, `<tt>lp</tt>' or
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| 188 | `<tt>lpr</tt>'. But in case it guesses wrong you may want
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| 189 | to change this in the script. Also if the printer does not support
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| 190 | PostScript directly this script may be a good place to
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| 191 | insert a call to GhostScript.
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| 192 | <p>
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| 193 |
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| 194 | <h4><tt>
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| 195 | notscape<br>
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| 196 | fontsz.cf
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| 197 | </tt></h4>
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| 198 | <p>
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| 199 |
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| 200 | Netscape on Unix has a very annoying "feature", it does
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| 201 | not remember the desired base size of the scalable screen
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| 202 | fonts and always resets it to 12.0 points. Even if the size
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| 203 | is changed manually in its preferences file, Netscape
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| 204 | forgets it after it exits.
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| 205 | <p>
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| 206 |
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| 207 | So my solution was to write a program which would change
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| 208 | the size to my favorite one every time right before
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| 209 | starting Netscape. `<tt>notscape</tt>' is exactly such a program,
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| 210 | it sets the font sizes an then transparently executes
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| 211 | netscape. It takes the font sizes from the file
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| 212 | `<tt>$HOME/.netscape/fontsz.cf</tt>' . An example of such file
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| 213 | is provided. The format of the file is quite self-explanatory,
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| 214 | for example the lines
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| 215 | <p>
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| 216 |
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| 217 | <tt>
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| 218 | fixed-koi8-r 140<br>
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| 219 | prop-koi8-r 150
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| 220 | </tt>
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| 221 | <p>
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| 222 |
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| 223 | mean "set the size of the fixed-width screen font in the
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| 224 | encoding koi8-r to 14.0 points; set the size of the proportional
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| 225 | (variable-width) font in the encoding koi8-r to 15.0 points".
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| 226 | <p>
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| 227 |
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| 228 |
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| 229 | <h3><tt>
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| 230 | nspr
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| 231 | </tt><br>
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| 232 | by Zvezdan Petkovic</h3>
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| 233 | <p>
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| 234 |
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| 235 | To print from Netscape, I usually print to the Postscript file first.
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| 236 | Then I use this small script to change the names of Times and Courier fonts
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| 237 | in the file and remove `/Encoding' lines. After that the file can be
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| 238 | sent to printer.
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| 239 | <p>
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| 240 | </BODY>
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| 241 | </HTML>
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| 242 |
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