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<TITLE>Building FontForge from source</TITLE>
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<DIV id="in">
<H1 ALIGN=Center>
FontForge build procedures
</H1>
<UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="nix-install.html#Installing">Installing from a pre-built unix
package</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="mac-install.html#Installing">Installing on a Mac</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="ms-install.html#Installing">Installing on MS/Windows</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#src-mac">Before you build (on a mac)</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#src-MS">Before you build (on MS/Windows)</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#src-source">Building and installing from source</A>
<UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="#src-distribution">Obtaining a source distribution</A>
<UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="#src-tarball">tarball</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#src-git">from the git repository</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#src-cvs"><DEL>from the cvs tree</DEL></A>
</UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="#src-Building">Building & installing it</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#src-installs">More complicated installs</A> (some configuration
options)
<LI>
<A HREF="plugins.html">Building Plugins</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="uitranslationnotes.html">Creating user interface translations</A>
</UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="#patch">Applying a patch</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#Dependencies">Dependencies (external libraries/helper programs)</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#suggested-fonts">Suggested fonts</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="#Documentation">Installing documentation</A>
<UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="#doc-tar">Installing a documentation tarball</A>
</UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="running.html">Running FontForge</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="uninstall.html">Uninstalling</A>
</UL>
<H2>
Before you build (on a <A NAME="src-mac">mac</A>)
</H2>
<P>
You must insure that you have the both the X11 server and the Xcode toolchain
installed on your system. This process is slightly different on OS/X 10.3
& 10.4
<DL>
<DT>
10.4
<DD>
<UL>
<LI>
Open the Install DVD that came with your system.
<LI>
Scroll down to "Optional Installs" and open it.
<LI>
Keep clicking <CODE>Continue</CODE> until you get to the pane "Custom Install
on "Macintosh HD""
<LI>
Press the arrow beside "Applications" so you get a list of them.
<LI>
Select X11
<LI>
Keep pressing <CODE>Continue</CODE>
<HR>
<LI>
The Xcode toolchain is optional software on the install DVD. Simply insert
the disk and click on the XCode install icon.
</UL>
<DT>
10.3
<DD>
<UL>
<LI>
The X server lives in a package called X11User on the third install CD.
<LI>
You must also install the X11SDK package on the XCode CD
<LI>
And you must install the XCode tools themselves.
</UL>
</DL>
<P>
You may also want to install the
<A HREF="http://fink.sourceforge.net/">fink</A> package which includes many
useful libraries (see the <A HREF="#Dependencies">dependencies</A> section
below for more info on this)
<P>
You must then start up a Terminal window (the Terminal Application also lives
in the Utilities sub-folder of the Applications folder) and be prepared to
type commands in that window (I know, it's very un-mac-like).
<H3>
Special note for building prior to 10.3
</H3>
<P>
OS/X has evolved over time. Certain system calls have changed. The current
source distribution should work on any 10.3+ system.
<P>
If you wish to build on a 10.2 system you must say
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>./configure --with-regular-link
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
(Rather than just saying <CODE>./configure</CODE>)
<H2>
Before you build (on <A NAME="src-MS">MS/Windows)</A>
</H2>
<P>
You must download the <A HREF="http://www.cygwin.com/">cygwin</A> environment.
You will need
<UL>
<LI>
the basic cygwin packages
<LI>
the X11 package
<LI>
the xterm package
<LI>
binutils
<LI>
the package containing gcc, make (probably called c compiler development
or something)
<LI>
You may want to download some additional optional packages to provide support
for various image formats (See the <A HREF="#Dependencies">Dependencies</A>
section below).
</UL>
<P>
<FONT COLOR="Red"><STRONG>Caveat: </STRONG></FONT>cygwin has a different
approach to the file system than Windows. A filename like
<CODE>C:\windows\fonts\arial.ttf </CODE>will be called
<CODE>/cygdrive/c/windows/fonts/arial.ttf </CODE>under cygwin (backslashes
are replaced by slashes, and the initial drive "<CODE>C:</CODE>" becomes
"<CODE>/cygdrive/c</CODE>"
<P>
Having done that you should now be ready to build. Open a cygwin terminal
window and be prepared to type commands in it.
<H2>
Building and installing from <A NAME="src-source">source</A>
</H2>
<H3>
Obtaining a source <A NAME="src-distribution">distribution</A>
</H3>
<P>
There are two basic ways to obtain a source distribution. One is by downloading
an entire source tree from the web, and the other is by using the git utility
to maintain a source tree on your machine which will be as up to date as
possible. The former solution provides more stability, the latter provides
access to cutting edge bugs.
<H4>
<A NAME="src-tarball">tarball</A>
</H4>
<P>
<A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/projects/fontforge/files/">Sourceforge's
file release system </A>will contain a tarball (a file with the extension
for .tar.bz2).
<P>
After you have downloaded one of these packages, either copy the tarball
to where you are, or move to the directory containing the tarball (I can't
provide explicit instructions here, because I don't know where your browser
put the file) and type (do not type "$"):
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>bunzip2 fontforge*.tar.bz2
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>tar xf fontforge*.tar
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>cd fontforge-*
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<H4>
from the <A NAME="src-git">git</A> repository
</H4>
<P>
git is another version control system. To set up your own (local, read-only)
copy of the git repository (including documentation), create a new directory,
cd into it and type the following (do not type "$", when it asks for a password,
just hit return):
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>git clone git://fontforge.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/fontforge/fontforge
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
You can also
<A HREF="http://fontforge.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=fontforge/fontforge;a=summary">browse
the git repository</A> online. Or see
<A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sourceforge/wiki/Git">about using
git on sourceforge</A> for more information, or read the
<A HREF="http://git-scm.com/documentation">git documentation</A>.
<H4>
<DEL>from the <A NAME="src-cvs">cvs</A> tree</DEL>
</H4>
<P>
The cvs repository is no longer up to date. It still exists (for now) for
historical purposes (and in case something goes wrong with git) but it is
no longer in active service and no commits have been made to it since
13-Feb-2011. You really want to use git, above.
<P>
<DEL>cvs is a nifty set of utilities which allows concurrent access to a
source tree by many users. To set up your own (local) copy of the cvs tree
(including documentation), create a new directory, cd into it and type the
following (do not type "$", when it asks for a password, just hit
return):</DEL>
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@fontforge.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge login
CVS password:
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@fontforge.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge checkout fontforge
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>cd fontforge
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
<DEL>Once you have established a directory you may update it to obtain the
most recent version of the source by typing:</DEL>
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>cd fontforge
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@fontforge.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge login
CVS password:
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@fontforge.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge update
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
<DEL>You can also
<A HREF="http://fontforge.cvs.sourceforge.net/fontforge/fontforge/">browse
the CVS tree</A> online. Or see
<A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=103338">sourceforge's description
</A>for more information, or read the
<A HREF="http://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual/">CVS manual</A>.</DEL>
<H3>
<A NAME="src-Building">Building</A> & installing it
</H3>
<P>
Now you have the source installed on your system and you should be positioned
at the top directory of that tree. You need to configure your package (this
is a little program that figures out how to use your system), and then build
it (do not type the "$"):
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>./configure
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>make
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
<A NAME="su">Having</A> done this you will probably want to install what
you have built. This should be done as root:
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>su
<FONT COLOR="Gray">password:</FONT> ******
<FONT COLOR="Gray"># </FONT>make install
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
On the mac the process is slightly different:
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>sudo make install
<FONT COLOR="Gray">password:</FONT> ******
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
While on cygwin, where there is no root, you just say:
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>make install
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<H3>
More complicated <A NAME="src-installs">installs</A>
</H3>
<P>
The configure script allows you to turn off and on various features of fontforge
that might not be appropriate for your system. Type
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>./configure --help
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
for a complete list of options. Some of the most useful are described below.
<H4>
Building fontforge without X
</H4>
<P>
If you don't want to install X11 on your system, you can use fontforge as
a command line tool which can execute scripts to manipulate fonts. FontForge's
scripting language is described in detail <A HREF="scripting.html">in the
section on scripting</A>, or the <A HREF="python.html">section on python
scripting</A>.
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>./configure --without-x
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<H4>
Building fontforge to edit type3 fonts
</H4>
<P>
If you do want to edit PostScript type3 fonts, you can configure fontforge
to give you access to more drawing modes than are generally available in
fonts.
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>./configure --enable-type3
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<H4>
Building fontforge to edit device tables
</H4>
<P>
If you do want to create device tables (which allow you to fix up kerning
data at a specific pixel size) in OpenType fonts
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>./configure --enable-devicetables
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<H4>
Building fontforge to use higher precision internally
</H4>
<P>
FontForge generally uses floats to represent coordinates. If you need greater
accuracy...
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>./configure --enable-double
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<H4>
Building fontforge with the tile path command available
</H4>
<P>
FontForge has a command which lets you tile a pattern along a path. Generally
this is disabled as it isn't what most fonts will use, but for some decorative
fonts it can be useful.
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>./configure --enable-tilepath
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<H4>
Building fontforge (also) as a python extension
</H4>
<P>
If you want to write python scripts in normal python (as opposed to within
the python embedded in fontforge)
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>./configure --enable-pyextension
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<H4>
Installing FontForge somewhere other than <CODE>/usr/local</CODE>
</H4>
<P>
If you want to install fontforge in a different directory (say in /usr/bin)
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>./configure --prefix=/usr
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<H4>
Installing <A NAME="installing-documentation-git">documentation</A> from
the cvs tree
</H4>
<P>
If you have a copy of the git repository on your system then you should be
able to type
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray"># </FONT>make install_docs
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
Again you will probably need to be root to do this install too. Use either
"su" or "sudo" as appropriate for your system (<A HREF="#su">see above</A>).
<H2>
Applying a <A NAME="patch">patch</A>
</H2>
<P>
From time to time someone will report a bug or request a feature and I will
reply by sending a patch which purports to fix the bug or implement the feature.
But how do you use the patch file I sent?
<P>
patch is a standard unix utility (Try typing $ man patch, for more info)
which will make changes to text files. I use it to modify the source files
of FontForge.
<P>
So before you can apply the patch you must
<A HREF="source-build.html#src-distribution">have the source code </A>available
to you. If you choose to download from the git repository, then, in all
probability, the patch will already have been applied (so you don't need
to do anything with it). But if you download one of my tarballs then you
will need to apply the patch:
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>bunzip2 fontforge*.tar.bz2
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>tar xf fontforge*.tar
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>cd fontforge-*/fontforge
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>patch <foobar.patch
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>cd ..
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>./configure
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>make
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>make install
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<H2>
<A NAME="Dependencies">Dependencies</A> (external libraries/helper programs)
</H2>
<P>
FontForge tries to avoid hard dependencies. If a library is missing then
fontforge will (in most cases, but not on cygwin) be able to continue to
run, it will just lack whatever functionality the library provides. So if
you don't need to import tiff images, you don't need libtiff. If you don't
need to handle SVG fonts you don't need libxml2, etc.
<H3>
Executables
</H3>
<P>
If you want to do autotracing around character images you should also download
either
<UL>
<LI>
Peter Selinger's <A HREF="http://potrace.sf.net/">potrace</A>
<LI>
Martin Weber's <A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/projects/autotrace/">autotrace
program.</A>
</UL>
<H3>
Libraries
</H3>
<P>
None is required for the proper compilation/execution of FontForge, if the
libraries are not present they will not be used. (If the machine on which
your executable was build didn't have them, then you must not only install
the libraries, but <A HREF="#source">rebuild fontforge from source</A>) If
your machine doesn't have them and you want them they are available from:
<UL>
<LI>
Image Libraries (to allow FontForge to import images in those formats generally
used as backgrounds for autotracing)
<UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html">libpng</A> (and required
helper <A HREF="http://www.gzip.org/zlib/">zlib</A>)
<LI>
<A HREF="http://www.libtiff.org/">libtiff</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libungif.htm">libungif</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="http://www.ijg.org/">libjpeg</A>
</UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="http://xmlsoft.org/">libxml2</A><BR>
To parse SVG files and fonts
<LI>
<A HREF="http://libspiro.sf.net/">libspiro</A><BR>
Raph Levien's clothoid to bezier spline conversion routines. If this is available
fontforge will allow you to edit with clothoid splines (spiro).
<LI>
<A HREF="http://libuninameslist.sf.net">libuninameslist</A><BR>
To display unicode names and annotations.
<LI>
<A HREF="http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/">libiconv</A><BR>
Only important for systems with no built-in iconv(). If not present FontForge
contains a minimal version of the library which allows it to work. But if
you want to use libiconv you must configure it with
<CODE>--enable-extra-encodings</CODE>, as FontForge requires Shift-JIS.
<LI>
<A HREF="http://freetype.sf.net/">freetype</A><BR>
To do a better job rasterizing bitmaps, and to enable the truetype debugger.
<TABLE BORDER CELLPADDING="6" WIDTH="50%" ALIGN=CENTER>
<TR>
<TD BGCOLOR="#ffff00">Some of FontForge's commands depend on you
compiling freetype with the byte code interpreter enabled. It
used to be disabled by default because of some
<A HREF="http://freetype.sourceforge.net/patents.html">patents
granted to Apple</A>. Now that they have expired, you no longer
need to worry about this, unless your setup happens to use an old
library version. Then you may enable the interpreter by setting
the appropriate macro in <I>.../include/freetype/config/ftoption.h</I>
before you build the library (see the README.UNX file on the top
level of the freetype distribution).
<P>
To enable the truetype debugger, FontForge needs to have the freetype source
directories available when it is built (there are some include files there
which it depends on)</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
<LI>
<A HREF="http://www.cygwin.com/">cygwin</A><BR>
To build or run on a MS Windows system you need the cygwin environment and
libraries.
<LI>
libintl<BR>
Is standard on most unixes. It is part of the fink package on the mac. Handles
UI localization.
<LI>
<A HREF="http://www.python.org/">libpython</A><BR>
If present when FontForge is compiled, allows the user to execute python
scripts within fontforge (and you can configure fontforge so that fontforge's
functionality can be imported into python -- that is fontforge both
<I>extends</I> and <I>embeds</I> python)
<LI>
<A HREF="http://x.org/">libX</A><BR>
Normally FontForge depends on the X11 windowing system, but if you are just
interested in the scripting engines (with no user interface), it may be built
on systems without X (the configure script should figure this out).
<LI>
<A HREF="http://www.cairographics.org/">libcairo</A><BR>
Cairo handles drawing anti-aliased splines in the outline glyph view. It
is dependent on libfontconfig, libXft and perhaps other libraries.
<LI>
<A HREF="http://www.pango.org/">libpango</A><BR>
Pango draws text for complex scripts. It depends on glib-2.0, libfontconfig,
libfreetype, libXft, and perhaps other libraries.
<LI>
Under Mac OS/X these libraries are available from the
<A HREF="http://fink.sourceforge.net/">fink project</A> and from
<A HREF="http://www.macports.org/">macports</A>.
<HR>
</UL>
<H3>
Extra Files
</H3>
<P>
If you want to edit <A NAME="cidmaps">CID keyed </A>fonts you need these
<A HREF="cidmaps.tgz">character set descriptions</A>. (These were last updated
22-Dec-2004)
<P>
<A NAME="suggested-fonts">Once</A> upon a time, fontforge only used X11 bitmap
fonts, on most systems in now uses fontconfig.
<P>
There seem plenty of good unicode outline fonts, so I shan't provide any
suggestions. To install them you simply create a subdirectory called .fonts
in your home directory, and then copy the font file into that subdirectory.
<P>
<FONT COLOR="RED"><STRONG>Warning for mac users:</STRONG> pango uses opentype
to layout complex scripts. Most fonts on the macintosh are in a different
format -- glyphs from them will display fine (so they work for latin, greek
cyrillic, japanese, chinese, etc.) but more complex features will probably
not work (so Arabic and Indic scripts may not be displayed properly).</FONT>
<P>
In the old days there weren't many bitmap fonts with good unicode coverage
so I provided a list of suggested fonts. That's not nearly as important now.
But if fontconfig isn't available for you, you might want to pull down some
old unicode bitmap fonts.
<UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="http://khdd.net/kanou/fonts/ff/fontviewfont-en.html">Kanou's fontview
fonts</A>
<A HREF="http://khdd.net/kanou/fonts/ff/fontviewfont.html"><IMG SRC="flags/Nisshoki-Japan.png"
WIDTH="39" HEIGHT="26" ALIGN="Middle"></A>
<LI>
<A HREF="http://czyborra.com/unifont/">The unifont</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="http://clr.nmsu.edu/~mleisher/cu.html">ClearlyU's font</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/">The FreeFont project</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-fonts.html">X fixed</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="http://canopus.iacp.dvo.ru/~panov/cm-unicode/">Computer Modern Unicode
fonts</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/unicode/fontguide/">Unicode
Font Guide for Free/Libre Open Source Operating Systems</A>
<HR>
<LI>
<A HREF="nonBMP/index.html">FontForge's conventions for non-BMP unicode bitmap
fonts</A>
</UL>
<P>
To install these, put them in a directory, and in that directory type:
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE> <FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>mkfontdir
<FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>xset fp+ `pwd`
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
You should make sure that the xset line happens whenever X is started on
your machine (put it in your .xsession file).
<H2>
<A NAME="Documentation">Documentation</A>
</H2>
<P>
<A HREF="overview.html">The complete fontforge manual is available online.</A>
<UL>
<LI>
A documentation tarball can be retrieved from the
<A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/projects/fontforge/files/fontforge-docs/">file
release system</A>
<LI>
A
Japanese<IMG SRC="flags/Nisshoki-Japan.png" WIDTH="39" HEIGHT="26" ALIGN="Middle">
<A HREF="fontforge_ja_htdocs-20060822.tar.bz2">tarball</A> (Version 22-Aug-2006)
<STRONG>Out of Date!</STRONG>
<LI>
There is a shorter tutorial which
<UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="editexample.html">Is available online</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="ja/editexample.html"><SPAN class="jatutorial"><SPAN>
</SPAN></SPAN></A><IMG SRC="spacer1x20.png" HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=1 ALIGN="Top"><STRONG>Out
of Date!</STRONG>
<LI>
<A HREF="http://edt1023.sayya.org/fontforge/editexample.html"><SPAN class="zhtutorial"><SPAN>
</SPAN></SPAN>
</A><IMG SRC="spacer1x20.png" HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=1 ALIGN="Top"><STRONG>Out of
Date!</STRONG>
<LI>
<A HREF="de/editexample.html"><IMG SRC="flags/GermanFlag.png" WIDTH="39"
HEIGHT="26" BORDER="0"></A><STRONG>Out of Date!</STRONG>
<LI>
<A HREF="fontforge-tutorial.pdf">Can be downloaded as pdf</A>
<LI>
<A HREF="tutorial.tgz">example files </A>(to work through the tutorial yourself)
</UL>
<LI>
The git repository contains a sub-directory called htdocs containing the
manual
<UL>
<LI>
The git repository contains a sub-sub-directory called htdocs/ja containing
the Japanese translation of the manual
</UL>
<P>
See the general comments on the <A HREF="#src-git">git repository </A>to
see how to access this.<BR>
See the section on <A HREF="#installing-documentation-git">installing git
documentation </A>to see how to install the docs from the git tree
</UL>
<H3>
<A NAME="doc-tar">Installing a documentation tarball</A>
</H3>
<P>
Once you have downloaded the documentation tarball as described above, you
should move to the directory containing it, and type:
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>su
password: ******
<FONT COLOR="Gray"># </FONT>mkdir -p /usr/local/share/doc/fontforge
<FONT COLOR="Gray"># </FONT>mv fontforge_htdocs*.tar.bz2 /usr/local/share/doc/fontforge
<FONT COLOR="Gray"># </FONT>cd /usr/local/share/doc/fontforge
<FONT COLOR="Gray"># </FONT>tar xfj fontforge_htdocs*.tar.bz2
<FONT COLOR="Gray"># </FONT>rm fontforge_htdocs*.tar.bz2
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
After doing this fontforge will be able to find the docs on your system when
you press the [F1] (or [Help]) key. If you don't do this fontforge will attempt
to find documentation online.
<P>
(on some strict unix systems you may need to do the following instead)
<BLOCKQUOTE id="shell">
<PRE><FONT COLOR="Gray">$ </FONT>su
password: ******
<FONT COLOR="Gray"># </FONT>mkdir -p /usr/local/share/doc/fontforge
<FONT COLOR="Gray"># </FONT>mv fontforge_htdocs*.tar.bz2 /usr/local/share/doc/fontforge
<FONT COLOR="Gray"># </FONT>cd /usr/local/share/doc/fontforge
<FONT COLOR="Gray"># </FONT>bunzip2 fontforge_htdocs*.tar.bz2
<FONT COLOR="Gray"># </FONT>tar xf fontforge_htdocs*.tar
<FONT COLOR="Gray"># </FONT>rm fontforge_htdocs*.tar
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
<HR>
<UL>
<LI>
<A HREF="running.html">Running FontForge</A>
</UL>
</DIV>
</BODY></HTML>
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