9. Solaris Notes

This page is no longer relevant to SketchLaTeX, as since April 2005 it no longer renders text as fonts. Ignore this page unless you are wanting to render computer modern fonts in X or in sketch.

The main sketchlatex install instructions are Linux/XFree86 biased, but these are some notes from Kostas Oikonomou from his experience installing it on a Solaris 8 Sparc system. This is mainly for the computer-modern font installation.

2002-02-11: Updated, with a better chance working now.

9.1. ~/.sketch/userhooks.py file:

from Sketch import config
import os
config.plugin_path.append(os.path.expanduser('\~/.sketch/Plugins'))
config.font_path.append('/opt/sketch/texfonts/afm')

9.2. Creating afm directory

mkdir /opt/sketch/texfonts
cd texfonts
mkdir afm cm
cd afm
ln -s /opt/TeX/texmf/fonts/afm/bluesky/cm/* .
ln -s \~/.sketch/std.sfd .

A typical line in std.sfd should look like

CMBX5,Computer~Modern,CMBX5,-unknown-CMBX5-bold-r-normal,unknown-fontspecific,cmbx5

The "unknown"s are important.

9.3. Make the TeX Type 1 CM fonts known to the X server.

This is the hard part. I don't pretend to understand all the why's here! Assumptions: You are running the CDE, and you have the TeXLive distribution, e.g. TeXLive 6.

You must have a correct fonts.scale (not .dir) file from somewhere. A typical line in fonts.scale is

cmbx5.pfb-unknown-CMBX5-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-unknown-fontspecific

(If the lines don't look like this, edit fonts.scale to make it look like this.)

This says that the family of cmbx5 is "CMBX5". Unfortunately, the BlueSky cm fonts all have a family type of "Computer Modern", and so the X server can't tell most of them apart. To fix this problem:

• cp /opt/TeX/texmf/fonts/type1/bluesky/cm/* /opt/sketch/texfonts/cm

• Use the t1utils (from CTAN) "t1ascii" program to make ascii .pfa files out of the .pfb ones.
• Edit the .pfa files, to change the FamilyName to match theFullName:

  /FullName (CMBX5) readonly def
  /FamilyName (CMBX5) readonly def 
  

  Now each font file is its own family. Wasteful, and we could do better.
• Use t1binary to turn the .pfa files back to .pfb.
• Run mkfontdir(1) in /opt/sketch/texfonts/cm. This will make fonts.dir from fonts.scale. Read the man page of mkfontdir to see why a fonts.scale must pre-exist.
• Run makepsres(1) in /opt/sketch/texfonts/cm. This will create a file PSres.upr, which is necessary.
• Add /opt/sketch/texfonts/cm to the font path:

  xset q (shows the current font path)
  xset fp+ /opt/sketch/texfonts/cm/
  xset fp rehash
  

• Make sure that the TeXLive path to these fonts, i.e.

  /opt/TeX/texmf/fonts/type1/bluesky/cm

  is on Ghostscript's font path, GS_FONTPATH.
• Put the fonts.dir file in /opt/sketch/texfonts/cm, and link it to fonts.scale.

9.4. Adjust the font path

Assuming now Sketch works ok, to have the fontpath permanently altered, put in your .profile:

xset fp default # for safety
xset fp+ /opt/sketch/texfonts/cm/
xset fp rehash