Arabic-Howto

1- Console

  1. To Install the font run "setfont rayed.f16"
  2. To enable Arabic keyboard mapping run "loadkeys arabic.map", to write in Arabic press "Right Control" this will toggle the language to Arabic pressing it again will return it to English.
You can put these commands in your startup script, to run every time you log to the system. 

2- XWindows

  1. Create a new directory for Arabic Fonts "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/arabic"
  2. Put the Arabic fonts "rayed.bdf" in the new diretcory
  3. run "mkfontdir" to create "fonts.dir" file
  4. Create new file "fonts.alias", this will create aliases for fonts
    5.         rayed -rayed-rayed-medium-r-normal--16-120-100-100-p-91-iso10646-1
  5. Run "xset fp+ /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/arabic/", this will add the new directory to your font path.

    6. If you want the font be used every time you run XWindows Add the new directory to "/etc/X11/XF86Config" 
            FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/arabic/"
    then restart XWindows.
  6. To enable arabic keyboard mapping run "xmodmap Xmodmap.arabic", to enable Arabic keyboard mapping every time you run XWindows, copy the "Xmodmap.arabic" to ".Xmodmap" in your home directory.

    7. To write in Arabic in XWindows you press ALT plus the character you want, or SCROLL lock to toggle the input to Arabic.
  7. To run Xterm with Arabic font run "nxterm -fn rayed"

3- Font Utiliteis

I created some font utilities to create different font format, all font generated have the size of 8X16
    Font formats:
  1. Console use "f16" format, see "setfont" man page for describtion of that format.
  2. BDF format used by XWindows, I found the foormat of this file from Adope site.
  3. Glyph format used by me, as font drawing format, open "rayed.glyph" file to see how it looks.
    4.         createfont font.glyph > font.f16
        extractglyph font.f16 > font.glyph
        font2bdf font.f16 > font.bdf
For more information, read Thai-HOWTO Hebrew-HOWTO 
Written By: Rayed Al-Rashed rayed@briefcase.com

22 Mar 1999