Installing Tamil fonts on Linux

Update : Feb 2007

Number of Tamil sites putting up websites in Tamil. And here is how you can view the pages on a Linux browser.

This example talks about Bhamini font. Others fonts can be installed similarly. Almost all of them are distributed in Windows format (TTF - True Type Fonts). Luckily X-Font Server (xfs) on recent distributions support TTF fonts.

Easy way

Right click on the font.TTF in Konqueror and say Install! (you may need to be root for system wide install)

Not so easy way

  1. copy the ttf font in the TTF font directory. ON Mandrake (9.0) it is /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF. (You may need to be root for this and following operations)
  2. rename the file XftCache
  3. run mkfontdir from within the dir
  4. restart XFS by xfs -restart or /etc/init.d/xfs restart
  5. test the font by using yoru favourite font tester program (kfontsel, gnome-font-selector). Fireup kcontrol and go to font section. You'd see the new installed font listed as bamini
  6. restart your browser and go to a tamil site (canadian tamil broadcasting corporation)
  7. enjoy!
I have tested with the following browsers under XFree-4.0

Unix-friendly Tamil fonts

Update

Tue Mar 11 19:47:48 PST 2003

I also installed Georgia font. Now the web pages look so cool in Opera + Anti Aliasing + Georgia!