international fonts and character encodings

[James Richard Tyrer]

Basil Fowler wrote:
> Christopher,
> 
> ISO 8859-6 is the Arabic charset.  It also includes letters particular
> to Farsi, in the same way that iso-8859-15 contains more glyphs than is
> required for American English.
> 
> I have to disagree with James Richard Tyler - there are normal fonts
> with this charset - I am using them. There is nothing wrong with unicode
> fonts, give them a try.
> 
> I too had blocks until I had fonts available that supported ISO 8859-6.
> 
> Microsoft Arial, Times and Courier New support this charset. I can embed
>  Arabic into Kmail thus و ة ى ﻻ  ر   or  Farsi thus و پ د ذ ر .  These
> letters correspond to the M -> C keys on an en_GB keyboard.  You will
> notice that the characters are different for the two languages.
> 
> Here is the list of relevant entries in my fonts.dir.
> 
> timesbd.ttf -monotype-Times New
> Roman-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-6 cour.ttf -monotype-Courier
> New-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-6 tahoma.ttf
> -microsoft-Tahoma-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-6 arialbd.ttf
> -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-6 courbd.ttf
> -monotype-Courier New-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-6 times.ttf
> -monotype-Times New Roman-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-6 
> tahomabd.ttf -microsoft-Tahoma-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-6 
> arial.ttf -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-6 
> timesbd.ttf -monotype-Times New
> Roman-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-6 cour.ttf -monotype-Courier
> New-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-6 tahoma.ttf
> -microsoft-Tahoma-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-6 arialbd.ttf
> -monotype-Arial-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-6 courbd.ttf
> -monotype-Courier New-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-6 times.ttf
> -monotype-Times New Roman-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-6 
> tahomabd.ttf -microsoft-Tahoma-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-6 
> arial.ttf -monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-6

We are left with a mystery here.  The solution to it may or may not be
relevant to his problem.

I have those fonts installed, however I do not have those entries in my
fonts.dir.

[root at localhost fonts]# cat  msttfonts/fonts.dir |grep "8859-6"
[root at localhost fonts]# cat  msttfonts/fonts.dir |grep "10646" |grep "edium-"
andalemo.ttf -monotype-andale mono-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-iso10646-1
arial.ttf -monotype-arial-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
ariali.ttf -monotype-arial-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
arialn.ttf -monotype-arial narrow-medium-r-condensed--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
arialni.ttf -monotype-arial narrow-medium-i-condensed--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
ariblk.ttf -monotype-arial black-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
berling.ttf -monotype-berling antiqua-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
berlingi.ttf -monotype-berling antiqua-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
comic.ttf -microsoft-comic sans ms-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
cour.ttf -monotype-courier new-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso10646-1
couri.ttf -monotype-courier new-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso10646-1
frutiger.ttf -linotype-frutiger linotype-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
frutit.ttf -linotype-frutiger linotype-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
georgia.ttf -microsoft-georgia-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
georgiai.ttf -microsoft-georgia-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
impact.ttf -monotype-impact-medium-r-condensed--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
ltype.ttf -b&h-lucida sans typewriter-medium-r-semicondensed--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso10646-1
ltypeo.ttf -b&h-lucida sans typewriter-medium-o-semicondensed--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso10646-1
micross.ttf -microsoft-microsoft sans serif-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
monotype.ttf -monotype-monotype.com-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
tahoma.ttf -microsoft-tahoma-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
times.ttf -monotype-times new roman-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
timesi.ttf -monotype-times new roman-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
trebuc.ttf -microsoft-trebuchet ms-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
trebucit.ttf -microsoft-trebuchet ms-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
Vera.ttf -bitstream-Bitstream Vera Sans-Medium-r-Normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
VeraIt.ttf -bitstream-Bitstream Vera Sans-Medium-o-Normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
VeraMoIt.ttf -bitstream-Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-Medium-o-Normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso10646-1
VeraMono.ttf -bitstream-Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-Medium-r-Normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso10646-1
VeraSe.ttf -bitstream-Bitstream Vera Serif-Medium-r-Normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
verdana.ttf -microsoft-verdana-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
verdanai.ttf -microsoft-verdana-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1

Note that the first command lists nothing and that I had to add "edium-"
to the second one to shorten the list.

I really don't have an explanation, but it probably has something to do
with XFree86 and the font installer programs.

It is my understanding that these fonts are UniCode encoded but that
XFree86 will subset them.  In his case, I think that this isn't relevant
since he will probably want to use utf8 encoding for his files.  I don't
know exactly what I would do on my system to use 8859-6 encoding in non-KDE
programs

--
JRT


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