changing Arabic font under Konqueror (Sarge-->Etch)

[James Richard Tyrer]

Hugo Coolens wrote:
> I recently made the step to Debian Etch. Unfortunately the font used
> in Konqueror to display Arabic is not as good as it was under Sarge.
> I have put screendumps on my website so you can
> see the difference:
> http://antec2.dyndns.org/~coolens/hugocoolens/download/etch.gif
> http://antec2.dyndns.org/~coolens/hugocoolens/download/sarge.gif
> 
These appear to be sans-serif.
> 
> Does anyone here know how I can bring back the font used in Debian
> Sarge Konqueror to Debian Etch Konqueror?

> I am also interested in the _names_ of the two fonts

That is clearly an issue.  Actually it is your main problem.  There are 
Arabic only fonts, but it is most likely that you have a Unicode font 
that includes Arabic glyphs.  So, I have no real idea how to determine 
this.  In theory, it should be the first sans-serif font which 
FontConfig finds that contains the glyphs.

> The only problem with the old font was that I got a white box
> when there was a so called uplifted 'alif maqSuura e.g. on a yaa', the
> new font does perform even worse by displaying the white box behind
> the character.

You can use any font which you want for Arabic script.  You just need to 
have the font installed and have your configuration files for FontConfig 
(/etc/fonts/) set up correctly.  But doing this is a black art.

-- 
JRT