Installing ProFont on Debian

I wish I could say it was a rewarding experience, alas, I cannot. At least not without descending into maniacal laughter for a few moments.

One of my personal quirks is an inability to let something go. Especially if it’s computer related. Being unable to just let-it-go has it’s pluses as minuses. On the plus side, I’ve solved some pretty tricky computer related problems and learned some interesting lessons along the way. On the minus side, I can waste hours working the problem, finding a solution and feel like I’ve wasted that time.

This experience goes in the minus column.

That said, I figure I’ll just pass this along so that some other poor sap doesn’t get caught up in the mess I got caught in. If I can save someone a few hours from their life, I suppose I’ll have salvaged something. Hopefully they find it prior to wasting hours of their life on the problem.

To install ProFont, untar it into a `/usr/local/share/fonts/profont’ directory. Then zip all the files using gzip:

gzip /usr/local/share/fonts/profont/*

Now, as root, create the file /etc/fonts/local.conf and fill it with the following gibberish:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <selectfont>
    <acceptfont>
      <pattern>
        <patelt name="family"><string>ProFont</string></patelt>
      </pattern>
    </acceptfont>
  </selectfont>
</fontconfig>

This is important because this file makes the font visible to the fontconfig subsystem. The crux of the problem is that bitmapped fonts, what ProFont is, are disabled by default. Finally, as root, enter the command:

fc-cache -fv

Watch the output. Check for a line with the ‘profont’ directory in it and make sure that it does not read 0 fonts, 1 dir at the end. If it does, go back up a couple of paragraphs and try again. In my case, it read 7 fonts, 1 dir and it seems likely that’s what your output should be as well. Unless you’ve removed some of the sizes, or added them.

Do NOT put this file into /etc/fonts/conf.avail as a numbered file. Do NOT put this file into /etc/fonts/conf.d. Do NOT monkey with the xset command- it will not get you anywhere. Do NOT bother with mkfontdir. Do NOT bother fonts.dir, fonts.alias or encodings.dir files.` I’m sure there are some other things that you DON’T need to bother with- I’ve just forgotten them at this point.

One last thing. If you’re using ROXTerm as your terminal emulator and the font doesn’t look right after selecting it, close down that terminal and restart it. Not X itself, just the terminal. On my system, the spacing was completely botched when I first selected it and I was just about to stick my head through my monitor. Fortunately, my hands slamming down on the keyboard closed my terminal, didn’t damage my keyboard and distracted me from the head-through-monitor thing. When I opened a new one terminal, everything looked just fine.

I was hoping for a sense of relief. Instead, all I’ve got is this blogpost.

UPDATE: If you try to install something like the proggy font, make sure you unzip the ‘pcf’ file- don’t leave it in the gz file. For some reason fontconfgi doesn’t like it that way. Everything from above still applies. Although, truth be told, the TTF version works better on my setup and none of the config file fiddling is needed. Just install the files to the directory and then us the fc-cache command.