Salam/hi all,
Ok, this was not that easy stuff if you don’t know how to do it and where to find it. I mean 1st fonts, then installation or copying to the right directories. Websites like bbcurdu.com and urdupoint.com are common Urdu news sites which i am sure most of the Urdu reading surfers will surf for the latest news and articles. These two websites use different fonts rendering system for browsers like Firefox and Chrome. I am not using any Urdu keyboard here and not using translation for the whole system, its just how to read Urdu websites in Linux, this tutorial is just for installing fonts system wide for browsers in Linux not a language pack etc. I will focus on two distros at the moment, Ubuntu and openSUSE. Ubuntu 9.04,9.10 and openSUSE 11.2(KDE4.4.3) will be used for the installation with Firefox 3.6.3, Firefox 3.0.19, Chrome 6.0.400.0. If you are on 10.04(Ubuntu), you can install it there also by the mentioned way below.
Before going further to discuss the installation, we need to download these fonts:
1- NafeesWeb.ttf (For urdupoint.com etc)
Go to this web page, http://www.crulp.org/software/localization/Fonts/nafeesWebNaskh.html
Download the file with this title ‘Font with MS VOLT project source‘. Unzip it in the directory where it is downloaded. Until here we are done with this font.
2- asunaskh.ttf (For bbcurdu.com etc)
Download directly from this site, http://www.urdulife.com/font/asunaskh.ttf
So lets start from openSUSE, the easy one which will make your life easier.
1- Open ‘Personal Settings(Configure desktop)‘ and click on ‘Font Installer‘
2- Click on ‘Add‘ button and navigate to the fonts where you downloaded it.
3- It will ask for three options like: Personal, System, Cancel. Which means you want to install it just for this user or system wide for all. I went for System to install it system wide for other users too. It will ask for the root password upon installation.
4- Repeat step 2 and 3 for the 2nd font.
5- Restart your browser and there you go.
Easy i would say!
Now its turn for Ubuntu. Here also have two types of installation/copying, one is system wide and another is user specific.
Method-1 (User specific):
1- You are not much familiar with this terminal thing?, so lets do it the easy way then. Go to your home directory like my case /home/mian. You can use nautilus for this. Click on Places -> Computer and then navigate to your home directory.
2- Now click on ‘View‘ in the menu and check ‘Show hidden files‘. Alternatively you can use Ctrl+h, just press and hold Ctrl and press h.
3- Search for folder .fonts, is it there?, if yes then no worries. Ohh..is not there?.. don’t worry, lets create it, right click and create a directory with name without quotes ‘.fonts‘. (Note the point before fonts, don’t be confused. It’s dot with fonts, so that it becomes .fonts).
4- Now copy the fonts from the downloaded directory and paste it in .fonts directory.
5- Now a little bit terminal thing, but don’t worry its not rocket science. Just open terminal and type this.
sudo fc-cache -vf
If ask for the password, enter your password.
6- You are done, restart the browsers and check the websites.
Method-2 (System wide):
1- In this case, we will use terminal, but will be just two commands to get you these fonts working. Open terminal and type this:
gksudo nautilus
Enter your password to proceed.
2- Now go to this directory, /usr/share/fonts/truetype and create a folder named ‘urdu‘ without quotes, and paste fonts here from the downloaded directory. Close this window now.
3- Now in the terminal, run this command:
sudo fc-cache -vf
4- Done, restart Firefox or Chrome or other browser and navigate to your favorite Urdu site.
I haven’t tested this on new release of Ubuntu 10.04. I have to give it a try later.
Here are the two working examples in the form of snapshots for urdupoint and bbcurdu after font installation:
urdupoint.com
bbcurdu.com
So now your fonts are installed and working. Enjoy reading and surfing these sites.
Good luck with it!
Arif
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