Mozilla 1.0 / XFT / Arabic

Gives Windows XP's ClearType a run for the money :)
This is basically an XFT enabled build of Mozilla 1.0 with the arabic patch applied. Xft enables anti-aliased fonts in Mozilla using your favorite arabic true type fonts. The Mozilla arabic patch fixes many arabic related bugs in the normal Mozilla.
Read more about the Xft in Mozilla here.
Read more about the Arabic Patch here.
Check out the before and after screenshots -

BEFORE    Stock Mozilla with the standard arabic fonts.

AFTER    Xft font smoothing (anti-aliasing) with correct arabic rendering.

Click here to see a screenshot of my desktop with a few sample arabic pages open.

The Xft feature looks for true type fonts in specific places. I found that not working in my case so I followed the instructions to add a ~/.fonts.conf file and that worked great (see this).

Arabic True Type

I basically copied all my .ttf fonts from my windows machine, that includes the basic arabic fonts. Here is what I did:

• Put all the .ttf files in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype
• Edit /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fs/config , add the above path to the catalogue.

That doesn't seem to work all the time, but here is the real fixer, create a file named .fonts.conf in your home directory. Put the following inside it:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
	<fontconfig>
		<dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype</dir>
	</fontconfig>

That should do it.. You can add more directories also. Enjoy...

First of all, the very cool guys at Arabeyes have done so much to support the arabic language on the *nix platform. You really ought to pay them a visit and lend a helping hand if you can.

I can be reach on my email ahmadANTISPAM@bitbuilder.com
remove the ANTISPAM part in my name before you send