Automatic Installation
If your system supports RPM (like Red Hat), than you can simply download an .rpm file and install it as root with
rpm -U culmus-fonts-0.8-2.noarch.rpm
(substitute the correct version instead).
Automatic installation packages for Debian, FreeBSD and Gentoo are available at the download page.
In case your system doesn't support any of the above, or the installation failed for some reason, you will need to install fonts manually. The following procedure covers only Linux, not Unix, even though procedure for Unix shall be similar.
Determine Installation Type
X Windows server can obtain fonts from several various sources. Run from command line
xset q
and locate in the output section named "Font path". In the list of comma-separated entries try to locate the one which says 'unix/:7100 ' (number may vary). If it is present, it is recommended that you install fonts for use with your font server (see section "Installation for Font Server " - requires root access). Otherwise you may install the fonts either system-wide (see section "Installation for X Server " - requires root access) or for your own use (see section " Personal Installation " - doesn't require root access).
If your computer is a part of large network, it may happen that you will see an entry like 'tcp/fsrv.mycompany.com:7100' (machine name and port may vary). This means that you are using an external font server, and in this case you may wish to ask network manager to install the fonts at that machine, to make them available to all users.
In addition to the above, don't forget to register the new fonts with fontconfig (see section "Registration with FontConfig"), if your system supports it.
Installation for Font Server
All the following actions should be carried out from the root shell.
Assuming you have downloaded a file culmus-0.71.tar.gz or later version, run:
mkdir -p /usr/share/fonts/he
tar -zx --directory /usr/share/fonts/he --file culmus-0.71.tar.gzThis will create a directory /usr/share/fonts/he/culmus-0.71 with all .pfa and .afm files in it.
Locate the configuration file for your font server. It is usually /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fs/config, but you can issue 'man xfs ' to determine the correct location. Now open the configuration file and locate the section which starts with 'catalogue = ' and contains a list of directories. Add the directory /usr/share/fonts/he/culmus-0.71 to the end of the list, after comma.
Restart font server by issuing either
/etc/init.d/xfs restart
or
/sbin/service xfs restart
Now the fonts should be available; proceed to section " Testing your installation ".
Installation for X Server
All the following actions should be carried out from the root shell.
Assuming you have downloaded a file culmus-0.71.tar.gz or later version, run:
mkdir -p /usr/share/fonts/he
tar -zx --directory /usr/share/fonts/he --file culmus-0.71.tar.gzThis will create a directory /usr/share/fonts/he/culmus-0.71 with all .pfa and .afm files in it.
Locate the configuration file for your X server. It is usually /etc/X11/XF86Config or /etc/X11/xorg.conf, but you can issue 'man XF86Config' to see the list of possible alternative locations. Now open the configuration file and locate the line which starts with 'FontPath' and contains a comma-separated list of directories. Add the directory /usr/share/fonts/he/culmus-0.71 to the end of the list, after comma.
Restart X server by either logging out, or restarting your computer if needed.
Now the fonts should be available; proceed to section "Testing your installation ".Personal Installation
Assuming you have downloaded a file culmus-0.71.tar.gz or later version, run:
tar -zx --directory ~ --file culmus-0.71.tar.gz
This will create a subdirectory culmus-0.71 in your home directory with all .pfa and .afm files in it.
Make the fonts available to your X server by issuing
xset +fp $HOME/culmus-0.71
xset fp rehash
Now the fonts should be available; proceed to section " Testing your installation ".
You may wish to add these commands to your ~/.xsession file, in order to avoid typing them every time you start an X session.Registration with FontConfig
FontConfig is a new font configuration tool, therefore it is only available in newer distributions (such as RedHat 8.x). If you are not sure, whether you have it, try to run 'fc-cache', and if you get a 'Command not found' error - you probably don't have it. As far as I know, Gnome 2.x and Abiword 1.x need it. KDE doesn't.
If you were installing the fonts as root, make sure they are located under /usr/share/fonts, and run 'fc-cache' as root. That's all.
If you were installing the fonts as an ordinary user, create a link .fonts from your home directory to your Culmus fonts directory:
ln -s $HOME/culmus-0.71 .fonts
or, if you already have .fonts, create inside it a link to your Culmus fonts directory:
cd .fonts
Run 'fc-cache', and you are done.
ln -s $HOME/culmus-0.71
Testing Your Installation
A. Run 'xlsfonts | grep culmus'. This command shall list all Culmus fonts.
B. If you have fontconfig, run 'fc-list David', and this will show you three entries (Bold, Medium and Medium Italic).
C. Run any Hebrew-enabled application, such as Mozilla or KWord and test whether they display Hebrew correctly.
The following instructions assume that you already have antialiasing enabled for your desktop, and want Culmus fonts to be antialiased too. In case you don't have antialiasing at all, please read this and this before proceeding any further.
Like the installation, antialiasing support is enabled differently by root and non-root.
Recent version of KDE and Gnome allow to configure the antialiasing through the control panel, but since it's a rather new feature, some things are not covered or done wrong. I recommend to use the manual procedure described below.
Global Antialiasing Support
All the following actions should be carried out from the root shell.
Open the file /etc/X11/XftConfig (some systems put it at /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XftConfig) and add to it the following line:
dir "/usr/share/fonts/he/culmus-0.71"
assuming that was your installation directory for the fonts.
User-level Antialiasing Support
Check whether your system allows user-level antialiasing support: open the file /etc/X11/XftConfig, and look for the line
includeif "~/.xftconfig"
If it is missing or commented out - too bad for you. Otherwise just add the following line:
dir "~/culmus-0.71"
to the file .xftconfig in you home directory, assuming you installed the fonts in ~/culmus-0.71.
Remark: KDE font installer tends to rewrite this file, so you need either to use the installer to install the fonts, or restore the aforementioned line each time it is overwritten.
Sub-pixel Antialiasing
If you have a laptop or an LCD screen, it is just essential that you enable sub-pixel antialiasing. Believe me, it's a whole new world! To make it work you only need to add the following line
match edit rgba = rgb;
to either of /etc/X11/XftConfig or ~/.xftconfig (see sections 2.1 and 2.2 for reference). Some laptops require the parameter to be bgr and not rgb. The following page will help you to determine the correct value (look at the figure in the section "A Smooth Feast for Our Eyes ").
a2ps
You will need a Hebrew plain text file in visual iso8859-8 encoding. You can use some combination of iconv and fribidi to get it from whatever you have.
a. Download the file iso8.edf and put it into /usr/share/a2ps/encoding. Add the following line to /usr/share/a2ps/encoding/encoding.map:
iso8 iso8
b. Add the line
AppendLibraryPath: /usr/share/fonts/he/Type1/
to the file /etc/a2ps-site.cfg (assuming that is the directory where your Culmus fonts are installed).
c. Now you can run a2ps as follows:
a2ps -X iso8 -o output.ps input.txt
This solution is by courtesy of Tzafrir Cohen and Oded Resnik.
a2ps with Fedora 35
Fedora 35 introduced the version 0.133 of Culmus fonts which contains several new TrueType fonts (TTF) and discards legacy Type1 fonts (AFM). a2ps doesn't support TrueType fonts, so in order to keep using a2ps the user needs to downgrade some Culmus fonts to version 0.130.
Steps to install Culmus 0.130:
- On a Fedora 33 machine execute:
dnf download culmus*- Copy files culmus-fonts-common-0.130-17.fc33.noarch.rpm, culmus-nachlieli-clm-fonts-0.130-17.fc33.noarch.rpm, culmus-miriam-clm-fonts-0.130-17.fc33.noarch.rpm, culmus-miriam-mono-clm-fonts-0.130-17.fc33.noarch.rpm to a Fedora 35 machine.
- On a Fedora 35 machine execute (in this order):
dnf install ./culmus-fonts-common-0.130-17.fc33.noarch.rpm
dnf install ./<file name> for the rest of filesThis solution is by courtesy of Adi Keren.
Enscript
Like a2ps, enscript also needs input in visual iso8859-8 encoding. I would recommend to use a2ps, because it doesn't require a separate set of fonts.
a. Get the "non-linux" package of Culmus fonts and extract it to the home directory. The fonts will actually reside in ~/culmus-ux. Run 'mkafmmap *.afm' in that directory and ignore the errors.
b. Add the line
AFMPath: /home/myusername/culmus-ux
to the file ~/.enscriptrc. Unfortunately enscript understands neither ~ nor $HOME, so you will have to specify the explicit path to the fonts.
c. Now you can run enscript as follows:
enscript -X ps -f Hasida-Medium10 -p output.ps input.txt
The font size (10 in this example) can be varied for your convenience. The size 11 is the best for the default fribidi wrapping of 80 chars per line. You can use alternatively "Hasida-Bold" to get bold font.
Adobe InDesign
Sometimes Culmus fonts may break to the extent that InDesign fails to properly display diacritics positions or apply other OpenType features. In this case you should purge the "Document fonts" subfolder of your InDesign job.
TeX / LaTeX environments
There are several TeX environments which feature native support of Culmus fonts, among them IvriTeX for Linux, MikTeX for Windows. Questions about Hebrew in TeX can be asked at the Hebrew TeX Facebook group.
If you have any other question, please contact Maxim Iorsh.Can I get a TrueType version of fonts?
Some fonts (specifically these with nikud support) are provided in the TrueType format, others are not. The easiest way to obatin the TrueType version of a font you like is to use the online conversion tool (link courtesy of Dotan Mazor).
Fontconfig produces multiple warnings
Fontconfig 2.10 and above produces a handful of warning of a sort
Fontconfig warning: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/65-culmus.conf", line 12: Having multiple values in <test> isn't supported and may not works as expected
This issue is thoroughly discussed at [1] and [2]. As far as I understand, this warning is purely cosmetical, and it doesn't reflect any change in existing functionality. Since culmus.conf used to work with earlier versions of fontconfig, I'm not going to fix it, unless there is some functional regression.
Is there a bowed lamed in your fonts?
Presently, bowed lamed is not formally supported in any of our fonts. It is available in "Frank Curled Lamed" font at the Developers' area. Please see also a design note on this issue.