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Installation

See section Prerequisites, for what you need to have installed before you can compile these programs.

After that, here's what to do:

Run sh configure in the top-level directory. This tries to figure out system dependencies and the installation prefix. See section The configure script, for options and other information about the configure script.
If necessary, edit the paths or other definitions in the top-level `GNUmakefile' and in `include/c-auto.h'.
Run GNU make. For example, if it's installed as `make', just type `make' in the top-level directory. If all goes well, this will compile all the programs.
Install the programs and supporting data files with make install.

If you encounter problems anywhere along the line, let us know. Known problems are listed below (see section Problems). See section Bugs, for details on how to submit a useful bug report.

configure: Options and frills for the `configure' script.
Prereqs: What's needed before installation.
Problems: Known trouble.

The `configure` script

(This section is largely from the Autoconf manual, by David MacKenzie. See section `Running configure scripts' in Autoconf.)

The configure script that comes with the font utilities is generated automatically by the Autoconf program. You can regenerate configure by rerunning Autoconf (for example, if a new version of Autoconf is released); you must arrange for Autoconf to use the macros in `./aclocal.m4' (see section `Generating configure' in Autoconf).

The purpose of configure is to adapt the source code to your system: for example, the name of the directory header file (`dirent.h' or `sys/dir.h'), whether an install program is available, and so on.

Normally, you do not need to give any options to configure; you cd to the directory with the source code and type `configure'. Exceptions: if `.' is not in your PATH, you must type `./configure'; if you are using a non-Bourne-compatible shell on some old systems, you must samp `sh configure'.

Running configure takes a minute or two. While it is running, it prints some messages that tell what it is doing. If you don't want to see the messages, run configure with its standard output redirected to `/dev/null'; for example, `configure >/dev/null'.

To compile the package in a different directory from the one containing the source code, you must use a variant of Make that supports the VPATH variable, such as GNU Make. cd to the directory where you want the object files and executables to go and run configure with the option `--srcdir=dir', where dir is the directory that contains the source code. Using this option is unnecessary if the source code is in the parent directory of the one in which you are compiling; configure automatically checks for the source code in `..' if it does not find it in `.'.

configure guesses the default installation prefix (we'll call it $(prefix)) by looking for the directory which contains the command gcc, and using its parent. For example, if gcc is installed as `/usr/local/gnu/bin/gcc', $(prefix) will be set to `/usr/local/gnu'.

You can override this default guess for the installation prefix by giving configure the option `--prefix=path'. You can also specify separate installation prefixes for architecture-specific files and architecture-independent files by giving configure the option `--exec_prefix=xpath'. Then xpath will be the prefix for installing programs and libraries. Data files and documentation will still use the regular prefix. Normally, all files are installed using the regular prefix.

You can tell configure to figure out the configuration for your system, and record it in `config.status', without actually configuring the package. To do this, give configure the `--no-create' option. Later, you can run `./config.status' to actually configure the package. This option is useful mainly in `Makefile' rules for updating `config.status' and the `Makefile' itself. You can also give `config.status' the `--recheck' option, which makes it rerun configure with the same arguments you used before. This is useful if you change configure.

configure ignores any other arguments that you give it.

On systems that require unusual options for compilation or linking that the package's configure script does not know about, you can give configure initial values for variables by setting them in the environment. In Bourne-compatible shells, you can do that on the command line like this:

CC='gcc -traditional' LIBS=-lposix sh configure

The Make variables that you might want to override with environment variables when running configure are:

(For these variables, any value given in the environment overrides the value that configure would choose.)

CC: The C compiler program. The default is gcc if that is in your PATH, cc otherwise.
INSTALL: The program to use to install files. The default is install if you have it, cp otherwise.

(For these variables, any value given in the environment is added to the value that configure chooses.)

DEFS: Configuration options, in the form `-Dfoo -Dbar...'. Packages that use the Autoconf macro AC_CONFIG_HEADER (including the file utilities) do not use this variable.
LIBS: Libraries to link with, in the form `-lfoo -lbar...'.

Of course, problems requiring manual intervention (e.g., setting these variables) should ideally be fixed by updating either the Autoconf macros or the `configure.in' file for that package.

Prerequisites

To compile and use these programs, the following are necessary:

The GNU C compiler, version 1.40 or newer.
GNU Make; probably any version newer than 3.50 or so will do.
X11R4 or R5 unshared libraries and headers. These are only necessary to run XBfe (see section XBfe) or for Limn (see section Limn) to display its results online. (You also need an X11 server, naturally.) You might be able to compile using the X11 shared libraries, but we haven't tried that.
To make any substantial use of the fonts you create, you will probably need TeX, Metafont, and their friends, especially PLtoTF and GFtoPK.
Ghostscript, version 2.4 or newer. You only need this if you want to use GSrenderfont or BZRedit.
The GNU Awk program, gawk. This is only needed if you want to use GSrenderfont.

See the section below for information on how to get all these programs.

Archives: Where to find programs.

Archives

The canonical source for all GNU software, including the GNU C compiler, GNU make, and Ghostscript, is `prep.ai.mit.edu [18.71.0.38]:pub/gnu'. That directory is replicated at many other sites around the world, including:

United States:

  wuarchive.wustl.edu   gatekeeper.dec.com:pub/GNU
  uxc.cso.uiuc.edu      ftp.uu.net:packages/gnu

Europe:

  archive.eu.net        src.doc.ic.ac.uk:gnu    ftp.funet.fi
  nic.funet.fi:pub/gnu  ugle.unit.no            isy.liu.se
  ftp.diku.dk

elsewhere:

  ftp.cs.titech.ac.jp   utsun.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp:ftpsync/prep
  archie.au:gnu

You can also order tapes with GNU software from the Free Software Foundation (thereby supporting the development of the font utilities and the rest of the GNU project); send mail to `gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu' for the latest prices and ordering information, or retrieve the file `DISTRIB' from a GNU archive.

The canonical source for the X window system is `export.lcs.mit.edu:pub/R5'. That directory is also shadowed at many other sites, including `gatekeeper.dec.com'. The FSF also sells X distribution tapes.

TeX is more scattered. A complete Unix TeX distribution is available for ftp on the machine `byron.u.washington.edu', or by ordering a tape from the University of Washington (send email to `elisabet@u.washington.edu'. What is on `byron' for ftp is often out-of-date, though.

The canonical sources for just Web2C--the port of just TeX, Metafont, and friends to Unix, without DVI processors, fonts, macro packages, etc.---are:

ftp.cs.umb.edu [192.12.26.23]:pub/tex/                  (Boston)
ics.uci.edu [128.195.1.1]:TeX/                          (California)
ftp.th-darmstadt.de [130.83.55.75]:pub/tex/src/web2c/   (Germany)

At all these sites, the files to retrieve are `web.tar.Z' and `web2c.tar.Z'.

The DVI-to-PostScript driver we recommend is Tom Rokicki's Dvips, and the X window system driver we recommend is Paul Vojta's XDvi. These programs are available from, respectively,

labrea.stanford.edu:pub/dvips*
export.lcs.mit.edu:contrib/xdvi.tar.Z

We have modified XDvi and Dvips to use the same path searching code as the current distribution of TeX and these font utilities; the modified versions are available from `ftp.cs.umb.edu:pub/tex'.

To use Metafont, you must have a file defining output devices. (See section Metafont and BZRto.) We recommend you obtain `modes.mf' from

ftp.cs.umb.edu:pub/tex/modes.mf

You can retrieve the document describing all the details of the naming scheme for TeX fonts from

ftp.cs.umb.edu [192.12.26.23]:pub/tex/fontname.tar.Z

Problems

This section lists some things which have caused trouble during installation. If you encounter other problems, please send a bug report. See section Bugs, for how to submit a useful bug report.

You may get a warning from the compiler about `-static' being an unrecognized option. Ignore it. (This has already been reported to `bug-gcc'.)
Under SunOS 4.x, the programs which use X (XBfe and Limn) cannot be dynamically linked, because (apparently) `/bin/ld' pulls in the entire `.sa' file, and the Form, Label, and Viewport widgets are multiply defined. (To us, this seems to defeat the whole purpose of having libraries. It also seems bizarre to us that X was written so that these multibyte functions are always needed (via __Xsi...), and furthermore that the multibyte functions need to specifically call the dynamic linking functions.) The file `lib/dlsym.c' (from the MIT X distribution) defines the dlsym, dlclose, and dlopen symbols, so static linking should work now. If the current setup fails, it might work to change `-lXaw' in the definition of X_libraries in `lib/defs.make' to the full pathname of the Xaw library.
On many machines (Sun 3 or Sun 4 running SunOS 4.1, Sun386i running 4.0.2, 386 running ISC 2.2), GCC 1.40 gets a fatal error compiling `imageto/main.c' with `-O'. Just use `-g' for that file, or use a newer version of GCC.
On a 386 running Interactive UNIX 2.2, `<math.h>' declares the wrong prototype for fmod: the routine takes two doubles, not one. We simply corrected our system include file. You may get compiler warnings for the file `widgets/Bitmap.c' at the lines which use the Xt function XtIsRealized on systems which define NULL as (void *) 0. The reason is that macro definition of XtIsRealized in `<X11/IntrinsicP.h>' incorrectly compares the result of XtWindowOfObject to NULL, instead of 0. If the warnings bother you, fix `IntrinsicP.h'.
The application resource files `limn/Limn' and `xbfe/XBfe' must be installed in a directory where your X server can find them. This directory varies according to how X was installed; in the default X distribution, it is `/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults'. If you cannot (or do not want to) write in the default directory, you can install them elsewhere and set the XAPPLRESDIR environment variable to that directory. See the tutorial on resources that comes with the MIT X distribution (`mit/doc/tutorial/resources.txt') for more information.