How to use Japanese True Type fonts?

[Mike Fabian <mfabian@example.com>]

Has anybody tried to use Japanese True Type fonts with Linux?

What is the best way to do this? Which fontserver can be recommended
for that purpose?

I tried to use the free Japanese True Type fonts available from:

http://www.linux.or.jp/~ishikawa/linux/dists/FreeType/xtt-fonts_0.19990222-3.tar.gz

Until now I tried to use these fonts with XFree86-4.0 (should have
support for True Type fonts already build in) and with the font server
'xfstt' but without any success.

First I tried it with XFree86-4.0.  I unpacked the tarball (which
contains the fonts, fonts.dir, and fonts.alias files), and added the
directory to X's fontpath with

    xset fp+ `pwd`

Now 'xlsfonts' lists these Japanese True Type fonts, it shows for
example the fonts 

    -watanabe-mincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
    -watanabe-mincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0

among many others. But I can't display any of these fonts with 'xfd':

    mfabian@example.com:~/xtt-fonts-0.19990222$ xfd -fn "-watanabe-mincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0"
Warning: Cannot convert string "-watanabe-mincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0" to type FontStruct
xfd:  no font to display

Then I deleted the original fonts.dir and fonts.alias and created
a new fonts.dir with the 'ttmkfdir' utility:

    mfabian@example.com:~/xtt-fonts-0.19990222$ ttmkfdir > fonts.dir
    unknown font foundry code LYJS
    unknown font foundry code LYJS
    mfabian@example.com:~/xtt-fonts-0.19990222$ cat fonts.dir
    8
    watanabe-mincho.ttf -misc-unknown-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-jisx0201.1976-0
    watanabe-mincho.ttf -misc-unknown-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-jisx0208.1983-0
    watanabe-mincho.ttf -misc-unknown-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-jisx0201.1976-0
    watanabe-mincho.ttf -misc-unknown-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-jisx0208.1983-0
    wadalab-gothic.ttf -misc-unknown-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-jisx0201.1976-0
    wadalab-gothic.ttf -misc-unknown-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-jisx0208.1983-0
    wadalab-gothic.ttf -misc-unknown-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-jisx0201.1976-0
    wadalab-gothic.ttf -misc-unknown-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-jisx0208.1983-0

Now 'xfd' can display one of these fonts:

    mfabian@example.com:~/xtt-fonts-0.19990222$ xfd -fn "-misc-unknown-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-jisx0208.1983-0"

but unfortunately only the first page (first 256 characters, i.e. only
ASCII characters are displayed).

Then I tried to use xfstt. I used the option '--unstrap' when starting
'xfstt' (according to the documentation this option is necessary to
display more then the first 256 characters in a font) and started the
X-server with the option '-deferglyphs 16' (this is also recommended
in the documentation of xfstt). But nevertheless, 'xfd' did never show
me more than the first 256 characters.

Maybe XFree86-4.0 and xfstt are not able to display Japanese True Type
fonts?

Has anybody tried X-TT (http://x-tt.dsl.gr.jp/)? Does this work
better? According to the installation manual of X-TT it is distributed
in form of patches against XFree86 3.3.5, so maybe this doesn't work
with XFree86-4.0 at all?

-- 
Mike Fabian   <mfabian@example.com>