X-Windows and Japanese

After reading the JE-HowTo docs, some people are hesitant to proceed with their exploration of Japanese because they think that they need to install X over again. Japanese xterm sessions known as kterms work fine under English X11R6 with no other modifications required. see section 5 Even if you figure this out from the documentation, another big gotcha awaits you. On the first attempt to read Japanese under kterm most people cannot access the Japanese fonts.

You must install the fonts contained in the file k14.tgz found within the xclt disk set in order to get kterm to display kanji.

Debian

In order to get X11 working under English, you need the minimum fonts contained in

xfntbase_3.2-1.deb

In order to display Japanese, you also need to install

fntbig_3.2-1.deb

The Big Fonts set refers to the size of the files, not the point size of the font.

You will be able to display Japanese with only the base and big font sets installed.

The following fonts are optional:

• xfnt100_3.2-1.deb
• xfnt75_3.2-1.deb
• xfntscl_3.2-1.deb

xlsfonts

There are other font packages that can be installed under X-Windows. You can list the fonts you have on your system with the <tt>xlsfonts</tt> command.

These are the fonts that I have on my system:

[craig@cow craig]$ xlsfonts |grep jis
-jis-fixed-medium-r-normal--0-0-75-75-c-0-jisx0208.1983-0
-jis-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-110-100-100-c-160-jisx0208.1983-0
-jis-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-150-75-75-c-160-jisx0208.1983-0
-jis-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-170-100-100-c-240-jisx0208.1983-0
-jis-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-230-75-75-c-240-jisx0208.1983-0
-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--0-0-75-75-c-0-jisx0201.1976-0
-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--0-0-75-75-c-0-jisx0208.1983-0
-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-130-75-75-c-140-jisx0208.1983-0
-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-130-75-75-c-70-jisx0201.1976-0
-sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--0-0-100-100-c-0-jisx0201.1976-0
-sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-120-100-100-c-80-jisx0201.1976-0
-sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-150-75-75-c-80-jisx0201.1976-0
-sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-170-100-100-c-120-jisx0201.1976-0
-sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-230-75-75-c-120-jisx0201.1976-0

fonts.alias

The font names are long. The names of the fonts are aliased in X-Windows to allow easier usage. Some of the fonts I have aliases are listed below:

[craig@cow craig]$ grep jis /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/fonts.alias 
k14          -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-*-*-*-*-*-jisx0208.1983-0
r14          -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-*-*-*-*-*-jisx0201.1976-0
rk14         -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-*-*-*-*-*-jisx0201.1976-0
r16          -sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-*-*-jisx0201.1976-0
rk16         -sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-*-*-jisx0201.1976-0
r24          -sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-*-*-*-*-*-jisx0201.1976-0
rk24         -sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-*-*-*-*-*-jisx0201.1976-0
kana14       -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-*-*-*-*-*-jisx0201.1976-0
8x16kana     -sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-120-100-100-c-80-jisx0201.1976-0
8x16romankana -sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-120-100-100-c-80-jisx0201.1976-0
12x24kana     -sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-170-100-100-c-120-jisx0201.1976-0
12x24romankana -sony-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-170-100-100-c-120-jisx0201.1976-0
kanji16      -jis-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-*-*-jisx0208.1983-0
kanji24      -jis-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-*-*-*-*-*-jisx0208.1983-0