RE: [Devel] EPOC and true type fonts

[Graham Asher]

Amir,

to load a TrueType font on to a Symbian device, do this (it works fine on my
wife's Nokia 9210 Communicator, and I would be embarrassed if it didn't,
because I'm the guy who wrote the TrueType support for Symbian - using
FreeType, naturally):

1. Put the TTF file in the \system\fonts directory on any drive (e.g., d:).

2. Do a soft reboot. On a phone you can usually do that by taking out the
battery and putting it back in.

One important precondition is that the device ships with FREETYPE.DLL, which
is the FreeType library wrapped in my plug-in rasterizer framework for
Symbian OS. I *believe* that all Series 60 phones have freetype.dll but I'm
not sure.

You can check that the font is available using Word or Sketch or Sheet or
any app that allows font choice. You may have to change the printer driver
to Hewlett-Packard-compatible - I can't remember which - because you need to
tell it that it can print by sending a bitmap image.

Note that you can also use a variable pitch GDR font: there is no
requirement for a GDR font to be fixed-pitch. There is an acceptable
variable-pitch Arabic BDF font somewhere but I can't remember off-hand where
it is. Sorry about the vagueness but I'm busy right now and haven't time to
search; and I don't work for Symbian any more and some things have become
misty over time.

Advice: for your first experiment use the Microsoft TAHOMA.TTF font, which
contains Arabic letters and works well on Symbian OS.

Best regards,

Graham Asher
Symbian alumnus 1997-2000.