Getting Font Support in BibleWorks/Linux

Now that you know that BibleWorks 4 will run under Wine, you'll want to get font support so that you can actually see Greek and Hebrew (and whatever else you use). This may take another step. BibleWorks 4 uses TrueType fonts to display non-Roman character sets. TrueType support is built into Windows, but typically not into X-Window. A lot of work has gone into getting TrueType fonts to work in Unix, because TT fonts look good and are pleasant to view.

In order to make TrueType fonts work in X-Window, you need a TT font server. Since so much work has been done in the last year or two, several font servers exist.

The easy way out

The more I like these newer Linux distributions, the more I like them. Mandrake 7.2 not only installs and tries to configure Wine for me, but it also comes with a font server which appears to handle both Unix and TrueType fonts. I fired up DrakConf, selected "Font Manager" and clicked the "Get Windows fonts" button. After a few seconds, the BibleWorks TrueType fonts had been added to the list of current fonts.

This had to be too good to be true. I started up BibleWorks 4 and looked at BHS. There was Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew font. Nice! I switched to Rahlfs' LXX and saw it in Greek. That's it! With just a few minutes of configuration, I've gotten BibleWorks 4 to work under Linux. It's taken me far longer to write about it than it took me to do the work.

If you're not as fortunate. . .

You may not be as fortunate as I was: maybe you are running an older Linux distribution and/or one which doesn't come with a built-in font manager (like my old Slackware install at work). Maybe you aren't running Linux at all, but some other flavor of Unix instead (I'm going to see if I can get BW4 to run under FreeBSD next). In that case, you may need some guidance to get TrueType fonts to work under X. I recommend the XFree86 Font Deuglification Mini HOWTO as a starting point. You'll also find a nice collection of links at http://www.kegel.com/linux/tt.html.

It's really pretty simple.

So far it's been pretty simple to get basic BibleWorks functionality:

  • Install BibleWorks 4 in Windows
  • In Linux, get Wine and configure it to recognize the correct drives
  • Set up a TrueType font server Depending on your distribution, the individual steps will vary in complexity. Mandrake 7.2 made this a 5 minute job--very impressive! Your own mileage may vary.

    What's next?

    Next step is to test BibleWorks to see what works and what doesn't. After that I'll take a swipe at getting the ISBE to work.

    Comments? Questions? Want to share your own experiences? Let me know!