evad.zone

I’ve been using Nokia N810 Internet Tablet for some time, and I didn’t like its default desktop fonts. Device is powered by Debian-based distro, with Hildon desktop on top, which basically is GNOME for handheld devices. Not surprising that I found a solution for changing fonts on GNOME’s website.

Unfortunately Tablet’s Control Panel doesn’t allow to change default font in nice GUI manner, but that’s where shell access via X-Terminal comes handy. First off, we need to place our favourite font files in /home/user/.fonts directory on the Tablet itself. Then, we need to create /etc/fonts/local.conf file. Below is sample file straight from my N810:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<!-- /etc/fonts.conf file to configure system font access -->
<fontconfig>
        <alias>
                <family>serif</family>
                <prefer>
                        <family>DejaVu Serif</family>
                </prefer>
        </alias>
        <alias>
                <family>sans-serif</family>
                <prefer>
                        <family>Nokia Sans</family>
                </prefer>
        </alias>
        <alias>
                <family>monospace</family>
                <prefer>
                        <family>DejaVu Sans Mono</family>
                </prefer>
        </alias>
</fontconfig>

In this particular case, DejaVu Serif will be used as default serif system font, Nokia Sans (really nice, btw!) as default sans-serif, and DejaVu Sans Mono as default monospace system font. After applying local.conf file, only device reboot is needed. However, please double check font face names, as the font name needs to be exactly the same as it appears in applications, so for example: DejaVu Mono != DejaVu Sans Mono.

Digging Nokia fonts out from Internet Tablet device

Nokia Sans and Nokia Sans Condensed are really good looking TTF fonts, which you can use anywhere – also on desktop machine. They are stored in /usr/share/fonts/nokia directory in the device. So grab those TTFs out from there and enjoy. :)

Sources
http://www.gnome.org/fonts/
http://fontconfig.org/wiki/

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 8:39 and is filed under Linux, Maemo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.