I installed cygwin and fontforge yesterday, on Vista (with SP1
installed). Here’s what I found. These notes may help others or make
it easier to update the instructions on the FF web page. I noticed a
message back in May from someone who wanted to install FF and had some
of the same questions I had. There seemed to be a general dislike of
cygwin. However, once I got it installed, FF is easy to start and works
very smoothly (so far), and the installation would not be difficult if
one had the right instructions. People who know how this is actually
supposed to work are welcome to correct my uncertainties!
1. downloaded cygwin (1.5) and FF prebuilt package; no problem
2. installing cygwin; I had some problems here because the latest
version doesn’t match what’s on the FF web page
--I tried to follow the directions that say you must have certain pieces
of X11 checked. However, in the X11 section, only one option (xterm)
exactly matched those described on the web page; there were many, many
more items to choose from
--the libraries also contain dozens of files so saying “do something
similar” is not helpful
--the cygwin setup program presents a window with two columns of
checkboxes, the lefthand ones already checked and the righthand ones
blank. There is no help system, so I wasn’t sure what to do. I
suspected that checking the righthand box might install the component
but didn’t know, nor had I any idea which of the dozens of files I needed.
--I finally located the View button in the upper right corner of setup
window; by using this I was able to change “default” to “install,” which
I thought might install everything instead of just the defaults, and
this is what happened. So I ended up with cygwin in its entirety; in
retrospect I probably should have done this only for the X11 and library
subsets.
3. installing FF
-- saying “start cygwin” is not meaningful since there is no cygwin
program icon; I located Start/All Programs/Cygwin/Bash shell; having
seen a reference to the bash shell in the directions I chose that, which
turned out to be correct (there are other things on the start menu under
cygwin also)
--the first line of the installation instructions as given worked OK
--on the second line I got a permission denied error; this turned out to
be a Windows issue, which I fixed by right-clicking on the directory and
giving permissions to all users (I was running as administrator, so it’s
not clear why this problem occurred at all; the directory in question
was created when extracting the tarball)
--then things installed OK as per the directions
4. running FF
I found two ways to start X
--Start/All Programs/Cygwin/Bash shell, then type startx ; this gives a
full screen as described (but with three windows, 1 called login and 2
xterm windows); those new to linux (like me) will learn that the windows
don’t behave as Windows users expect (clicking in the upper left
minimizes, rather than closes, the window, etc.)
OR
doubleclick on startxwin.bat in the \bin directory; this opens a bash
shell which minimizes to the toolbar with the “hide root option”
checked, then opens an xterm window on the desktop
--having done either of these things, type “fontforge -new” in the xterm
window as the directions say
One can of course create a shortcut to the Bash shell, use the command
line to start, etc., with the usual Windows ways of doing things; I list
here just the first way (and to me the most obvious) that I found.
The advantage of the second method is that the windows behave as
expected (each has standard Windows controls at the top), but they pop
up at odd places on the desktop. This may or may not be a distraction
for you, depending how much stuff you keep lying around on your desktop.
If you are tempted to uncheck “Hide root window” in the icon on the
toolbar, don’t; a grey/green screen appears, but windows can’t be moved
or resized; alt-tab is the only way out of this (escape doesn’t work)
5. help system
I followed directions for getting the help system integrated with the FF
program, and everything seemed to work OK (the directory was definitely
created) but when I hit F1 FF loses the focus, as though it’s trying to
open the help system, but nothing happens. Any ideas?
David
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