Configuring fonts for the UNIX desktop

If you want to view the UNIX desktop in your locale, you might find it necessary to configure the fonts that are needed to display the text in the encoding of your locale.

About this task

The Tivoli® Netcool/OMNIbus installation includes resource files that contain definitions for the user interface elements of the UNIX desktop applications; for example, definitions for window dimensions, font selections, colors, string values for window titles, menus, buttons, icons, field labels, and message strings.

Resource file translations are available for the following locales: English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese. Additionally, locales that use the ISO-8859-1 character set are expected to display fonts correctly, with the English setting on. Other character sets might require some font configuration.

The resource files are stored in the following location:

$NCHOME/omnibus/desktop/locale/arch/locale_name/app-defaults

Where arch is the operating system directory and locale_name is the full locale name; for example en_GB.ISO8859-1. Note that some locale names might be symbolic links with abbreviated names.

The resource files include:
  • NCO: Definitions for the Conductor, and its associated Filter Builder, and View Builder
  • NCOBanner: Definitions for the Conductor splash screen
  • NCOELCT: Definitions for the transient event list
  • NCOEvent: Definitions for the Event List monitor box window, the event list, and associated windows such as the Login window, Filter Builder, and View Builder
  • NCOHelp: Definitions related to the online help; this file might not have any definitions
  • NCOMessage: Definitions for the messaging dialog box that can be used with tools
  • NCOXigen: Definitions for the Server Editor
  • NCOXprops: Definitions for the Properties Editor

If your locale is not included in the Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus installation package, the resource files for the en_US.ISO8859-1 locale are used by default. You can configure your installation to use another locale that is not provided in the installation package. If your locale uses a character set encoding other than ISO-8859-1, you must additionally ensure that you define a font that can accurately render the resource file characters into the characters for your locale.

To configure another locale and font set:

Procedure

  1. Run the following command to list all supported locales:

    locale -a

  2. Set the LC_ALL environment variable to one of these locales.
  3. Run the following command to display your character encoding:

    locale charmap

    Make a note of the encoding because it will be required later.

  4. To create a set of localized resource files in a font that renders correctly, go to the directory $NCHOME/omnibus/desktop/locale/arch, where arch represents your operating system directory. You must copy a set of resource files from a locale that contains suitable fonts for your encoding and then customize the copied files. For example, to create files for the Arabic locale (ar), create a directory with the locale name, and copy the resource files for the en_US.ISO8859-1 locale:

    cd $NCHOME/omnibus/desktop/locale/arch

    mkdir ar

    cd ar

    cp -r ../en_US.ISO8859-1/* .

    The resources files (prefixed NCO), images subdirectory, and default event list configuration files are copied to the ar directory. You must now look for a suitable set of fonts on your system, which matches the application font in the resource file.

  5. From the command line, enter the appropriate command for your operating system:
    Operating System Command
    AIX® /usr/X11R6/bin/xlsfonts -fn "font_name"
    HP-UX /usr/bin/X11/xlsfonts -fn "font_name"
    Linux® (Red Hat) /usr/X11R6/bin/xlsfonts -fn "font_name"
    Solaris /usr/openwin/bin/xlsfonts -fn "font_name"

    In this command, font_name is the character encoding that was output in step 3. Specify this value as a wildcard by using asterisks (*). Note that you must enclose the value in quotation marks to prevent the shell from interpreting the asterisks in the text. For example:

    /usr/openwin/bin/xlsfonts -fn "*-iso8859-6"

    The list of matching fonts is shown.
  6. Preview each of these fonts to determine whether they are suitable. For each font, enter the following command:

    xfd -fn font_name

    Where font_name is one of the matching font names returned in the previous step.

    A window opens, showing the full name of the font and a grid containing one character per cell. You might need to use the Next Page and Previous Page buttons to view all the characters. When you have identified suitable fonts, you can add the font set to your resource files.
  7. Open each of the resource files named NCO in turn, to change the font.
    For example, for the event list resources, you must set NCOEvent*fontList, NCOEvent*sub_matrix.labelFont, *view_builder*display_matrix.labelFont, and NCOEvent*info_matrix.labelFont to font sets that contain all fonts required for the locale.

    UNIX font names are of the form: 

    -foundry-font family-weight-slant-set width-serif-pixels-points-hres-vres-spacing-average 
    width-character set-encoding
    You can specify font names with wildcards. For example, the default font for the event list is
    -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--12-*-75-75-*-*-iso*-*

    For Arabic, you can replace this with:

    -dt-interface user-bold-r-normal-m serif-14-140-75-75-p-188-iso8859-6

    When using EUC character sets, several fonts are required at one time; for example, EUCJIS (Japanese) requires iso8859-1, jisx0201.1976-0, jisx0208.1983-0, and jisx0212.1990-0 fonts. You can specify such a font set with one or more font names containing wild cards. (Fonts within a font set are separated with a semicolon and font sets are ended with a colon).
  8. If required, change other settings in the resources as follows:
    • Specify default widths (in pixels) of the windows. You might need to adjust these values to accommodate your font and ensure that text labels on the windows are displayed appropriately.
    • Replace string values for window titles (*.title), button labels (*.labelString), messages (*.messageString), and other textual elements with your translated text. Make sure that the translated text uses the character encoding of your locale.
  9. Save your changes to the files.
    You can now run Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus with the correct locale and fonts.