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Graphics Muse
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<H4>
&quot;Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more lovable!</I>&quot;
</H4>

<P> <HR> <P> 
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		<!-- What is a Graphics Muse? -->
		<FONT size=4><B>muse:</B></FONT>
		<OL>
			<LI><I>v;</I> to become absorbed in thought
			<LI><I>n;</I> [ fr. Any of the nine sister goddesses of learning and the
				arts in Greek Mythology ]: a source of inspiration
		</OL>
		<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/w.gif ALT="W" ALIGN="left" 
			HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" WIDTH="36" HEIGHT="28">elcome 
		to the Graphics Muse!  Why a "muse"?  
		Well, except for the sisters aspect, the above definitions are
		pretty much the way I'd describe my own interest in computer graphics:  
		it keeps me deep in thought and it is a daily source of inspiration.

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		[<A HREF="#mews">Graphics Mews</A>]
		[<A HREF="#musings">Musings</A>]
		[<A HREF="#resources">Resources</A>]
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	<td>
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	<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/t.gif ALT="T" ALIGN="left" 
		HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" WIDTH="26" HEIGHT="28">his 
	column is dedicated to the use, creation, distribution, and dissussion of 
	computer graphics tools for Linux systems.  

	<BR clear=both>
	&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
	Last month I had promised to do a review of Keith Rule's new book on 
	3D File Formats this month.  I'll also said there would be a section
	on adding fonts on Linux in last months colums.  Ok, I'm a liar.  
	First, I decided that although Keith's book deserves some examination 
	I felt that another
	book, Mark Kilgard's OpenGL text, had a more direct bearing on Linux
	users.  I'll consider taking a look at Keith's book some time in the
	future.

	<BR clear=both>
	&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
	Second, I had quite a bit of other material for January's column so
	had decided to move the font discussion to February's column.  However,
	I forgot to update the introduction in January's column to reflect
	this change.  My apologies.

	<BR clear=both>
	&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
	Now for the bad news:  I had a major system crash on the 16th of
	January which first of all caused me over a week of grief trying
	to recover and second caused the loss of a large number of files.
	No, I wasn't doing backups.  So shoot me.  I managed to recover an
	earlier copy of this months Muse column from a laptop I have, but
	I lost a good portion of what I'd already done.  Now, as I write this,
   I have 3 days to get the column done and uploaded.  The result is
	that the book review and a number of other items will have to be put
   off till another time. 

	<BR clear=both>
	&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
	So, does anyone have a decent tape backup system that can run on 
	ftape drives?


	<BR clear=both>
	&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
	In this months column I'll be covering, along with how to add fonts to 
	your system:
	<UL>
		<LI> a GIF Animations update: the MultiGIF program
		<LI> some Printer info I gathered in the past month 
		<LI> tkPOV V2.0 - a graphical front end to POV-Ray 3.0
	</UL>

	<P>
	<B>NOTE</B>:
	I lost all my old email and mail aliases when my system went down.  If
	you have been in touch with me in the past and want to stay in touch
	<A HREF="mailto:mjhammel@csn.net">please send me some email 
	(mjhammel@csn.net)</A>!  I'm particularly interested in hearing from
	<B>Paul Sargent</B>, who was helping me with my look into BMRT.  I lost
	your email address Paul, along with all the messages we'd exchanged on
	the BMRT article series!  Write me (or if you know Paul, please have
	him contact me)!
	
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	<BR clear=both>
	&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Disclaimer:
		Before I get too far into this I should note that any of the news items I
		post in this section are just that - news.  Either I happened to run 
		across
		them via some mailing list I was on, via some Usenet newsgroup, or via
		email from someone.  I'm not necessarily endorsing these products (some of
		which may be commercial), I'm just letting you know I'd heard about 
		them in the past month.
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		<H4> xfig 3.2.0 Beta available </H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Xfig is a menu-driven tool that allows the user to draw 
		and manipulate objects interactively in an X window.  The 
		resulting pictures can be saved, printed on postscript 
		printers or converted to a variety of other formats (e.g. to
		allow inclusion in LaTeX documents).
		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		xfig is available on ftp.x.org in 
		<A HREF="ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/applications/drawing_tools/xfig">
		/contrib/applications/drawing_tools/xfig</A>.
		You also need a JPEG library, which can be found in /contrib/libraries.
		and TransFig version 3.2.0-beta1.  TransFig contains the postprocessor 
		needed by xfig to convert fig files to one of several output formats,
		such as PostScript, pic, LaTeX etc.  The TransFig package is in the 
		directory 
		<A HREF="ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/applications/drawing_tools/transfig">
		/contrib/applications/drawing_tools/transfig</A>.
		</td>


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		<H4>
		Alexander Zimmermann has uploaded another update to his ImageMagick
		package.
		</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		ImageMagick (TM), version 3.7.9, is a package for display and
		interactive manipulation of images for the X Window System.
		The package has been uploaded to sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming
		as:
		<UL>
			<LI>ImageMagick-3.7.9-elf.lsm
			<LI>ImageMagick-3.7.9-elf.tgz
		</UL>

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		ImageMagick supports also the Drag-and-Drop protocol form the
		OffiX package and many of the more popular image formats including
		JPEG, MPEG, PNG, TIFF, Photo CD, etc. 

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		You will also need the package libIMPlugIn-1.0-elf to get it working.
		These can be retrieved from
		<A HREF="ftp://ftp.wizards.dupont.com/pub/ImageMagick/binaries">
		ftp.wizards.dupont.com 
		<BR>
			&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
			/pub/ImageMagick/binaries</A>.

		</td>

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		<H4>
		World Movers, the first VRML 2.0 Developer Conference
		</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		I received the following information via email (unsolicited, but
		its probably the first time I got something I found really
		interesting via a blind email post).  Note that I have nothing
		to do with this conference, other than I wish they'd invite me to go - 
		expenses paid, of course:

		<P clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		World Movers, the first VRML 2.0 Developer Conference, will be held on
		January 30 and 31 at the ANA Hotel in San Francisco, CA.

		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		At World Movers you will:
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		<UL>
			<LI> Select from sessions in three key tracks over two days
				<UL>
					<LI> Content Creation
					<LI> Business Applications of VRML
					<LI> Future Directions and Current Technologies
				</UL>
			<LI> Learn how to create great VRML 2.0 content and applications
			<LI> See and learn about real applications that use VRML
			<LI> Find out about the latest tools for VRML 2.0
		</UL>

		<P>
		With a pan-industry advisory board and a wide array of hosts and
		participants, World Movers will give you a complete picture of VRML 2.0
		content and applications from all perspectives.

		<P>
		Register by calling (800)488-2883 or (415)578-6900, or go online at
		<A HREF="http://www.worldmovers.org">
		http://www.worldmovers.org</A>.

		</td>

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		<H4>
		PNG Magick Plug-in 0.8
		</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		There is a new plug-in for Unix/Linux versions of Netscape called
		PNG Magick Plug-in 0.8.  This plug-in supports
		the following file formats:
		PNG, XPM, TIFF, MIFF, TGA, BMP, PBM, PGM, PPM, PNM, PCX,
		FITS, XWD, GIF, JPEG, WAV and MPEG-1.  It is reported to support
		Drag and Drop capabilities as well.

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		For MPEG-1 support you need the Xew library which doesn't seem
		to work well with the Linux version of this plug-in.

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		PNG Magick Plug-in 0.8
		is published under the GNU General public License and is available at
		<A HREF="http://home.pages.de/~rasca/pngplugin/">
		http://home.pages.de/~rasca/pngplugin/</A>.
		</td>

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		<H4>
		TkFont v1.1
		</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		There is a new tool for viewing fonts on Linux.  I haven't tried
		this yet so I don't know how well it works.  It has been uploaded
		to <A HREF="http://tsx-11.mit.edu"> 
		tsx-11.mit.edu</A> in the /incoming directory.
		The file-name is `tkfont-1.1.tar.gz'.
		</td>

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		<H4> Version 0.1.8 of Lib3d is now available from Sunsite.</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Lib3d is a high performance 3d C++ library distributed under the GNU
		LGPL.  Lib3d implements sub-affine texture mapping, Gouraud shading
		and Z-buffer rasterization, with support for X11, DGA, SvgaLib and DOS.
		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Lib3d is available from 
		<A HREF="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/Incoming/lib3d-0.1.8.tar.gz">
		ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/Incoming/lib3d-0.1.8.tar.gz
		</A>
		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		For more information:
		<A HREF="http://www.ozemail.com.au/~keithw">
		http://www.ozemail.com.au/~keithw
		</A>
		</td>
  
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		<H4> 
		CFP: ACM SIGGRAPH 97 Sketches Program
		</H4>
		Deadline: April 16, 1997
		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		The following was posted in a number of places.  I got it via a
		friend on the Gimp User mailing list.  I have no association with
		SIGGRAPH (unfortunately) so can offer no other details than the 
		following:
		<P clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		SKETCHES are live, 15 minute presentations that provide a forum for
		unique, interesting ideas and techniques in computer graphics.
		Sketches allow the presentation of late-breaking results, works in
		progress, art, design, and innovative uses and applications of
		graphics techniques and technology. Sketch abstracts will be published
		in the Visual Proceedings.
		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Sketches are a fun, educational, high-profile way to show your work
		and creations. We are seeking submissions in four areas:

		<UL>
			<LI>Animations
			<LI>Applications
			<LI>Art and Design
			<LI>Technical 
		</UL>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		For more information, see the SIGGRAPH 97 Call for Participation, send
		email to 
		<A HREF="mailto:sketches.s97@siggraph.org">sketches.s97@siggraph.org</A>, 
		or for the latest, most
		comprehensive information on how to submit to Sketches and other
		SIGGRAPH 97 programs, including supplemental documents, please go to:
		<A HREF="http://www.siggraph.org/s97/">
		http://www.siggraph.org/s97/</A>.

		<P clear=both>

		<table>
		<tr><td valign=top>
			To request a copy of the Call for Participation, contact:
			<I>
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;SIGGRAPH 97 Conference Management
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;Smith, Bucklin & Associates, Inc.
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;401 North Michigan Avenue
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;Chicago, Illinois 60611 USA
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;+1.312.321.6830
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;+1.312.321.6876 fax
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;
				<A HREF="mailto:siggraph97@siggraph.org">siggraph97@siggraph.org</A>
			</I>
			<P><B>DEADLINES:</B>
				<br clear=both>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 16 April 1997
				<br clear=both>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 5 pm Eastern Daylight Time
				<br clear=both>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Final Sketch proposals
			</td>
		<td valign=top>
			To discuss your concepts and ideas for Sketches, contact:
			<I>
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;David S. Ebert
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;SIGGRAPH 97 Sketches Chair
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;University of Maryland Baltimore County
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;CSEE Department ECS-210
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;1000 Hilltop Circle
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;Baltimore, Maryland 21250 USA
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;+1.410.455.3541
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;+1.410.455.3969 fax
			<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;
				<A HREF="mailto:sketches.s97@siggraph.org">
				sketches.s97@siggraph.org</A>
			</I>
			</td>
		</table>

	</td>


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	<td colspan=4>
		<H4>Did You Know?</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		The 
		<A HREF="http://webspace.sgi.com/moving-worlds/">
		VRML 2.0 Specification, Moving Worlds</A>
		from SGI, provides for
		"spatial audio"?  This is a definition of how sound is played
		in relationship to your point in space and distance from an object
		which has a sound attached to it.  The O2 system from SGI has 
		a VRML browser which was demonstrated on Part 2 of PC-TV's series
		on Unix which covered commercial Unix options.  Part 3 of this 
		series started airing at the end of January and is devoted to
		our favorite OS - Linux!

		<P>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		There is a wonderful description on using color palettes with
		Web pages at
		<A HREF="http://www.adobe.com/newsfeatures/palette/main.html">
		http://www.adobe.com/newsfeatures/palette/main.html</A>.  The page
		is a reprinted article by Lisa Lopuck from Adobe Magazine and is
		quite detailed.  Check it out!

		<P>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Have you been thinking about using POV-Ray 3.0's new <I>caustics</I>
		feature?  Are you unsure exactly what it does?  Want to learn all
		about it?  Then check out 
		<A HREF="http://www.enter.net/~cfusner/tutorial/caustic.html">
		The Caustic Tutorial for POV</A>.  This is a very detailed
		explanation on what caustics are and how to use them.
		Briefly,
		<BLOCKQUOTE>
		caustics are formed when light is either focused or dispersed due to
		passing through media with different indices of refraction.  Bright spots
		in the shadows are where light is focused and dark spots are where the
		light has been dispersed.
		</BLOCKQUOTE>
		Thanks to 
		<A HREF="mailto:protering@bosque.com">Paul R. Rotering</A> for this description (taken from the IRTC-L 
		mailing list).

		<P><FONT size=4><B>Q and A</B></FONT>
		<P>
		<I>Q: What is displacement mapping?</I>
		<P>
		A: Displacement mapping is not only the perturbing of the surface 
		normal of an object, like a bump maps do, but in fact a distorting
		of the object itself.  You can think of it
		as a height field over an arbitrary surface.  The latest version of
		<A HREF="http://www.seas.gwu.edu/student/gritz/bmrt.html">
		BMRT</A> is reported to support displacement maps.  Few other
		publicly available renderers provide this feature.

		<P>
		<I>Q: 
		I have just downloaded the complete batch of plug-ins from the
		"Plug-in Registry", and noticed that the "interpolate",
		"lightest" and "darkest" plug-ins appear to do the same thing 
		as the "blend",
		"add" and "multiply" channel ops respectively. Is this correct, or is
		there some difference under certain circumstances?
		</I>
		<P>
		A: 
		Not exactly.  Blend uses integer values and restricts you to
		interpolation.  Interpolate/Extrapolate uses floating point values and
		does not restrict the range of the blending value --- you can do
		extrapolation, too (look at my home page for some examples):
		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
        <A HREF="http://www.nuclecu.unam.mx/~federico/gimp">
        http://www.nuclecu.unam.mx/~federico/gimp</A>
		<BR clear=both>
		Lightest and Darkest pick the lightest and darkest pixels from two
		images.  It is not the same as add and multiply except for bilevel
		images.

		<P>
		Both of these questions were answered by Mena Quintero Federico,
		aka Quartic, on the Gimp User mailing list.
 
		</td>

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<A NAME="musings">
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</td>
</table>
</A>
<BR clear=both>

<TABLE width=560>
<tr>
	<td valign=top>
		<H4>GIF animations update: MultiGIF
		</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		After my first column (Linux Gazette, issue 12), 
		<A HFEF="newt@pobox.com">Greg Roelofs</A>
		wrote me to tell me about another tool for creating animated 
		GIF images.  Andy Wardley's 
		<A HREF="http://www.peritas.com/~abw/multigif.html">MultiGIF</A>
		allows the use of sprite images as part of the animation.  Sprite
		images are like small sections of an image.  Instead of
		creating a series of GIF images that are all the same size and simply
		appending each one at the end of the other (as WhirlGIF does) the user can
		create an initial image along with a series of smaller images that are
		positioned at offsets from the upper left corner of the full image.  

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		By using sprites (I'm not completely sure what a sprite 
		really is, but Greg used this term and it appears similar to other
		uses I've seen - someone correct me if its not the correct use of 
		the term) the GIF animator can reduce the file size anywhere from
		a factor of two to a factor of 20 in size.  As proof, Greg offered
		his animated 
		<A HREF="http://quest.jpl.nasa.gov/PNG/">
		PNG-balls</A>, which went from 577k to 233k in size.
		Another animation, a small horizontally oscillating "Cylon eyes"
		(referring to the old Battlestar Gallatica metal menace), provided
		a savings of a factor of 20.

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		MultiGIF comes with C source code and is shareware.  Andy only asks 
		that you provide a donation if you find you are using it frequently.
		There is also a utility called gifinfo which can be used to identify
		GIF files, including multiframe GIF animations.

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Both WhirlGIF and MultiGIF come with fairly decent documentation
		describing how to use the various command line options.  About the
		only thing that might be missing is why you would use one option over or in
		conjunction with another, but thats a minor point.  I find the use of
		sprites with MultiGIF and its smaller output files more useful to me.
		However, new users who are not quite familiar with how to create sprites
		(including transparency) with tools like the Gimp might prefer the simpler
		WhirlGIF.
		</td>
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<TABLE width=560>
<tr>
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		<H4><I>
		Adding Fonts to your system
		</I> </H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Fonts are used extensively for creating graphics images.
		Many of the graphics on my Web pages and in the 
		Graphics Muse use fonts I've installed from 
		collections of fonts on commercial CDs.  
		Fonts are also used for ordinary text in X applications, from
		the fonts in your xterm to the title bars provided by your 
		window manager to the pages displayed by xman.
		The difference is hard to distinguish, but 
		whether used for ordinary text or to create 
		outrageous graphics, adding fonts to your system and letting 
		your X server know about them is the first step .  

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Just so you know:  nearly all X applications accept the "-fn" 
		and/or "-font" command line arguments.   This is a feature built into
		the X Windows API.  How this is used depends on the application.  For 
		xterms, just use "-fn <fontname>" to specify the font used in the
		xterm window.  This does not specify what font to use for the xterm
		title bar.  That is controlled by the window managers X resources.

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		To know what fonts are available on your system you can look
		under the font directories for fonts.alias files.  There is supposed to be
		one of these in each directory under 
		<FONT size=2><I>
		/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts</FONT></I>,
		but whether there is or not depends on the distribution you're using.
		The name to use is the
		name on the left.  For example, under 
		<FONT size=2><I>
		/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc</FONT></I>,
		in the file fonts.alias there is the following line:
		<table>
		<tr>
			<td width=10% valign=top>
			<FONT size=2><B>
				5x7
			</B></FONT></td>
			<td width=90% valign=top>
			<FONT size=2><B>
				-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal-<BR>
				&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;-7-70-75-75-c-50-iso8859-1
			</B></FONT></td>
		</table>
		To use this font with xterms I would do:
		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; 
		<FONT size=2><B>
			xterm -fn 5x7
		</B></FONT>
		<BR clear=both>
		You can actually use the string on the right, but unless you understand 
		how fonts are defined you probably don't want to do this.  

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		I don't want this to turn into an X Windows column.  There are other
		places for such discussions, and I'm sure LG could use a regular
		columnist for X.  But this column is about computer graphics so
		this is all I'm going to say about using fonts in X applications
		from the X resources standpoint.  In any case, since the X server
		is being used to handle the fonts, adding fonts to
		your system is the same whether you use them for graphics or as
		X resources.

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Suppose you had a font called <I>westerngoofy</I> that you
		wanted to use in the Gimp as the start
		of some neat title graphic for a Web page.
		By default there isn't an entry in any of the fonts.alias files 
		for <I>westerngoofy</I>, so when you use the text tool in the Gimp 
		it won't show up in the list of available fonts.  
		There are 3 steps to making this font available for use with the
		Gimp:
		<UL>
			<LI>Grab the fonts and place them in a local directory
			<LI>Configure that directory for use as a font directory
			<LI>Tell the X server about this new font directory
		</UL>

		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		The first part is simple - grab a copy of the font file and put it
		in some directory.  Make sure you've uncompressed it if the archive
		you retrieved the file from compresses the fonts.  Most X servers
		don't understand compressed fonts (some do, but all understand 
		uncompressed fonts).  The directory can be owned by anyone.  It does
		not have to be a directory under the system fonts directories
		(generally these are under
		<FONT size=2><I>
		/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts</FONT></I>). On my system I have a "src/X11"

		<P clear=both>
		<CENTER>
		<A HREF="#next-column">-Top of next column-</A>
		</CENTER>
		</td>

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	<td valign=top width="53%" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0>
	<table>
	<tr>
		<td valign=top cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0>
			<UL>
				<LH>
					<A NAME="next-column">
					<B>More Musings...</B>
					</A>
					</LH>
				<LI>
					<A HREF="more-musings.html#printer-info">
					Printer Info 
					</A> - my journey into color printing
				<LI>
					<A HREF="more-musings.html#tkpov">
					tkPOV V2.0
					</A> - a graphical front end to POV-Ray 3.0

			</UL>
			<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
				VSPACE="5" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1">
		</td>

	<tr>
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		<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
			WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1"></td>

	<tr>
		<td valign=top cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0>
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			HSPACE="8" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1">
		<BR clear=both>
		directory under my home directory.  Under this I created a "fonts"
		directory where I put new fonts that I find.  If you are the owner
		of your system and have root access you might want to put the fonts
		under /usr/local/fonts or someplace similar.

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Note that since TrueType fonts are not supported by default by most
		X servers we won't concern ourselves with how to use them here.  The
		font format you should be using are Type1 fonts.  There are plenty
		of places to get these, including numerous CD-ROMs available from 
		any decent computer software stores.  Some online resources are
		listed in the 
		<A HREF="http://www.csn.net/~mjhammel/linux/lgh.html">
		Linux Graphics mini-Howto</A> under the "Other Topics" section.

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Next you need to configure your new fonts directory so that the
		X server can provide you FontName-to-File mappings.  To do this you 
		need to get hold of a little Perl script called 
		<A HREF="http://goblet.anu.edu.au/~m9305357/type1inst.html">
		<I>type1inst</I></A>, 
		which is short for "Type 1 Install".  This script is easy to use and comes
		with documentation explaining what you about to do.  Basically, 
		you run the script to create a couple of files, fonts.alias and 
		fonts.dir, which the X server uses to associate a fonts name to
		the font file.  You can also use <I>mkfontdir</I>, but I like
		<I>type1inst</I>
		better.  <I>mkfontdir</I> doesn't always seem to be available
		on all platforms and finding a binary version (or even source)
		has never been easy for me (I think its buried in the X11 source
		tree, which I really don't want to download just for one program).
		
		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		The last step is to let the X server know about the new font
		directory.  The <I>xset</I> command allows a user to configure
		a number of options for the X server.  One of these options is
		the paths to search for font files.  The format of the command
		is as follows:
		<P>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		<FONT size=2><B>
		xset fp+ &ltpath&gt
		</FONT></B>
		<P>
		The <I>fp</I> option is used to modify the font path.  The plus
		sign is used to add a font path.  Because the plus sign is after
		the <I>fp</I> the font path specified will be appended to the
		current list of paths, if any.  Using <I>+fp</I> would prepend
		the new path to the front of the current list.  There are other
		possibilities.  Running 
		<P>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		<FONT size=2><B>
		xset -?
		</FONT></B>
		<P>
		will provide a thorough list of options.  The man page for xset
		also contains good descriptions of the options.

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Now that the server knows where to look, it has to be told to 
		go ahead and check for fonts in the new directories.  The
		<I>rehash</I> option to xset does this.  Simply run 
		<P>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		<FONT size=2><B>
		xset fp rehash
		</FONT></B>
		<P>
		and your new fonts are ready for use!

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Of course, once you've installed the fonts in a directory and
		run <I>type1inst</I> you can put the <I>xset</I> commands in your
		.xinitrc file so they are run every time you start up your X
		environment (such as with the <I>startx</I> script).  This is what
		I do so that I always have access to the set of fonts I've installed
		from CD-ROMs or from font archives from the net.

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Thats all there is to it.  You should now be able to use your fonts
		with tools like the Gimp or XPaint in order to create lots of
		interesting logos for Web pages.  Enjoy!

		</td>
	</table>
	</td>



</table>


<P>
<A NAME="resources">
<table>
<tr>
<td>
<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/resources.gif ALT="Resources" ALIGN="left" 
	HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" WIDTH="246" HEIGHT="57">
</td>
</table>
</A>

<BR clear=both>
The following links are just starting points for finding more information
about computer graphics and multimedia in general for Linux systems.  If
you have some application specific information for me, I'll add them to my
other pages or you can contact the maintainer of some other web site.  I'll
consider adding other general references here, but application or site
specific information needs to go into one of the following general 
references and not listed here.

<BR clear=both>
<P>

<A HREF="http://www.csn.net/~mjhammel/linux-graphics-howto.html">
Linux Graphics mini-Howto
</A>

<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.csn.net/~mjhammel/povray/povray.html">
Unix Graphics Utilities
</A>  

<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.digiserve.com/ar/linux-snd/">
Linux Multimedia Page
</A>  

<P>
Some of the Mailing Lists and Newsgroups I keep an eye on and where I get alot
of the information in this column:

<P> <A HREF="http://www.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/~gimp/">
		The Gimp User and Gimp Developer Mailing Lists</A>.
<BR> The IRTC-L discussion list (I'll get an address next month).
<BR> <A HREF="news:comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing">
		comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing</A>
<BR> <A HREF="news:comp.graphics.rendering.renderman">
		comp.graphics.rendering.renderman</A>
<BR> <A HREF="news:comp.os.linux.announce">
		comp.os.linux.announce</A>

<br>


<P>
<A NAME="future">
<H2>Future Directions</H2>
</A>
Next month:
<UL>
	<LI>BMRT Part I:  An Introduction - creating a simple scene and rendering it
	<LI>Scanner Info
	<LI>Height Fields with HF-Lab
	<LI>Review: TkPOV - a POV-Ray scene file editor
	<LI>Book Review: OpenGL Programming for the X Window System	
</UL>
<BR>
<A HREF="mailto:mjhammel@csn.net">
Let me know what you'd like to hear about!</A>


<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P> 
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1997, Michael J. Hammel <BR> 
Published in Issue 14 of the Linux Gazette</H5></center>

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