Printing japanese without non-free packages

[David Kuehling <dvdkhlng@gmx.de>]

Hi,

after hours of reading through various documentation files I finally
managed to get printing of japanese work without having to install any
non-free packages like gsfonts-ckj-resource etc.  I did this after a
fresh reinstall of my computer using Debian Sarge.

You actually only need to install `gsfonts-wadalab-*' which will supply
you with neat japanese vector-fonts.  The usual fonts used by
applications to print japanese are those:

        Ryumin-Light-H
        GothicBBB-Medium-H

To map them to wadalb-mincho and wadalab-kochi fonts, run the following
command as root:

        gsfonts-wadalab-config install

Voila.  You can now print japanese euc-jp text files using `a2ps -X
eucjp'.  To make Emacs' ps-print use those fonts, tell it that you have
a japanese printer:

        M-x customize-group ps-print-font

Select value `non-latin-printer' for option `Ps Multibyte Buffer' .
Then click on `state' and save the new settings.  If you have `mule-ucs'
installed, this will even enable you to print unicode (utf-8, utf-16,
ucs-2 etc.) encoded files.

Luckily I can now even print via `a2ps' using CUPS without having to
filter PostScript-files through `ps2ps'.

If you're using jLaTeX, use dvi2ps for converting your DVI-files.
Install `dvi2ps-fontdata-ja'.  In /etc/texmf/dvi2ps/fontdesc, make sure
that the line

        fontdesc       fonts$kpse/ntt-bikanji

Is uncommented.  You can optionally use vflib for printing if you
comment that line and uncomment

        fontdesc        fonts$kpse/ntt-vflkanji

For this to work, you need japanese ttf fonts installed that work with
vflib.  The only packages included in DFSG-free Sarge seemed to be
`ttf-kochi-*' (you need both).  Where are the much nicer watanabe-fonts
that I used with Debian Woody?.

There's still the asiya24 gothic font, which is usuable only through
vflib.  Unfortunately it isn't defomized, it is thus quite difficult to
make it work.  The sample-configuration files supplied with the package
are somewhat broken.  After hacking something into /etc/vfont/ and
running update-vfontcap, I noticed, that
/var/lib/defoma/vflib2.d/vfontcap would be appended to /etc/vfontcap,
thus making it hard to override the setting for debian-vfont-Mincho and
-Gothic, the fonts that are by default refferred to by the ntt-vflkanji
fontdesc file.  For Defoma, I didn't yet find any usuable documentation
that would be end-user suitable.  No manpage, nothing.  Package
defoma-doc didn't help so far.  

David
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