Extracting the Hong Kong Ming Unicode Reference Font
from a Distribution-specific Binary

Introduction

The government of Hong Kong provides binary Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS) software packages for a few popular Linux distributions. These provide both input method (IME) and font software. However, they are only useful if you happen to have one of the supported distributions and versions.

This document provides instructions for extracting the Ming Unicode HKSCS font from any one of these distribution-specific packages so that you can use it on your computer, regardless of distribution or operating system.

Instructions

1. Download one of the binary Hong Kong Supplemental Character Set (HKSCS)
   software packages provided by the Hong Kong government web site, such as the 
   Mandrake setup.bin 
   package.

2. "setup.bin" is actually a shell script with a tar file attached to it.
   So, using an editor, remove all lines of the shell script until you get to
   the beginning of the tar file.  In the file I downloaded, this was everything
   before line 237:
   
       line 233 -> runinstaller $distro   ^
       line 234 -> cleanup                |
       line 235 ->                        | REMOVE ALL LINES PRECEDING TAR GZIP
       line 236 -> exit 0                 v 
     -----------------------------------------
       line 237 -> ^_<8b>^H^Hs/B?^@^Cpackage.tar^@ì tar xzvf package.tar.gz
       
   Since we downloaded the Mandrake distribution, this will result in a 
   "package_mdk" directory.  If you downloaded the package for a different
   distribution, the name will vary accordingly.
   
   In any case, an RPM file starting with "imfont" should be present in
   the untarred directory:
   
       -rw-r--r--    1 edtrager users    10227133 Aug 19  2003 imfont-1.0-0.i386.rpm

4.  An "rpm" query command can be used to show what files the "imfont" RPM contains:

        > rpm -qlp imfont-1.0-0.i386.rpm
        
          /usr/share/inputmethod/bin/fontcleanup.sh
          /usr/share/inputmethod/bin/fontsetup.sh
          /usr/share/inputmethod/ming_uni.ttf
          
5.  We want to extract only the "ming_uni.ttf" file.  We do not want to
    run the "fontsetup.sh" or "fontcleanup.sh" scripts, especially if we are
    using a different OS or different distribution.  This can be done
    by using the "--noscripts" option along with the "-i" install option
    shown below.
    
    Recall that to install an RPM requires administrative privileges.  Below
    we use the Linux "su" command with the "-c" option to run the RPM command
    (Alternatively, you could use "sudo"):
    
          > su -c "rpm --noscripts -ivh imfont-1.0-0.i386.rpm"
            Root Password: *********
            imfont ##################################################  

6. "ming_uni.ttf" will now be installed the "/usr/share/inputmethod/"
   directory on your computer.  You can now examine the font (for example, using 
   FontForge) or install it
   as appropriate for your operating system.

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