Malayalam unicode font installation and setup in linux

OPTION – 1

Example: Say we want to install ML-Karthika font “mlkr0ntt.ttf”, create a directory for all malayalam fonts, say, /usr/local/share/fonts/ttfmallu

mkdir /usr/local/share/fonts/ttfmallu
cp mlkr0ntt.ttf /usr/local/share/fonts/ttfmallu

ttmkfdir -o fonts.scale

cd /usr/local/share/fonts/ttfmallu

head -1 fonts.scale > fonts.dir
tail +2 fonts.scale | tac >> fonts.dir
cp fonts.dir fonts.scale
xset +fp /usr/local/share/fonts/ttfmallu

To verify that the font is installed properly,

xset q
xfontsel

OPTION – 2

If you are using a KDE desktop, start the “KDE Control Centre”. Under “System Administration”, there is a “Font Installer” utility. Switch to the Admin mode to install the new font from the font installer.

thanks Jayachandran for this how to!