Linux Instructions

The following document is an explanation of how to get SimSig to run under Linux, kindly written by Will Salt. Please note that you do this at your own risk and that neither myself or Will can be held responsible for any adverse affects it may have! Please also note we cannot give any more help other than that printed below.

This is (as best as I can remember) what I did to get SimSig running
under Linux. Most of the important stuff (the stuff on fonts) comes
from the WINE documentation.

This page describes how to get SimSig running under Linux on a
dual-boot system, after you have already installed it on Windows. I
have managed to get the installation program running under Linux
also, but I'm not sure if this method is fully reliable.

Firstly, you need to have Wine [http://www.winehq.com] set up and
running. This can take quite a bit of work if you haven't done it
already, but it comes with plenty of documentation. As well as Wine,
you need the font conversion tool supplied with it (called 'fnt2bdf').

When you have SimSig installed on Windows, reboot in Linux, making
sure that your Windows drives are mounted so that Linux can see them.
(For reference in the examples, my C: drive is mounted as
'/mnt/win/c/'.) If you have a suitable version of Wine, you should be 
able to try to start SimSig straight away, with the following command:

wine /mnt/win/c/Program\ Files/SimSig/LivSt.exe

(replace LivSt.exe with Didcot.exe according to the version you are
running.)

Note that your display has to be set to 1024x768 resolution
beforehand, because X Window can't change its resolution whilst
running. If your machine doesn't support 32-bit colour depth, you'll
get an error message, but that doesn't matter. The program might take 
some time to start.

The purpose of doing this is to check that your version of Wine can
run the program. However, it's not really useable without installing
the SimSig font under X Window. To do this, start by copying the font 
file to your home directory:

cd
cp /mnt/win/c/windows/fonts/simsig.fon .

Next, use the Wine font-conversion routine to produce a .bdf file.
If you've downloaded and installed Wine yourself, this program will
probably be somewhere in the source code directories.

/usr/src/wine-20000326/tools/fnt2bdf simsig.fon

(the exact path will depend on the version of Wine you are using)

If you are using a v1.x version of SimSig (such as Liverpool Street),
this will produce one output file: simsig.bdf. If you are using a
newer version (such as Didcot), it will produce several output files.
You now have to use the X Window font compiler to convert these files
into .pcf files which X can use directly:

(for Liverpool Street)

bdftopcf simsig.bdf > simsig.pcf

(for Didcot)

for fnt in S{imSig,IMSIG}*.bdf;do bdftopcf $fnt >${fnt%.bdf}.pcf;done

Lastly, you need to install the pcf file -- copy it to an appropriate
directory, update the catalogue of fonts in that directory, and tell X 
that the list of available fonts has changed. To do this, you will
need to be root:

(for Liverpool Street)

cp simsig.pcf /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/

(for Didcot)

cp S{imSig,IMSIG}*.pcf /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/


(then, for either)

mkfontdir /usr/lib/Xll/fonts/misc/
xset fp rehash

(you do not have to run the last command if you do not have an X
session running at the time).

If you have already installed Liverpool Street and want to install
Didcot, you will need to install the fonts supplied with Didcot.
Delete the original Liverpool Street font file
(/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/simsig.pcf) first; otherwise the mkfontdir
command will report errors.

If everything has gone according to plan, SimSig should now run;
although I find that screen redrawing is a little slower than under
Windows if the popup windows are frequently used.


-- 
Will Salt