Thursday, October 17, 2013

Changing the default Armenian system font in Mac OS

The default Armenian font in Mac OS operation system family is Mshtakan font.

Mshtakan font example
The font is totally not readable, painful for eyes, too small characters.

There is a very nice free font called DejaVu http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/Main_Page. Which provides way more readable fonts.
So let start changing the default Armenian system font.

  1. Download Armenian fonts from here
  2. Install all DejaVuSerif fonts by double clicking on them or selecting the files and command + "array down"
  3. Then go to following folder in Mac OS
    cd /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CoreText.framework/Versions/A/Resources
  4. Backup DefaultFontFallbacks.plist file.
  5. Copy DefaultFontFallbacks.plist to Desktop and modify with Xcode, TextEdit or Vim (whatever editor you use)
  6. Replace Mshtakan word everywhere with desired font name. NOTE : The font name should not contain the spaces e.g. in my case is was DejaVuSerif.

Enjoy the better Armenian default system font which looks like this.
DejaVu Serif example


P.S. For those who are using the Firefox browser for internet surfing, changing the system default font will not affect display font in firefox as firefox has its own settings which should be modified like here
Changing the default Armenian font in firefox