Here's a quick guide for solaris to install MS-Verdana "by hand".

Verdana is a free true-type font from the evil empire that unfortunately is
one of the best fonts available for web browsing.
 (See bottom for how to use the sdtfontadm GUI instead)

I'll assume you are making a whole new font directory,
$HOME/fonts

1. Download the zip file from

  http://www.microsoft.com/typography/downloads/verdana.exe
  and run unzip -L verdana.exe

  (-L  renames all the verdana*.ttf files to lowercase)

2. create the fonts.scale file BY HAND as follows

 4
 verdana.ttf -ms-verdana-regular-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
 verdanab.ttf -ms-verdana-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
 verdanai.ttf -ms-verdana-regular-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
 verdanaz.ttf -ms-verdana-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1

3. run 'mkfontdir .', which will insert the fonts.scale info
   into the standard 'fonts.dir' file.
   (If you have no other fonts in the directory, the files will be the
     same)

4. create fonts.upr, as follows:

 PS-Resources-1.0
 FontFamily
 FontOutline
 .
 FontFamily
 Verdana=BoldItalic,Verdana-BoldItalic,Bold,Verdana-Bold,Italic,Verdana-Italic,Regular,Verdana
 .
 FontOutline
 Verdana=verdana.ttf
 Verdana-Italic=verdanai.ttf
 Verdana-Bold=verdanab.ttf
 Verdana-BoldItalic=verdanaz.ttf
 .


5. tell the X server about it:

  xset fp+ $HOME/fonts
  xset fp rehash

You should now be able to do stuff like

xfd -fn '-ms-verdana-bold-i-*'

and see it.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
How to use sdtfsadm, the GUI client:

cd to the directory with the fonts, and run sdtfontadm
  Fonts->Install   gets you a popup.

It shows a blank viewport, until you click the [Directory...] button
at the **TOP**
  (List Fonts From: [Directory...])


That should then show you the contents of your current directory, with all
the fonts greyed out. The default button is [Go To]. Instead, click on
[Choose]

This will finally show you the fonts available in your current directory,
including any truetype fonts.

Once you install them, the fonts will install to $HOME/fontadm_fonts/
unless you change that with

  Install To: [Directory...]


  ***HOWEVER ***
Please note that the by-hand way is actually 'better', since it
adds the fontadm.upr information. sdtfontadm does not seem to do so.

And.... sometimes the gui just plain doesnt work, it seems.
For example, when adding some japanese truetype fonts, it set the
entry badly as xxxxiso8859-xxx.
I had to hand-edit fonts.scale, and copy it back to fonts.dir anyway,
as above. So, sometimes, you just need to do it the hard way.