Requirements ------------ It requires fontconfig >= 2.2.93 It also requires pango to build obviously. It does not require patches any more. Building -------- assuming you are installing everything to the same prefix dir export PATH=/bin:$PATH export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH Build and install silgraphite to Build and install pangographite to Finally you need to create a file ~/.pangorc which has [Pango] ModulesPath=: e.g. [Pango] ModulesPath=/opt/graphite/lib/silgraphite/pango/1.5.2:/opt/graphite/lib/pango/1.4.0/modules It is important that you put the Graphite modules after the core modules or Graphite will not be used in preference to these. Then run pango-querymodules > /etc/pango/pango.modules e.g. pango-querymodules > /opt/graphite/etc/pango/pango.modules Now when you run a program - try testtext or gedit, it should start using Graphite if it can. *FIXME* This will need to be changed because of the patches in Debian and Ubuntu for extra modules