[Mini-HOWTO] X.org & font

evoweiss · Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 8:24 pm Post subject:

Hi all,

I just followed this guide and it seems to have worked. The only mystery is why I get the following error messages in my Xorg error log file:

molecularbear · n00b Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 22

Well, I've spent a good portion of the day researching font issues and have ended up a bit better than when I began. What would be great is if Gentoo would put out a definitive guide to fonts. Font issues appear to be somewhat complicated, especially for something that one would think would be fairly simple. I don't even understand the need for XFS. If you want to use XFS, you specify:

sl70 · Guru Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 449 Location: Saitama, JP

I followed this HOWTO and now my fonts look beautiful, but the problem now is that when I try to print from Firefox, the browser crashes with a segfault, and I get no output. I have a feeling that it's a fonts permission thing, since I can print fine as root. I went through all the /usr/share/fonts directories and all the font files are either 644 or 444. I can't figure it out. Can anyone help?

Tnx.

sl70 · Guru Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 449 Location: Saitama, JP

Well, it's not a permissions problem, since I can print as another regular user. It must be my individual setup. Grrrrrrrr. This is so frustrating.

sl70 · Guru Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 449 Location: Saitama, JP

So, I created a new profile in firefox and now I can print ok, but my fonts don't look as good as before. Back to work....

F.Ultra · Apprentice Joined: 17 Mar 2004 Posts: 169 Location: Sweden

rhill · Posted: Wed Dec 08, 2004 4:09 am Post subject:

this whole thing has me completely turned around too. what the guide says not only contradicts itself, but it contradicts the version in the wiki (http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Xorg_and_Fonts). the wiki seems more up-to-date but it's still a puzzle.

one thing that seems important is the order the fonts dirs are listed in xorg.conf. like if Type1 and TTF both have a version of the same font, whichever one that comes first in xorg.conf is the one it uses. that's just my guess, but it seems i can change the appearance of my menu and terminal font by changing the order.

also, freetype's webpage says it does both truetype and Type1 fonts, so why do we also load the Type1 module in xorg.conf? or should we not be doing that?

something tells me tonights going to be a google night. =/

rhill · Posted: Wed Dec 08, 2004 8:10 am Post subject:

well it took me a while, but i finally got it worked out. i can't believe how much nicer everything looks now.

i kinda used a combination of this guide, the wiki guide, a bunch of old XFree HOWTO's i found on TLDP.org, and a few pages from the four corners of the net.

i don't have everything set-up exactly right yet and i want to do a bit more research and trial and error work first before i post a quick walkthrough of what i did. in the meantime, these will put anyone on the right track:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Font-HOWTO/index.html

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/FDU/index.html

they're both pretty outdated, but still good. the first explains everything about fonts and X, and the second is a guide to deuglifying XFree. the latter was hugely helpful. i'm seriously considering bringing it up to date, maybe rewrite it for Gentoo and putting it on the wiki or submitting it as a Gentoo Font Guide.

rhill · Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:46 am Post subject:

here's what i ended up with in my xorg.conf fontpath in the end.

Quantum Skyline · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2003 Posts: 20

Thanks for the howto! Now I have an answer to Cleartype.
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Corona688 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jan 2004 Posts: 1204

This howto was really useful. Everything's antialiased now

Couple things:

You don't need to edit the firefox user preferences file manually -- just type "about:config" in your address bar and you can modify the same settings there.

If your font sizes seem to change randomly, X probably can't make up it's mind about how big your screen is. Specify it manually in your "Monitor" section like this and your fonts will change size no more:

Code:

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Dell"
VendorName "Plug'n Play"
ModelName "Dell D1025TM"
HorizSync 30-85
VertRefresh 50-120
# DisplaySize WIDTH_IN_MM HEIGHT_IN_MM
DisplaySize 434 406
EndSection

Under KDE, also head to Control Center -> Appearances and Themes -> Fonts, and check "Use anti-aliasing for fonts".

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robet · Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 6:34 pm Post subject:

I don't think you even have to do anything w/ Firefox after following the steps and restarting X. It just became beautiful on it's own.
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ursusarctos · Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:30 pm Post subject:

After setting the fontpaths in xorg.config, my terminals no longer display in color properly. Xterm opens, but will not show green or red, giving this error message:

converter · Apprentice Joined: 24 Dec 2002 Posts: 163

chuliomartinez · Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2005 10:08 am Post subject: xfs

The xserver (xorg or xfree it doesn't matter) use their own freetype lib. E.g. don't link to the freetype2 lib. Sure it is the same code but probably older than the current freetype version and compiled with flags you cannot alter without compiling the xserver. So it is in my opinion better to use the xfs which DOES link to freetype, thus having better rendering with every new freetype version:) For example if you want byte code interpreter you have to compile freetype with a special option.
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drphibes · Guru Joined: 30 Nov 2004 Posts: 432

chuliomartinez · Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 12:52 pm Post subject: One question

Ok please correct me if I'm wrong.
1. Application ask xserver or xfs to render the fonts for them?
- or do they ask freetype directly? (don'y thing so)
- how does an app know whenether to ask xfs or xserver for fonts.
(does x delegate these calls if xfs is running thus making it transparent to the apps?)
2. Xserver will use any freetype lib it finds first?
(ok you already answered this one)

I would love to know more about the font handling (and don't feel like inspecting source right now:) so please share with me:)
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drphibes · Guru Joined: 30 Nov 2004 Posts: 432

whether or not xfs is running is completely transparent to the application. most modern x applications use higher-level toolkits to display widgets (e.g. gtk+) and fonts (e.g. pango) and don't call freetype directly.

http://www.freetype.org/david/unix-font-rendering.html#x11-render

Zarhan · l33t Joined: 27 Feb 2004 Posts: 996

As of xorg 6.8.2 at least, ttf-bitstream-vera fonts are now included with xorg, so no need to install them separately anymore.

Apreche · Guru Joined: 18 Sep 2003 Posts: 506 Location: Beacon, NY

I just did this howto and I can say that it definitely made a huge difference. On my LCDs all the fonts look great.

However, I have a problem still. In some places, like (g)vim and terminals I use very small monospaced fonts for programming and such. Specifically fonts like the proggy are destroyed by the configuration in this howto. I have these fonts downloaded and stored in ~/.fonts and I can use them just fine. But th ey are all deformed and ugly as sin. How can I configure xorg to not uglify these fonts?

MattSharp · Apprentice Joined: 15 Aug 2003 Posts: 258

Great how-to but I am having a couple of problems.

1). In Konsole, using Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, the right side of "m" disapears, so it looks like an "n" overlapped with an "r" if that makes any sense. That is using size 10. If I increase to 11, problem is solved.

2) In Firefox, with fonts smaller than 9 (and to a lesser extent fonts that are size 9) the letters are too close together and it doesn't look very good. Has anyone seen this?

ilm · Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 9:49 am Post subject:

I'm hoping someones still watching this thread!!! :wink:

Anyway, I tried to follow the HowTo, but I seem to be missing something:

1) In terms of USE flags, I already had a truetype flag. Is this the same as truetype-fonts???

2) I have no /etc/fonts/local.conf file in my system

3) I had no font paths in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, so am unsure of where to place these lines

4) I also have no ~/.fonts.conf, so am not sure how to set up antialiasing, etc.

However, the fonts all seem to work.

On a side note, am I required to have xfs running???

Hope someone can help!!!!!!

Hijacker · n00b Joined: 03 Jul 2006 Posts: 17

Hey all,

I followed the Guide and got fancy AA running everywhere, on all apps now. Looks great =)

But still, there's one app which refuses to apply anti aliasing. This is Zend Studio, the PHP framework. This is running off of java... are there some special settings I might have to check, when running Java applications? Or is that the wrong direction?

If anyone got a clue what I could adjust to get AA working with Zend Studio, I'd be glad if you told me

Thanks,
Hijacker