[Howto] Xorg & X Font Server & Fonts

max4ever · Last edited by max4ever on Sun Oct 03, 2004 4:21 pm; edited 2 times in total

Howto - Xorg & X Font Server & Fonts

Summary

Introduction
Installing necessary software
Editing config files
[Re]starting services
Some other notes
Credits and links...

Version 0.2.1

1. Introduction
This tutorial was made after i tryed another howto and i still couldn't get my fonts to work. After many nerves and time i figured out howto fix it, so here it is, me sharing my "knowledge".

2. Installing necessary softwareYou need to have freetype and some fonts installed. To see what fonts are avaible:

occe · Apprentice Joined: 12 Feb 2003 Posts: 171 Location: Sweden

thanks, this made my fonts work again!
_________________
/occe

AMD64 3000+
Nvidia Geforce6600GT

Forezt · n00b Joined: 16 Sep 2004 Posts: 5

Great guide! This really helps to fix fonts in The GIMP and on Firefox, especially with the Verdana font.

genstef · Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 7:09 am Post subject:

Thank you for this nice guide, I will try it soon

genstef · Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 8:05 am Post subject:

Now my german oe,ae,ue are replaced with strange greek symbols..

But I think the font looks prettier

Drunken Master · n00b Joined: 04 Sep 2004 Posts: 3

Xft != Xfs

Xft = X FreeType interface library
Xfs = X Font Server

So what exactly is this howto supposed to accomplish?

max4ever · Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 5:04 pm Post subject:

genstef: you probably have some font which isn't compliant with <insert standart here>and doesn't has those characters/has the table of characters wrong or something? if it worked before(with the fonts before? some other font?) that's my best guess of what is causing the problem... also *maybe* you need to put something into /etc/env.d/99locale
here is mine:

genstef · Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 7:29 pm Post subject:

did not work

STrange thing is that it does not work in terminals but in gtk programs like firefox it works ..

max4ever · Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 9:12 pm Post subject:

some more info ?

1)what software isn't working properly? name+version
2)what fonts have you tryed?
3)anything else you can think of that's relevant... did it worked before this tutorial in that specific software ? what broke

after this tutorial?
_________________
Stop posting your PC's hardware as your signature.

genstef · Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 9:51 pm Post subject:

Software that breaks is aterm.

More info:

genstef · Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2004 9:19 am Post subject:

Xpdf does not work,t oo.

But it did not work before, so thats not harm done by xft

Where can I get these fonts:
Error: Couldn't create a font for 'ZapfDingbats'
Error: Couldn't create a font for 'MyriadMM_700_600_'
Error: Couldn't create a font for 'Helvetica'

bludger · Guru Joined: 09 Apr 2003 Posts: 389

What exactly does xfs do? Is it really needed? How does it fit together with things like fontconfig? I ran for a long time without xfs and seem to see everywhere that I should be running it.

Sorry, after writing this I re-read your post and saw that you have a link to xfs info. I will check this out.

ticapix · Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2004 7:25 am Post subject:

Hi,
I did exactly what was said in the howto but I have still this error using the freenx server

LookOfEvil · n00b Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 5

I'm not sure about the configuration of the freenx server, but that error message indicates that the server could not find the fixed font, which Xorg and XFree86 both store in the "misc" subdirectory of their fonts directory. Make sure that the freenx server is connecting to xfs, and if not, then add the directory containing the fixed font to its font search path.

LookOfEvil · n00b Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 5

bludger · Guru Joined: 09 Apr 2003 Posts: 389

arkaine · n00b Joined: 23 Jun 2004 Posts: 62 Location: Ohio

I just tried this...and the FontPath = "unix:-1" part kind of told X to go fuck itself...I ended up with a never ending black screen. :-/ Have you ever heard of that happening? I did everything as you said, so I'm not sure. By the way, I had to boot off a livecd just to edit xorg.conf to get it working again heh.

ticapix · Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 5:10 am Post subject:

max4ever · Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 6:04 pm Post subject:

arkaine · n00b Joined: 23 Jun 2004 Posts: 62 Location: Ohio

I'm pretty sure I typed in right in the xorg.conf, but when I came back to talk about how it went I didn't really look to see exactly what it was, I just figured you'd know what I was talking about. And with the ctrl + alt +fkey part...I never knew that I could do that until a little later that night hehe :oops:

but just to make sure I'll try again...I could of sworn I copy + pasted when I put it in the config

EDIT: Yah, I had it typed in right

Deranger · Veteran Joined: 26 Aug 2004 Posts: 1215

Ehm, how this is better than "X.Org & Font" HOWTO?

LookOfEvil · n00b Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 5

bludger · Guru Joined: 09 Apr 2003 Posts: 389

If this is the case, then it shouldn't be the default setup as described in the documentation, but rather a special case.

LookOfEvil · n00b Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 5

I agree - it's not something that people with a single desktop should be setting up. If you have a network with a lot of desktops with smaller disk space (or no disk space, in the case of diskless machines), then xfs is right up your alley. Of course, if you have a diskless machine, you could always serve them over the network using NFS, so xfs looks like a solution in search of a problem, unless the terminal needing the fonts doesn't speak NFS.