[solved] missing fonts (fc-cache sees, fc-list doesn't see)

nmel · n00b Joined: 12 Mar 2017 Posts: 34

I've recently discovered that my system is missing some of the fonts I used previously. In particular, I'm interested in bringing back Century Schoolbook L from urw-fonts. I'm really lost due to the following observations.

fc-cache goes through the fonts and is able read the files. I verified with the following command

mike155 · Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2017 12:07 pm Post subject:

What happens if you do

nmel · n00b Joined: 12 Mar 2017 Posts: 34

After all the steps

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

What does "ls /etc/fonts/conf.d" and "emerge --info fontconfig" look like?

nmel · n00b Joined: 12 Mar 2017 Posts: 34

I've found the problem. I commented this part of /etc/fonts/infinality/infinality.conf

The Main Man · Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2017 6:43 pm Post subject:

Indeed, I had the same problem and your solution fixed it.
I'm curious, is 52-infinality.conf the only one enabled when you do "eselect fontconfig list" ?

mike155 · Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2017 7:50 pm Post subject:

The infinality add-on, which claims to deliver better rendered fonts, silently disables Type 1 fonts?

Now that really sucks!

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

Infinality screws up a lot of things besides; IIRC it disables everything but truetype fonts because it used to be a problem back in 2005, overrides most of freetype's sane rendering defaults, and pokes at the internals in fairly horrible ricer ways (e.g. replacing the v35 TTF renderer with old, slow code).

It may have been useful a decade ago but it clearly hasn't been maintained since then. Using it in 2017 is pure cargo-cultism.

The Main Man · Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2017 8:09 pm Post subject:

It's part of freetype, I'm not using the add-on separate package.

mike155 · Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2017 8:18 pm Post subject:

I doubt it is part of freetype, because I don't have a file '52-infinality.conf'.

Most probably, you installed freetype with use flag 'infinality', which then pulls in the packages below:
- app-eselect/eselect-infinality
- app-eselect/eselect-lcdfilter
- media-libs/fontconfig-infinality
- media-fonts/croscorefonts

So you could re-install freetype without USE flag 'infinality'. After that, 'emerge --depclean' should remove the
packages above and '52-infinality.conf' should be gone...

The Main Man · Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2017 8:31 pm Post subject:

I'm not sure what you mean, of course it's part of freetype, having USE flag disabled for it is a different matter.
There used to be separate package for it, I think there still is :
media-fonts/infinality-ultimate-meta

I know how not to use it but that's not the point here.

mike155 · Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2017 8:53 pm Post subject:

What I wanted to say is: freetype and infinality are two different projects. You can install either freetype or freetype+infinality. If you install freetype without infinality, you won't get '52-infinality.conf'. That's why I called infinality an add-on - you don't have to install it and it's not part of freetype.

The Main Man · Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2017 9:19 pm Post subject:

You won't get DVD support in Kodi if you disable dvd USE flag.
That's just an example, but that's what USE flags are for.
Like I said, infinality used to be a different project, I might be wrong about timing but I think around two years ago it became part of freetype.
What you're saying is that if you enable infinality USE flag then infinality package gets installed as well, which again it's not the case.
Gentoo specific config files are installed (and that's where the core of this problem is IMHO)
Apart from that particular font (urw-fonts) , others are working fine, at least the ones I have installed.

nmel · n00b Joined: 12 Mar 2017 Posts: 34

@kajzer: Yes, 52-infinality.conf is the only one enabled.

@Ant P.: I used freetype without infinality for many years and even didn't bother much about fonts. However, a series of recent (in the last 1-2 years) full system updates make my fonts look uglier and uglier though I didn't touch any font configuration. In March, after another update many fonts became hard to read, so I searched for a solution. I followed Gentoo Wiki to configure fonts but I couldn't make fonts to be good looking without infinality option. Do you have a good reference on how to setup freetype+fontconfig for using the latest advances in the field and, the most importantly, for beautiful fonts rendering? Another problem is how to measure a goodness of a font rendering — it seems to be more of a perceived satisfaction which is highly subjective.