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XFree86 Fonts Related Problems

Fonts FAQ

1. How does one add Truetype fonts ?
2. I run /sbin/init.d/SuSEconfig.fonts and that doesn't output any errors (should it?).
3. How can I fix AntiAliasing problems with LCD monitors?

1.	How does one add Truetype fonts ?
	Change to where the fonts are. cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype Copy your truetype fonts here. Determine if there are any files been created for the scaling of the ttf's. ls -l fonts.s* Remove all these files. rm fonts.s* Create a new font scale file. ttmkfdir \| sed s/^[0-9]// > fonts.scale.myfonts Now run SuSEconfig.fonts /sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig.fonts Run xset to reread the font paths xset fp rehash You should be able to see the fonts with xfontsel Note Mike Fabian Background information about ttmkfdir* ttmkfdir -o fonts.dir This will be overwritten during the next run of SuSEconfig. Better use ttmkfdir -o fonts.scale.myfonts Then run SuSEconfig. That's not perfect either for various reasons: duplicate lines from `fonts.scale.myfonts` and other `fonts.scale.*` files will all end up in `fonts.dir` ttmkfdir's output is sometimes not very good, it may omit encodings which are useful, sometimes it adds encodings which don't work well, sometimes it makes entries for fonts as charcell fonts “-c-” which don't work well as charcell fonts. There are many other problems with ttmkfdir ... You can try mkfontscale instead of ttmkfdir. mkfontscale works better, but even mkfontscale can't do the job perfectly. Probably it is impossible to do the job perfectly automatically. The author of mkfontscale wrote me: “ Mapping TrueType and Type 1 font tables to XLFDs is intrinsically an underspecified task. ” Therefore we use the current mechanism of generating `fonts.scale` out of handedited `fonts.scale.something` files. These files were originally created with mkfontscale, but then improved manually and packaged with the font rpm. If you add you own fonts, you need to do the same for best results. Create a `fonts.scale.myfonts` first with ttmkfdir or mkfontscale. Then improve it manually if necessary. I'll try to make the automatic mechanisms work a little bit better in the future, but that is unfortunately not so easy.
2.	I run /sbin/init.d/SuSEconfig.fonts and that doesn't output any errors (should it?).
	/sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig.fonts didn't update fonts.dir. Example root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# echo 0 > fonts.dir root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# /sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig.fonts Updating fonts.scale for truetype Updating fonts.scale for Type1 Updating fonts.scale for Speedo Updating fonts.scale for CID root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# cat fonts.dir 0 nothing happened. /sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig.fonts checks the timestamp of `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype` and compares it with the timestamp of `/var/adm/SuSEconfig/lastrun.SuSEconfig.fonts` to find out whether it needs to update `fonts.dir`. But the timestamp of the `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype` didn't change after I did echo 0 > fonts.dir, therefore SuSEconfig.fonts didn't do any work. It's possible to force it by removing fonts.dir: root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# rm fonts.dir root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# /sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig.fonts Updating fonts.scale for truetype Updating fonts.scale for Type1 Updating fonts.scale for Speedo Updating fonts.scale for CID Updating X11 font directory truetype... create XftCache files ... Now we see the message `"Updating X11 font directory truetype..."` and now `fonts.dir` has the same contents as `fonts.scale`: root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# head -n 5 fonts.dir 694 luximr.ttf -b&h-Luxi Mono-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1 luximr.ttf -b&h-Luxi Mono-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-2 luximr.ttf -b&h-Luxi Mono-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-3 luximr.ttf -b&h-Luxi Mono-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-4 root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# You can achieve the same effect by touching `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype`: root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# touch /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# /sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig.fonts Updating fonts.scale for truetype Updating fonts.scale for Type1 Updating fonts.scale for Speedo Updating fonts.scale for CID Updating X11 font directory truetype... create XftCache files ... root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# Or, if you want to recreate all fonts.dir files in all directories, remove the global time stamp: root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# rm /var/adm/SuSEconfig/lastrun.SuSEconfig.fonts root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# /sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig.fonts Updating fonts.scale for truetype Updating fonts.scale for Type1 Updating fonts.scale for Speedo Updating fonts.scale for CID Updating X11 font directory 75dpi... Updating X11 font directory CID... Updating X11 font directory Speedo... Updating X11 font directory TTF... Updating X11 font directory Type1... Updating X11 font directory baekmuk... Updating X11 font directory encodings... Updating X11 font directory encodings/large... Updating X11 font directory japanese... Updating X11 font directory local... Updating X11 font directory misc... Updating X11 font directory truetype... Updating X11 font directory ucs... Updating X11 font directory ucs/misc... Updating X11 font directory uni... Updating X11 font directory util... create XftCache files ... root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# When I go to run "xset fp rehash" as my user I get the following output: xset fp rehash X Error of failed request: 86 Major opcode of failed request: 51 (X_SetFontPath) Serial number of failed request: 8 Current serial number in output stream: 10 What does this actually mean? Broken `fonts.dir` or `fonts.dir` refers to fonts which don't exist or fonts listed in `fonts.dir` are broken themselves. For example: root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# xset fp rehash OK, no error (This root user has access to the display because I became root using the sux script). Now write nonsense to fonts.dir: root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# echo nonsense > fonts.dir And we get this error message: root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype# xset fp rehash X Error of failed request: 86 Major opcode of failed request: 51 (X_SetFontPath) Serial number of failed request: 8 Current serial number in output stream: 10 root@nozomi:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype#
3.	How can I fix AntiAliasing problems with LCD monitors?
	Graham Smith Basically you have to add match edit rgba = bgr; to the `~/.xftconfig` file. If this file does't exist just create it and add the above line to it. Note XFree86 Font De-uglification HOWTO Section 4.1.3.3 Item 8 but recommend reading all the items in the above section as it covers many fixes that can be done to make the better on the eyes. http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/FDU/index.html

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Updated: Tue, 03 Feb 2004