Mailing List Archive: X11 fonts, configuration (XF86Config, xfs, fontconfig, etc)

X11 fonts, configuration (XF86Config, xfs, fontconfig, etc)

Oct 2, 2004, 9:08 PM

Post #1 of 3 (527 views)

There seems to be several ways that X applications can retrieve
fonts; I've been playing with three: /etc/X11/XF86Config, xfs, and
fontconfig.

Is there any way of knowing which applications use which method for
getting font information?

Also, can I do away with any of the above methods? It's kind of a
pain to maintain redundant font configuration info (across three
different interfaces).

The same question applies for (what I call) "font query tools", such
as xfontsel, xlsfonts, fc-list... Where are these queries
retrieving their font info? (By the way, long ago when I ran
Debian, I had a nice program called gtkfontsel, but I can't seem to
figure out which package offers that handy util.)

Finally, on a semi-related note: from a bit of playing I did today,
it appears that Fluxbox 0.9.10-r3 is sensitive to the fontconfig
configuration. I could not get artwiz fonts to work with Fluxbox
until I emerged the artwiz-aleczapka-en package and added its
directory to /etc/fonts/local.conf (whereas adding the "vanilla"
artwiz directory seemed to have no effect).

Thank you!
Matt

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Matt Garman
email at: http://raw-sewage.net/index.php?file=email

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Re: X11 fonts, configuration (XF86Config, xfs, fontconfig, etc) [ In reply to ]

andfarm at teknovis

Oct 2, 2004, 9:38 PM

Post #2 of 3 (522 views)

Permalink

On 2 Oct 2004, at 21:08, Matt Garman wrote:
> The same question applies for (what I call) "font query tools", such
> as xfontsel, xlsfonts, fc-list... Where are these queries
> retrieving their font info?

From deep within the guts of the X server.

Re: X11 fonts, configuration (XF86Config, xfs, fontconfig, etc) [ In reply to ]

bertbuchholz at gmx

Oct 3, 2004, 5:59 AM

Post #3 of 3 (528 views)

Permalink

On Sat 02.10 23:08, Matt Garman wrote:
> There seems to be several ways that X applications can retrieve fonts;
> I've been playing with three: /etc/X11/XF86Config, xfs, and
> fontconfig.
>
> Is there any way of knowing which applications use which method for
> getting font information?

It depends on the graphics library a program uses. gtk+2 for example
uses xft/freetype, so all apps compiled against it are using fontconfig.

Have a look at

http://freedesktop.org/~xorg/X11R6.8.1/doc/fonts.html

It explains most of the font issues. It doesn't matter if you're using
XFree and not Xorg.

> Also, can I do away with any of the above methods? It's kind of a
> pain to maintain redundant font configuration info (across three
> different interfaces).

xfs is unnecessary on a local system. The old way of font handling is
there only for compatibility reasons IIRC and is being replaced by this
xft/freetype stuff in the next years. And it indeed works great: just
copy a TTF into ~/.fonts, run fc-cache and every application capable of
using fontconfig can use this font from then.

Bert

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