I may be speaking out of turn here. I don't know much about X fonts but they used to be server specific. That was back when the fonts were .snf files. If you used different versions of the xserver on the same system they might take fonts in a different format. You might check if .pcf fonts are in a "standard" format for all servers. If they are, then you might stand a chance of making the byte-swap work.
Example: I use both M$ and linux xserver software. Exceed on windows uses .fon files (presumably in ms windows format). Both exceed and xf86 can use font servers. Both run on x86 hardware. What is the chance the formats would be compatible? If the font format is specified in the protocol, chances may be pretty good. The point is, there are more questions here than just byte order. jim ---------- From: Stephen J. Carpenter[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 1998 1:39 PM To: Debian User's List Cc: The recipient's address is unknown. Subject: Re: Big-endian/little-endian (WAS: Re: can I burn the output of mpg123 -s?) On Tue, Aug 18, 1998 at 01:22:53PM -0400, Michael Stone wrote: > Quoting Stephen J. Carpenter ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > > On Tue, Aug 18, 1998 at 10:34:39AM -0400, Michael Stone wrote: > > > The solution is to always run hton before putting stuff on the wire and > > > running ntoh when pulling stuff back. That way you can be sure that the > > > stuff on the wire is always network byte order without having to put in > > > nasty test cases. > > > > thats all well and good BUT... > > xfstt is a ont server for X11....So it has to work within the existing > > protocols...it would be a "bad thing" if you had to modify the Xserver to > > use a new font server. > > Are you saying that the xserver looks for host (e.g., random) byte order > rather than network byte order on the network?!? (I never had reason to > look, but I just might, now...) Thetruth is I don't know. xfstt , as part of its connection sequence uses some value to determine the byte order of its peer and if it is not the same drops the connection. This leads me to believe that the X Server expects its fonts (if not everything else...the rest I don't know) to be rendered in host order and sent in that order. on the other hand it may just be parinoia? maybe X does fo ntoh's all right? I could check by removing the check for byteoder and riunning the server on my IPC (where host order == network order) and connecting my i386 to it.... but the very existance of that check leads me to believe that it wont work but...I was told it would not be hard to fix the swapping -Steve -- /* -- Stephen Carpenter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --- <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>------------ */ E-mail "Bumper Stickers": "A FREE America or a Drug-Free America: You can't have both!" "honk if you Love Linux" -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null