%% Ross Boylan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: rb> Thanks for making this available; I used the one for 4.x, as I rb> used the earlier one. It's very helpful.
Welcome! rb> There was one point in the instructions I got a little lost. It's in rb> section 5.1 "The next subject of interest is where the .alias file rb> should be put." You then refer to the .scale file belong in rb> /etc/X11/fonts/TrueType. rb> For those of us who didn't install the debian package, this directory rb> does not exist. I'm probably fairly typical: I figured I'd use the rb> fonts already on my drive, since I boot several OSs. Well, OK, but note that you're not following the instructions in the document so there's little doubt things will not work the way the document says they will :). You should check the license on the fonts already on your drive, if you're concerned with things like that: they may well not be usable on OS's other than the native OS (Windows, presumably). The Core Fonts package is explicitly legally licensed. I left enough information in there for folks to be able to work with local fonts (how to create a .scale and .dir file, for example), but I didn't provide, nor did I mean to provide, really detailed instructions for this. I'll see if I can find some time to add more details. rb> So you need an instruction to create that directory, and then you need rb> to say what files should be moved or copied there. I copied both of rb> the fonts.* files I just created. This meant that when I executed the rb> rm you gave, I was left with a .scale file in the directory. I rb> suspect that was not the intent. rb> Then the next problem comes in 5.3 at update-fonts-alias. For this to rb> work with an argument of TrueType requires /usr/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType rb> to exist. I made a symlink to the directory I started with. I don't believe this is the Right Way to do this. If you're installing your own fonts, not using Debian packages, I don't think you should put the information for them into /etc/X11, etc. Those areas are for Debian packages which install fonts. If you are installing your own fonts, outside of a Debian package, I think you should put them somewhere else, like /usr/local/share/fonts/ttfonts as in my document, and construct the fonts.scale, fonts.dir, and fonts.alias files in that directory directly, and add that directory as a FontPath. In general I try to put _ALL_ locally installed (outside of a package) files somewhere outside of the standard system directories (such as in /usr/local or /opt or wherever) and just add references to them; adding your own files into Debian system package-controlled directories can lead to problems. Definitely creating /usr/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType as a symlink to some other directory is not correct: Debian packages will want to create that as a directory so you don't want to create it yourself. The way the other TrueType packages do it is they either dump their files in that directory directly, or they create symlinks for each individual .ttf file, not the entire directory (this is what the MS fonts package does). rb> By the way, the .scale file had entries that were not iso8859-1 (e.g., rb> -3). Yes, I know. That's fine, and correct. The .scale file only has one entry for each font/character set combination, so that's not a drain on resources. It's not a problem to have the extra character sets: the only reason we trim the alias file is that it has an entry for every font/character set/point size/weight/slant/etc. combination possible, which is quite a few files. Since we only need the aliases for a few applications (maybe we won't need them at all in Netscape 6/Mozilla) we save some compute power by trimming out all the charsets we don't use. Note you can still use those charsets! They just don't have a full suite of aliases. rb> Now, here are a few other observations. rb> wine kept crashing on me until I deleted the linotype-palatino fonts rb> from the /usr/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType/fonts.dir (copied to rb> fonts.scale). Apparently this is an X bug, but it might be good to rb> let people know. OK, but note that this font is not in the MS core fonts package. rb> Users previously using xfstt will want to remove the 7101 server from rb> their XF86Config-4. Only if they don't want a font server any longer of course. rb> I think that to get the new path to work you not only need to modify rb> FontPath in XF86Config.-4, but you need to add this path to the list rb> in /etc/X11/fs/config for catalogue. In fact, if I understand rb> correctly, the XF86Config-4 entry may be optional as long as you have rb> something at 7100 for the font server. The fs/config file configures the font server. You need one or the other, but not both (actually, it can still help to have things rb> Since the server now has freetype built in, I'm not sure if running rb> the font server separately has any value (at least for a local rb> machine). Any clarification of that would be helpful. My doc says: In XFree86 4, loadable modules functionality was added to the X server and among the loadable modules provided were two providing TrueType font support directly in the X server, without requiring an external font server (obviously if you need a font server for some other reason, you are still free to use one). Maybe this should be expanded. rb> The whole X setup seems to have a lot of redundancy (e.g., *.dir rb> and *.scale), which is asking for trouble. I don't know if there's rb> anything you can say about it that would help, though. Well, the *.dir vs. *.scale is how the X setup is done. The *.dir files are used for regular, non-scaled fonts. The *.scale file is used only for scalable (TrueType, etc.) fonts. I'm not sure why there have to be two or why they have to have the same contents, though. rb> Anyway, it might be worth letting people know they can fool with rb> such things in, e.g., /etc/X11/app-defaults/Xman. Personally, I wouldn't change anything there. Again, that's a system file controlled by the package manager. I know it's a config file, so it won't be updated without asking first, but even so it's a PITA to keep updating that file with that kind of modification. I really avoid modifying any package-controlled files unless there's no other alternative. With X resources there are more alternatives than you can shake a stick at :). There's really no need to modify these config files. Personally, I create a $HOME/app-defaults directory, then in my shell setup I set: export XUSERFILESEARCHPATH=$HOME/app-defaults/%N Obviously if you use XDM or GDM or whatever you need this set in your session setup file as well. Now I can create a $HOME/app-defaults/Xman (for example) file, and every time I start xman it'll be loaded just like the system Xman resource file, overriding those settings. The nice thing about this method, as opposed to using .Xdefaults and xrdb -load or whatever, is that they're dynamic: you change the file and restart the app and you don't have to reload them into the X server. rb> When I configured NS (Mozilla, actually) as described in part 7 the rb> choices actually appeared as Monotype-arial black. Arial Black is a different font. You should have _both_ Arial _and_ Arial Black in the Monotype foundry. If you don't, you're missing some fonts or some aliases or some contents of your .scale file or something. rb> Do you want to make a recommendation for the serif fonts, e.g., rb> monotype-times new roman? Personally I don't have any real opinion. I rarely use serif fonts. Use what you think looks good :). rb> A couple lines on exactly how and when to restart the font server rb> and the X server would be good. I was concerned doing so would rb> kill my session, so I just logged out and then back in. I'm also rb> not sure whether, e.g., /etc/init.d/xfs reload is adequate, or if rb> restart is necessary. I thought I mentioned this, but perhaps it was too brief. You can either restart the server (by logging out and in), _OR_ you can use xset to change your font path dynamically. They're equally good, so use whichever you're more comfortable with. My document doesn't deal with font servers at all, it's completely geared towards using the builtin font management not an external server. Therefore, /etc/init.d/xfs is irrelevant; I actually uninstalled the font servers on my system altogether. Thanks for the notes...! -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul D. Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> HASMAT--HA Software Methods & Tools "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These are my opinions---Nortel Networks takes no responsibility for them.
