On 6 Nov 2002, Brian K. Jones wrote: >Date: 06 Nov 2002 11:33:51 -0500 >From: Brian K. Jones <jonesy@CS.Princeton.EDU> >To: psyche-list@redhat.com >Content-Type: text/plain >List-Id: Discussion of Red Hat Linux 8.0 (Psyche) <psyche-list.redhat.com> >Subject: True type fonts in mozilla./evolution > >Ok. I'm a little confused now because the way Redhat has decided to >render fonts in 8 is different from every other distro, so now the old >instructions for getting TTF in mozilla don't seem to apply? This is not a "Red Hat decides to be different from everyone else" thing. XFree86 has had a font subsystem that is about 15 years behind modern technology for well, about 15 years. Keith Packard of the XFree86 core team, has been working on a new font infrastructure for about 2 years now to replace the ancient garbage font system in X. This new system is called Xft. Xft is a client side font library which uses the RENDER extension to produce antialiased fonts. Xft is a core part of XFree86, and not some random Red Hat thing like some people seem to think. Xft has been included in XFree86 for a while now, and antialiased fonts have been available in KDE now for a while as well. The first Xft library (Xft1) was available in some previous Red Hat Linux releases, and if you enabled AA fonts in KDE, then you were using it. Most of the rest of the system did not use Xft at that time. Now, Keith Packard has improved Xft, and brought it to a new level. Xft2 is now a part of XFree86, and is much better. Xft2 uses another new piece of technology that Keith has written called "fontconfig", which is intended to be a sane way of configuring fonts systemwide, and is not X specific. Once *everything* is using fontconfig, Linux will have a rather sane one stop shop place for configuring fonts. Keith also ported the original Xft1 library to use fontconfig, so that Xft1 and Xft2 apps can run side by side, and share the same font configuration, instead of having 3 different ways of configuring fonts. Having this wonderful new font technology, and having nothing using it, isn't too beneficial. Not to XFree86, not to Linux, not to the Linux userbase, and not to Red Hat users, or any other distribution's users. The GNOME and KDE releases in Red Hat Linux 8.0, both are using Keith Packards Xft2 and fontconfig, both of which are a core part of XFree86 now, and will be _the_ way fonts are done from now on period, in _all_ Linux distributions that are using X at all. Keith has done a fantastic job at creating this technology, and we are very glad to be using it in Red Hat Linux 8.0, and to take X11 out of the 1980's finally. Unfortunately, you don't just change a major piece of infrastructure over night, flick a switch and have every application working using the new interfaces. It takes time for people to port old legacy apps, and even some newer apps to the new interfaces. There are many apps that do NOT yet use the new Xft interfaces, and as such they still use the legacy X server fonts via xfs. Until someone ports all of those applications to use Xft, there will be a necessity for both Xft and xfs to co-exist, and as such there will be a necessity for 2 different font configuration systems. One, fontconfig, and the other, the traditional xfs font server config or X server config. Applications that do not use Xft include Mozilla, OpenOffice, Evolution, most Xt and Xaw applications, GTK1 apps, and almost all applications that do not use GTK2 or Qt3, or use Xft directly. Mozilla Xft support is in Mozilla CVS now, and will be released in a future Red Hat Linux release. Other apps are sure to follow too. Until they do, you, and others are faced with configuring fonts in two places if you want fonts to work in all applicaitons. The alternative, would be shipping the same old 1985 crap forever and not ever switching to the new font technology that Keith has written. So if you wonder why "Red Hat decided to render fonts different", now you know. It is called progress, and evolution. People who want to use the ancient font garbage from 1985 that X has traditionally come with, might prefer to use Red Hat Linux 4.2, or somesuch. >figure out how to make the thing see my directory. It doesn't see my >~/.fonts directory either. Nor does evolution or Mozilla. That's no surprise. None of those apps are using Xft, and so none of those apps will see anything configured via fontconfig, or dropped into ~/.fonts >Does anyone know the magic incantations necessary to get this to >work? Yes. >Do I now have to know two different font rendering configs to >get all my apps to use TTF? Yes. >Is there documentation on this that I missed? I read man pages >for xfs, fontconfig, and I read the XftConfigReadme in /etc/X11, >and the comments in /etc/fonts/fonts.conf. I'm really pretty >frustrated at this point. I'm sorry to hear that you're frustrated. If given the choice between using 1985 font technology for another 5-10 years, or biting one's lip and migrating to new technology, I think most people would take the latter. Once all applications are modified to use the new technology, then dual font configuraiton will no longer be needed. But until that point is reached, configuring fonts in 2 places is a requirement. IMHO, the benefit is very very much worth the slight inconvenience. Red Hat just happens to be the first to boldly use this innovative new font technology. And we do so, with many great thanks to Keith Packard. -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer XFree86 maintainer Red Hat Inc. -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
