On Wednesday 06 November 2002 5:28 pm, Mike A. Harris wrote: > This is not a "Red Hat decides to be different from everyone > else" thing. This is precisely a 'Red Hat decides to be different from everyone else thing', as you yourself say later in this email, and I quote: "Red Hat just happens to be the first to boldly use this innovative new font technology." Red Hat is, BTW, the first to do a lot of the things they do. I don't think anyone has a problem with this per se. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be any documentation available to ease the pain in migration for new users of this 'brand new technology'. Seems like Red Hat might've considered that since they *are* the first to step so boldly into this new frontier, they better prepare the rest of us that are still stuck in the old country. Just a suggestion. While the release notes, IIRC, do mention Xft, I don't believe they mention fontconfig (or fontconfig-config for that matter). I found it during my stumbling. I also discovered that while Xft was being used, so was xfs, and so now there were double the font directories, double the config files, etc. This stumbling could've been made completely unnecessary if not for the brevity of the release notes. Again, it's not the new technology I'm complaining about - it's this idea that everyone will just automagically know what to do with it. > 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. > Thanks for this info. Thanks to Keith for his work. > 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. > I did not imagine this *library* was a 'random Red Hat thing'. The fact that they've decided to shove it down my throat is a bit inconvenient though. I maintain X servers for a decent number of users who believe that fonts should look and behave consistently across applications. When they don't, I need to fix it or explain why I can't fix it. It would've saved me a good bit of time and detective work to just have *some* of what you say in this email up front. It's valuable, and I hope other people find this thread. > 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. Awesome. Thanks again to Keith Packard. It's nice (for me, anyway) to know this is a part of the XFree86 project. Fontconfig is still a point of confusion for me, because 'man fontconfig' seems to be library documentation, not a description of how to use a tool to configure your fonts. Doing a 'locate fontconfig' doesn't turn up a binary either - but turns up 'fontconfig-config', which I should think is useful, but there's no manpage for it, and running it with --help... well.... doesn't. Still looking for docs on how to work with this new system in my spare time. > > 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. Agreed. In addition, having this new technology and not telling people what the heck is going on and how to hack this beast into submission is also less than useful to some of us. I can't deploy until I know what's going on - in gory detail - with probably about 40% of the packages on the Redhat CDs. Xft would be one of those packages. > > 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. > And there was much rejoicing. > 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. > So let me get this straight: Red Hat has gone ahead and created (really nice) interfaces to configure everything from X windows to apache to Samba and NFS to your firewall - even though most of that stuff hasn't gone through any major change - making these interfaces most useful to newbies. But for the one thing that causes system administrators some pain, there has been no tool or pretty interface to help create a seamless font configuration across the two main font configuration methods? I'm not griping about these new interfaces, mind you. They're better than linuxconf IMHO, and I don't really use guis anyway. I'm just pointing out something that seems ironic to me. I would imagine it would be up to redhat and not the XFree86 people to come up with such a tool. > 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. Fair enough. This was the conclusion I had come to myself. Just woulda been nice to know ahead of time. > > 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. Well, now that you've explained all of this, that would appear *not* to be the case. I suppose someone who wanted to use the old 'crap' could probably just get rid of Xft altogether. Not that *I* would do that (now that I've gotten a clue, for which I have you to thank). > > >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 I figured this out from your explanation above, but thanks just the same. A little info can go a long way. Pass it on... > > >Does anyone know the magic incantations necessary to get this to > >work? > > Yes. Nice. Very helpful. Thanks. > > >Do I now have to know two different font rendering configs to > >get all my apps to use TTF? > > Yes. > Understood. Not completely amused by the additional work, but glad to have some light shone on the subject. > >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. I'm sorry I seem to have given off some vibe that I'm one of these old gray beard types who shun anything that you don't have to load off of 80 floppies. I'm not. In fact, I'm the guy getting people to replace their desktops with Linux boxes, and to log into Linux servers from the SunRays instead of Sun boxes. I'm the guy getting people to switch from Pine, elm and exmh to Evolution or KMail, and from Netscape to Galeon. I take a good deal of heat for this at times, and have felt what your words describe above. I'm not knocking 'new'. I just think it appropriate to document this type of change a bit better for people who have been using the 'same old same old' for so long - to make it less of a shock to the system. Brian K. Jones System Administrator Dept. of Computer Science, Princeton University jonesy@cs.princeton.edu http://www.linuxlaboratory.org http://phat.sourceforge.net http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jonesy Voice: (609) 258-6080 -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
