[vox-tech] truetype fonts under gnome

[vox-tech@lists.lugod.org]

On Mon, May 27, 2002 at 03:17:07PM -0700, nbs wrote:
> The other fonts, just some downloaded TTFs, work
> fine under XFontSel, but don't get rendered
> under GFontSel and Gimp.  Instead, I just see the
> text as if it were "Fixed" or "Clean" font...

  If you could give URLs and which ones don't work that would be 
helpful.

> I'm using Debain Woody, XFree86 4, Gnome from Woody.
> Fonts are beign handled by XF86-4 via the "freetype"
> module (eg, not via a font server)

  What I've figured out is there are 5 different font engines available
for X on Debian... I dug up the Garton font via a web search (have you 
paid your $6 shareware fee yet ;)

  Garton and the MS TTF font pack are working on the demo box with 
xfstt as the font server.  I can forward you the magic config settings
to make this work, if you are interested.

  I'm convinced there is something about the font itself that confuses
some of the renderers... the bug is either in the renderers or the font.
Bug reports should be probably be filed against the various renderers that 
do not work (until someone who knows can check and identify what is broken
in the font itself).

    TTFN,
      Mike

xfstt               - Handles the Garton font perfectly.
                      (Gimp was tested, and works)
xfs-xtt             - Does not handle the Garton font at all
                      (both xfontsel and gfontsel broken)
xfs                 - Half handles Garton
                      (xfontsel works, gfontsel does not)
X "freetype" module - behaves the same as "xfs" (half works)
X "xtt"      module - behaves as xfs-xtt (nothing works)

  xfstt has a few bonuses: it doesn't need .scale or .dir things, it will
build it's own indices with --sync option, which 
"/etc/init.d/xfstt restart", does automatically.  You also just need to
specify a single directory it will automatically descend into subdirectories
to find fonts.

  The "xtt" module, is extra special... it uses fonts.dir but is case 
sensitive and doesn't like '.TTF' files that everyone else does.  Truetype
files must end in ".ttf"