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  From: Benjamin Close <linux@senet.com.au>
  To  : LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 23:55:00 +1030 (CST)

Truetype fonts in X4 ( was about XFree 4.0... )

On Wed, 29 Nov 2000, Jake Hawkes wrote:

> XF86 used to have an inbuilt font server, but one bad thing about this
> was speed. To display a font it hadn;t displayed before, the X server
> had to find information for it (searching a list of directories) then
> render it. This all took time, and it was time that the used was shaking
> the mouse saying "whats wrong? why has my X session frozen".

I must admit I still prefer the built in X server as I find most the fonts
I use are loaded when X starts anyway. X 4 also provides a much nicer
built in font render which doesn't hang X whilst it's rendering the font.
(Although the user is still left thinking why didn't that font change till
it's rendered). However, with modern machines it's pretty quick anyway.
 
> Funky things that you can do is add TrueType (windows) fonts, which I
> have been trying to get going but have had little luck - but that's
> another thread.

Thread change :)

The builtin render also supports truetype fonts natively A simple

        Load  "freetype"

in the Modules section of XF86Config then something like

     FontPath    "/mnt/dos/windows/fonts"

In the Files section of XF86Config then running:

ttmkfdir > fonts.scale
mkfontdir  

in the directory with true type fonts and bingo, you have ttf support. Of
course you'll need to restart X or run something like xset +fp path;xset
fp rehash if you don't feel like restarting.

Now If only I could get netscape not to core dump when viewing various web
pages...but that's another thread :)

Cheers,
--
* Benjamin Close
* Benjsc@senet.com.au


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