Re: Debian Font Guide for Newbies and the Confused

[moseley@hank.org]

Rob,

Thanks much for writing this up.

One issue I have problems with is solving font problems with specific 
applications.  It think that's due to my general lack of understanding 
of fonts, and that there's more than one font system in use.

I would love to see a trouble shooting section.  I'm not sure what it 
would  include, but perhaps use of strace or ldd to determine what font 
system the application is using.  And then how to test various steps of 
the font selection and rendering process.  (I suppose it would be 
helpful for me to see how to write a small application that selects 
fonts to understand that part of the font puzzle).

As an example, sometimes mozilla's font display is rotten.  I suspect 
what's happening is X is making a poor font substitution.  I'd like to 
know how to debug the process from the font mozilla asks for (assuming 
from <font> or style sheet) and what font actually gets selected by the 
X server for display.

Another example is I happen to like the font used for xterm.  I don't 
use an .Xdefault setting for xterm.  So if I wanted to use that font in 
gvim how would determine what font xterm is using?

I don't really want to know how to do those specific things as much as 
know how to figure out how to do those things. ;)

Thanks,



-- 
Bill Moseley
moseley@hank.org