On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 07:28:36AM -0700, moseley@hank.org said > 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. ;) This is a very interesting point, and I'm still mulling it over. I'm not really sure how to express general knowledge like this, I only know what I do from experience. An explanation of how the whole X/xft/fontconfig font system works and inter-relates is definitely something I'd like to write sometime, but I'll have to understand the whole thing myself, first :) -- Rob Weir <rweir@ertius.org> | mlspam@ertius.org | Do I look like I want a CC? Words of the day: Etacs strategic Saddam Hussein import Pakistan InfoSec
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