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Re: TrueType font policy / best practices?



On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 12:16:21PM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Le mar 06/04/2004 à 12:07, Pasi Kärkkäinen a écrit :
> > The whole font subject is a big mess in Debian.
> > 
> > There seems to be no policy about fonts, and nobody knows where to put them,
> > or how to handle them.
> 
> The fonts should be put in /usr/share/fonts, and registered through
> defoma. BTW, if they are registered through defoma, their location
> doesn't matter for defoma and fontconfig, but FHS mandates a location.
>

OK. Good to know.

How does registering happen with defoma.. If I want to manually add some
fonts? I guess by using defoma-font.

Two cases:

	1) Add a font(s) to existing fontdirectory
	2) Add new fontdirectory with some fonts

defoma runs mkfontdir/mkfontscale automatically I guess..

I know I can add ttf fonts to fontconfig easily just by copying the fonts to
~/.fonts/. But If I want to install some fonts systemwide, the questions
above come to mind..

> > Some time ago people were told to add
> > /var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType to font path, but now that
> > directory seems to be empty? No fonts in there, just empty
> > fonts.dir/fonts.scale/fonts.alias files.
> 
> That shouldn't be. If you have some installed fonts, they should appear
> here as symlinks if x-ttcidfont-conf is installed.
>

The problem was that x-ttcidfont-conf was removed automatically in some upgrade..
at least I didn't remove it myself :)
 
> > The ttf fonts seem to be in /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ directory, but there
> > are no fonts.dir/fonts.scale/fonts.alias files..
> 
> As it should be.
>

OK.
 
> > What path should I add to my fontpath to X (for gtk1/motif/etc apps) ?
> 
> /var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType
>

Yep. Now, after installing x-ttcidfont-conf I see the fonts (links) here.
 
> > (I'm using unstable)
> > 
> > Defoma/Fontconfig/X guys please tell (or better, write down) how things should
> > work!
> 
> You should start by reading fontconfig's README.Debian, which tries to
> summarise this.
>

Thanks. I didn't notice this file before.
 
> > 	1. In what directory all the (new) fonts should be/put in
> > 	2. What fontpaths need to be set/modified for new dirs (X/fontconfig/etc)
> > 	3. What's the purpose of defoma.. what does it do for the fonts
> > 	4. what is x-ttcidfont-conf and how it relates to these other things
> 
> defoma is a font registry. If you register your fonts through defoma,
> they are made available to both fontconfig and x-ttcidfont-conf (and
> other font-using stuff). The purpose of the latter is to provide a
> fontpath for legacy X applications that don't use fontconfig.
>

OK.

Defome/x-ttcidfont-conf just feel so weird because they are only used in
Debian, and you can't find any definitive documentation for them :)

Font directories everywhere (/usr/share/fonts, /var/lib/defoma/*,
/usr/lib/X11/fonts) and when something is broken, you get easily quite
confused.

Thanks!

-- Pasi Kärkkäinen
       
                                   ^
                                .     .
                                 Linux
                              /    -    \
                             Choice.of.the
                           .Next.Generation.



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