Understanding Font Paths

[Alan Chandler <alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk>]

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I am running kde under debian unstable and something weird has suddenly 
happened to the fonts in konsole.

Before starting, I should state that I "think" I am running the Xserver 
without an additional font server (ie neither xfs or xfs-xtt, not xfstt), as 
I can't quite understand why I should need it .  I presume that the 
libfreetype module loaded by the x-server should suffice.[So if someone can 
explain why ought to use pne of the above font servers I would be interested 
to listen]

Anyway, I have started to look at the various packages and config files that 
seem to be in use and as far as I can see, I have at least four copies of 
some x fonts (particularly the truetype ones) stored on my system

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts (with /usr/lib/X11/fonts via symlink)
/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs
/var/lib/defoma/gs.d/dirs/fonts (not sure this is not just ghostscript - but 
there are truetype fonts in this directory)
and
/usr/share/fonts.


Why the separate places, and which one is correct.

My /etc/X11/XFConfig-4 has the following in it

Section "Files"
  FontPath      "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
  FontPath      "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath      "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath      "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
  FontPath      "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo"
  FontPath      "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
  FontPath      "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType"
  FontPath      "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo"
  FontPath      "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
  FontPath      "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
        # if the local font server has problems, we can fall back on these
EndSection

Since this part of the the file is controlled by debconf - why has it not 
added the /var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs lines into XFConfig-4.

As you can see /usr/share/fonts does not figure - however, the package 
xfonts-konsole puts its fonts into the top level of /usr/share/fonts  (in a 
compressed form?) and then there are type1 and truetype subdirectories with 
further directories underneath.

Now in /etc/fonts/fonts.conf there is a list of directories that includes 
/usr/share/fonts but NOT /var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs

On top of all of this, there is a kde font installer.  It seems to know about 
fonts - but I have no idea what it is actually manipulating)


I am very confused - could do with some enlightenment.



- -- 
Alan Chandler
alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk
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