Re: true type fonts fixed...
Sorry 'bout the delay.
On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Ross Boylan wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 03:21:15PM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
> > On Wed, 9 Jul 2003, Ross Boylan wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 01:41:26AM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
> > > > scenario:
> > > > sid, kde-3.1.2, xserver-svga (v3.3.6), X-4.2.1, xfstt
> > >
> > > Huh? Are you combining parts of X from 3.3 (xserver) and 4.2 (the
> > > rest)? I'd be surprised if that worked out.
> >
> > Why is that? Would you be surprised if a v3 remote X-terminal could
> > connect to machine with XFree-4?
>
> Well, you're right that it should work, but whether it actually works
> is a different matter. It probably didn't get much testing.
Ya, too bad considering the number of unsupported in XF4 graphics
cards.
> It also might be particularly problematic in the case of fonts, since
> as far as I can tell some of the font functionality is migrating to
> the client (while perhaps also remaining on the server) with v 4. I'm
> not sure exactly what's where. Further study in this area seems to
> produce further confusion, at least sometimes!
Too many cooks; clients should use what fonts are available through
the underlying operating system, not try to do it themselves (imo).
> > > > - KDE knows about the fonts but they are not rendered
> > > How do you know it knows?
> >
> > ...on a per-user basis: fonts were copied into ~/.kde, had a green
> > checkmark, appeared in the font selector dialogs, but were always
> > rendered as helvetica
> >
> > ...in admin mode: .afm's were created (iirc) under X11R6 when the
> > fonts were in /usr/share/fonts (no surprise, eh)... green blah blah
> > helvetica
>
> Well, that's an interesting variation on my problem. Mostly, I don't
> see anything at all, whereas you get some default font (maybe my
> default font is invisible?).
I've never had a system wide `all characters are boxes' problem; maybe
with one or two non-KDE apps, quite awhile ago, and definately
not related to the current font problems.
> My symptoms:
> 1) Some text doesn't appear at all in Konqueror, or only as lines.
> For example, I only see the graphics on my KDE help pages (even in my
> vanilla Debian KDE 2.2 installation).
never seen that
> 2) Some apps have drop down lists of styled texts. Some of the
> entries are blank.
> 3) Some apps give you a font chooser which lets you pick style, size,
> etc and shows a preview pane. When I pick some fonts, the preview
> pane is blank.
seen these with specialized symbol fonts, but chaulked it up to a lack
of anything to render (i.e., blanks at those `character codes')
> > > > Hmmm, could having ttf available through both fontconfig (via
> > > > x-ttfcidfont-config) and xfs-ttf be a problem...
> >
> > s/b xfs-xtt :-/
> >
> > > Well, I've been more thinking that not having fonts available through
> > > fontconfig is the problem. Someone recommended to me to make sure the
> > > TT fonts were in fontconfig.
> >
> > sounds reasonable
> > except the v3 xservers don't know about fontconfig (???)
> >
> > I think there are too many cooks <shrug>,
> > and am not sure why KDE is doing low level mucking about with fonts
> > (especially at the system level).
>
> KDE apparently uses Qt to handle fonts. I'm not sure if the stuff in
> the control center is a straight interface to Qt or if KDE is adding
> something extra on top.
I can understand Qt (needs to run under three different OSes) wanting
to go low-level with font set up, but what is KDE's excuse.
> My understanding du jour of font configuration:
> - XftConfig is used by freetype v 1 and apps that depend on it.
> Probably none do.
>
> - fonts.conf is used by fontconfig and freetype v2. Most newer apps use
> this, including newer KDE. Note that freetype v2 is in the
> libfreetype6 package on Debian.
>
> - XF86Config-4 used by the X server itself. But in v4 the server is
> schizophrenic, getting some stuff the traditional way and some via
> freetype v 2 (or maybe X and Freetype both use the same core
> library?).
>
> - various spots for particular apps.
>
> Maybe one of those spots is aliasing everything to Helvetica?
I have had "export QT_XFT=0" in .bashrc for awhile and have been
starting KDE from the commandline, so I shouldn't have to worry about
XftConfig making a contribution. (right?)
XF86Config-4 is not used by the v3 servers so I haven't touched it
(looks ok, afaict, has the /var/lib/defoma/x-ttf... lines and correct
ttf server port reference in the Files section).
The only font infrastructure related pkgs I have sought out are ttf
servers, anything else has been pulled in via dependencies (e.g.,
fontconfig, freetype v2.1.4-4, x-ttcidfont-conf) and configured
however Debian defaults to doing it.
Remember I said I managed to get ttf via xfs-xtt... well, the
ttf-larabie pkgs got installed but the fonts didn't appear in KDE so I
went into the kcm font installer to see what would happen --- now I'm
back to no tt fonts (tried both administrator and user mode, *.afm
created in same dir as the *.ttf files this time).
So, Arial and the rest of the ms core fonts have disappeared from the
KDE font selectors and the only thing touched was the KDE font
installer (which shows the tt fonts as installed and enabled)...
...how do I disable KDE's font installer subsystem,
it appears to be broken.
- Bruce
Reply to: