Re: Anti-aliasing: xfstt or xfs-xtt ?!?
On Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 10:58:11PM +0000, Joao Pedro Clemente wrote:
> > > I notisted my kde fonts were somewhat arcaic so I figured out I needed
> > > anti-aliasing. The antialiasing-howto deb package had a doc that talked
> > > about
> > > xfs-xtt
> > > but I found (with apt-cache) a xfstt.... They seem somewhat similar...
> > > Any clue?
>
> [snip]
> > this was a big deal. Now that X4 knows how to honor Freetype on its
> > own the normal xfs is probably preferred. However, if you were having
> > trouble with that for some reason... perhaps you'd still want it.
>
> [snip]
> > But in terms of an external font server optimized for TTFs, yes, they
> > both do that.
>
> But... That means I don't even need {xfs-xtt,xfstt} to have anti-aliasing,
> and X "alone" will provide the aliased fonts?
> In the meanwhile I tryed both xfstt and xfs-xtt and I actually didn't like
> the appearence of either of them... I reverted to non-antialised fonts..
>
> I haven't tryed the basic xfs, will it behave differently? Hmmm..
> Thank you for your reply!
In point of fact I'm not sure xfstt is at all capable of antialiasing.
It does its own magic then coughs the things up as "native" - and I
never bother to read the source well enough to determine if it was
coughed up as glyphs (which are never antialiased) or as type1s (whose
hinting is kind of wimpy under normal circumstances).
I've no hands on experience with xfs-xtt but it was claimed to be better
by people who cared about that sort of thing.
Anyways, yes, XFree86 version 4 built-in direct support for the freetype
library. You can therefore use TTF fonts locally without a font server
at all, as long as you have the "freetype" extension loaded, and its
directory properly prepared and mentioned on the fontpath.
Since xfs is just seperating out the same code into a fresh binary so
fonts can be served remotely, it should be capable of offering any fonts
that the standalone server can.
Networks have gotten pretty fast but it sucks for a system to crash just
because half its fonts disappeared; most people avoid font servers
unless they have a huge cache of fonts they need to use on several
machines, and/or the several machines benefiting from the font server
are short on memory to manage the font cache themselves. E.g. xterminal
hardware.
Antialiasing specifically, though, may be application dependent; type1
and TTFs offer up their hints, which either are or aren't used to depict
them more properly. Once the font is provided ... in whichever form ...
then it will be used; hopefully your window manager is using it well;
I don't recall the context where you were feeling bitten.
It's been my experience that type1's go much better in postcript docs
(funny thing that :> since they're raw postscript themselves, the
outlines can be redrawn at any scale easily and mostly perfectly) which
often includes printouts. TTFs go better onscreen, and in cases where
you are cooking up a bitmap image file. E.g. I created a 300dpi 8.5x11
image in gimp (oink! lots of memory) then sent it to a printer who was
going to print it out at 48" height. The TTFs came out nice and clean.
Type1's had very tiny jags which by the time it was expanded that high
were noticeable, though not yet horrid and painful. Many people have
gone through complicated hoops to convince their systems to use one
onscreen and another one entirely on the printouts, which looks better;
others find it annoying that wysiwyg is ruined by such efforts unless
the fellow who does the mappings is *particularly* persnickety about
font metrics (curvature of r's and f's, depth of hooks, serif or not,
kerning) and font features (is the g scoopy or calligraphic, capital Q,
& etc).
Hope that helps!
. | . Heather Stern | star@starshine.org
--->*<--- Starshine Technical Services - * - consulting@starshine.org
' | ` Sysadmin Support and Training | (800) 938-4078
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