Trouble with TT fonts
Hi all!
This is my first post here, so hi to all, congratulations and many
thanks for your work.
Now I follow with the problem I have with TrueType fonts. I have read
the archives of this mailing list and googled a little. I found many
posts related and some helped me quite a lot, but still I have some
trouble. Here is the description:
0) Background. This is to tell you how I set up some stuff, maybe you
should not skip it...
I just installed debian, and these are my first steps on this distro.
I have previously used red hat, so the change was big ;-)
Install: I installed the basic packages plus some other stuff. One of
my concerns was to get nice fonts to the desktop, so I got the ttf from
windows, according to this:
http://www.linux-sottises.net/howto-en/mini/FDU/
It improved, but some fonts did not render as nice as I expected,
they were still ugly, but I convinced myself they looked better ;-)
I then searched a little bit more and I did what's told in this
article:
http://theregus.com/content/4/26770.html
Which is basically compiling freetype defining some macros that are not
defined by default, so it renders better fonts.
What I got is a new freetype lib: "libfreetype7" (major soname 7, for
the lib). I also kept the "old" version libfreetype6 which comes with
debian woody 3r1, the readme says it is ok to have both without
namespace conflicts... and I have not run into trouble.
The results were greatly better, much much better. I can see all fonts
well rendered with "font selector", and I also get antialias. That's
very good! It really made a difference.
1) Next I installed oo.org with this settings in sources.list for
apt-get
deb http://www.fs.tum.de/~bunk/debian woody/bunk-1 main contrib non-free
deb-src http://www.fs.tum.de/~bunk/debian woody/bunk-1 main contrib
non-free
I didn't seem to have a problem to install it... it went well. I've
got openoffice.org.
$ dpkg --list "*openoffice*"
(...)
pn libming-fonts- <none>
un openoffice <none>
ii openoffice.org 1.0.2-0.bunk
ii openoffice.org 1.0.2-0.bunk
ii openoffice.org 1.0.2-2+1
(...)
ii openoffice.org 1.0.2-0.bunk
(...)
2) Now I start openoffice write as a normal user, it asks for my address
book etc... it goes well.
The second start, though, gives me a problem. As I have read in other
posts, fonts are set to 0 size... getting the very same thing you can
see in this screen shot from bugreport #1872:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=581&file=oo.jpg
I read that some windows fonts give problems, namely a specific font:
"tahoma", so I take it away from the directory it was, and I redo the
"fonts.dir" and "fonts.scale". I ran deforma also.
After that, I can see the menus from openoffice well, but I can not see
the true type fonts.
3) Although I see the menus, I seem to have problems with truetype
fonts, since I can not see them in the fonts menu, I see there's a font
there, but I get a blank line instead, the rest of the fonts are seen
well. I can select the true type fonts and write, but they don't get
displayed on the screen. The rest are well displayed also when I type.
And that's basicaly the problem. So I read more in the mailing lists:
4) According to some posts, I could have problems with my new
libfreetype, since oo's binaries are linked against it. I am no expert,
so I don't really know that for sure, the post I read is this one:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-openoffice/2003/debian-openoffice-200303/msg00009.html
I checked /usr/lib for freeetype libs:
libfreetype.a
libfreetype.la
libfreetype.so -> libfreetype.so.6.1.0
libfreetype.so.6 -> libfreetype.so.6.3.0
libfreetype.so.6.1.0
libfreetype.so.6.3.0 (<- this is the one I compiled, shouldn't it be 7?)
also
$ dpkg --list "freetype*" shows:
(...)
ii libfreetype6 2.0.9-1
(...)
So it is the one mentioned in the post, but I have the new one also, and
I don't really know what happens here when oo is loaded and linked to
the libs.
Finally:
5) So briefing the first time _worked_ "well" (or I though so)... second
time gives me problems. Now if I create a new user, from the first time
I see the menus but no truetype fonts.
_BUT_ the strangest thing is this one:
it _works_ if i run oo as root (God forgive me for running as root),
the fonts are displayed well in any case, and I get antialiased fonts...
So, I don't think it is a linkage problem, but rather a priviledges or
some configuration files... but here I don't know what to touch or do,
and if you have suggestions, they'll be more than welcome!
If you need more info (even more? ;-) I can provide it.
I believe this will be hardly reproductable for you, developers...
/Josep
P.S.: I noticed that a new created user gets a menu entry "Open Office",
while the old one gets the differents office applications spreaded into
different menus "Editors", "Graphics"... the root user has a menu entry
"Open Office".
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