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Re: what do i need for truetype fonts and antialiased fonts?



on Sat, Mar 31, 2001 at 11:28:57AM -0800, Forrest English (forrest@truffula.net) wrote:
> i'm pretty sure there's a way to make all of my fonts be true type fonts,
> and i've heard rumors there's a way to make use of antialised fonts.  
> what packages do i need, apt-cache search ttf seemed fairly inconclusive.
>  and what sort of configuration do i need to do?

There are TrueType and an aptly named "Font DeUglification HOWTO" which
you should look at.  Depending on your X Server version, you may or may
not need to add a TrueType font server.  Don't let this alarm you, it's
pretty straightforward.

Antialiasing of general display fonts is _not_ available under
GNU/Linux, barring some esoteric options.  There *are* applications
which do display fonts in an antialiased manner -- 'gv' and 'acroread'
are two of these.  For all the hullaboo about antialiased fonts under
Legacy MS Windows, it turns out that only *title* fonts over a certain
pointsize are antialiased.  For fonts at sizes used most frequently for
body text, antialiasing actually makes reading of text *more* difficult
as it simply blurs the text.  More useful than antialiasing in these
cases are font sizing hints -- this is where TrueType excels over other
font techniques.  

There are specific fonts, designed, as fate would have it, by Microsoft,
which are specifically designed for ease of reading online, "Georgia"
and "Verdana".  Personally, I find a strong preference for Garamond
(serif), I *don't* care for non-serif proportional fonts in general.
For most purposes, monospace fonts are still the best way to fly -- I
tend toward courier in GUI apps and various incantations of the
'misc-fixed' fonts in X11 standard font selection.

For more on fonts in general, see Joel Spolsky on "Three Wrong Ideas
From Computer Science":
http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$190

On my desktop, running XFree86 3.3.x, I run the xfstt fontserver with a
selection of fonts largely snatched from my otherwise
long-since-banished MS NTWS 4.0 install, plus a few freebie fonts
collected over the ages.  On my laptop, running XFree86 4.x, I've got
the same fonts (copied from desktop), but access them natively under the
X server.  Note that configuration and registration of fonts varies
slightly in these two configurations.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>    http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?       There is no K5 cabal
  http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/         http://www.kuro5hin.org

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