Re: Fonts: the Neverending Struggle
Hi,
I don't disagree with some of your points, or your feelings about the
font situation. I do remark that with many voluntary initiatives
(Gnome, KDE, WindowMaker, etc.) for desktops, I'm not surprised that
they don't all use one common scheme for fonts, and other aspects.
There is no one "GNU/Linux", and no one "Desktop", and this isn't a
mistake (although it's inconvenient in some regards). It's an aspect of
the nature of Open Software development.
As an extreme example, you might decide to design and implement a
Universal Font framework anyone could apply anywhere, thus solving the
problem for everyone. Everything that happens here happens because
someone volunteers.
Another way to say the same thing (IMO) is that Open Software is like
herding cats.
I'm still getting used to it myself.
Can I suggest you install the "aptitude" front end for selecting
packages? I use it, and it lets me search for terms, in this case
"fonts", so it's easier to find the range of whats available. There are
several truetype font packages available, and a number of postcript as
well, of course.
On Fri, 2003-06-13 at 20:33, M. Kirchhoff wrote:
> Another problem is simply the lack of decent fonts. Most of the guides refer
> users to the free Microsoft TrueType font pack; however, it seems that those
> links are all dead now that Microsoft no longer offers them. When I try to do
> "apt-get install msttcorefonts", I get an error message about them no longer
> being available (sorry I don't my debian box handy to grab the exact error
> message). Is there a font-site-to-end-all-font-sites out there somewhere?
I downloaded and installed them 3 days ago. Has M$ done something in
the intervening time?
> Font problems seem to be some of the most frustrating and difficult to deal with
> in regards to Debian and GNU/Linux in general, particularly for newbies like
> myself. I've heard that the latest versions of distros like RedHat and SuSe
> offer great font support and goodies like anti-aliasing right out of the box,
> which is great for recent converts from the Windows world, where good looking
> type is a no brainer. But for newbies like me who prefer Debian
> and--especially--who run older hardware and thus prefer more lightweight X
> managers like Fluxbox over full environments like Gnome or KDE, it's a real pain!
Not to take away from your reactions (I share some of them), but perhaps
the "heavyweight" aspect comes from including all those setup goodies.
> Basically, I'm in search of how-tos or any other kind of help that fills the
> eight-month gap in font coverage in those older how-tos.
I'm a Debian new(ish)bie myself. Here are some of my solutions so far:
I am running Woody/stable, but adding backported packages to get some
things not included. "www.apt-get.org" has a searchable list of
packages - check each individual package to make sure it's for stable.
KDE 2 and Gnome 2 both anti-alias fonts. I haven't decided which I will
use yet, but I have both installed. (I have been using Gnome, but
Galeon is busted/unreliable/locks up and not all of Gnome is upgraded to
Gnome 2 yet.)
Once I installed the msttcorefonts package, Gnome 2 included them by
default, but the many Gnome 1 packages still installed didn't use them
(and the default looked like shit).
I solved this by editing /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 and including a line to
list my truetype fonts:
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType"
You can find the path on your system (after you've installed fonts, but
maybe some are already there) with "find / -name truetype", or "find /
-name substitute_font_name_here". There might be more than one place to
find them.
This provided the truetype fonts, but selecting them is a bit more
involved. Edit or create and edit a file named ".gtkrc" in your user
home directory. Run "gtkfontsel". Use this to select a font you like
for your Gnome 1 desktop apps. I use Verdana. Use the "Copy font name"
button once you've picked the size and weight you like of the font you
choose. For instance:
-microsoft-verdana-medium-r-normal-*-*-120-*-*-p-*-iso8859-1
Put this into the .gtkrc file:
style "default"
{
fontset =
"-microsoft-verdana-medium-r-normal-*-*-120-*-*-p-*-iso8859-1"
}
widget_class "*" style "default"
(Note: the fontset entry is all on one line - this mail program wrapped
the line).
Save it, logout, log in and that's the default font for Gnome 1 desktop.
Someone more knowledgeable than me might now be provoked into telling me
how much easier it would be for me to just...
And you and I will both learn something if they do.
Cheers,
Bret
--
Bret Comstock Waldow <bwaldow@alum.mit.edu>
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