Re: Xprint observations
R (Chandra) Chandrasekhar wrote:
> Dear Jan,
>
> I have an interesting footnote to add to your observations.
>
> If you install mozilla-browser_1.5-3 and include
> mozilla-xft_1.5-3 from unstable, and in Mozilla, under
> Edit/Preferences/Appearance/Fonts, select the fonts serif,
> sans-serif and monospace, without foundry affiliation (probably
> from Xft?) you can see rather impressive anti-aliased fonts
> on-screen and also get good looking serif, sans-serif and
> monospace printout from Xprint under Mozilla.
>
> However, if you change to any other fonts such as, for
> instance, verdana, the Xprint output will default to courier.
I think I know more or less what is the matter now.
I also tried the version you mentioned (mozilla-browser_1.5.3) and
found the same. Very good anti-aliasing; wysiwig printing, but
only as long as you do not touch the default fonts. If you change
only *one* of the defaults to something else, xprint changes
everything to some large sans-serif font, I believe URW Gothic L;
for some reason in your case it is Courier.
In fact you do not have to *change* anything. Open the
preferences, appearance, font dialog and close it again with 'OK',
and you have "permanently" lost good print behaviour of xprint.
OK.. I did some more experiments and this is what I found. This is
fairly complicated and long, I am sorry!
-- In my case Mozilla from Debian 1.5_3 starts up with Bitstream
Vera Serif as the serif font for *display* because that is its
default. B.V. Serif is *called* just serif; Mozilla finds the
correct font through fontconfig.
-- The user has a settings directory for Mozilla (Debian 1.5_3)
called ~/.mozilla.
-- The Mozilla.org version (from
mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-1.5-sea.tar.gz) uses that same
settings directory. Before trying Debian Mozilla 1.5_3, I had
set the serif font in the Mozilla.org version to Bitstream Vera
Serif. So there was *already* a line in prefs.js:
user_pref("font.name.serif.x-western", "bitstream-bitstream
vera serif-iso8859-1");
-- Because of that, Mozilla (Debian 1.5_3) printed Bitstream Vera
and so I thought it printed 'wysiwig'. But then after touching
the font settings, it printed URW Gothic.
-- If I do the experiment again after rm -Rf ~/.mozilla, Mozilla
(Debian 1.5_3) starts with a blank prefs.js file. Now it
prints (the first time) serif in a Times Roman-like font. I
think this is what you saw; you did not mention 'wysiwig' but
only printing serif, sans, and mono. And of course after
touching the font settings it becomes URW Gothic (in your
case Courier) again.
-- In the Debian versions (mozilla-browser 1.5_3 and
mozilla-snapshot [=1.6a] behave exactly the same in this
respect), after touching the font settings there is a line in
prefs.js saying either things like
(a) user_pref("font.name.serif.x-western", "serif"
OR an explicit font name if you set it, e.g.:
(b) user_pref("font.name.serif.x-western", "Bitstream Vera
Serif"
-- Now I think everything can be explained by assuming that xprint
does not understand either (a) or (b). And if it does not
understand it, it does some random thing like printing Courier
or URW Gothic.
The only two things it does understand are
(c) user_pref("font.name.serif.x-western", "bitstream-bitstream
vera serif-iso8859-1");
in which case it prints bitstream vera, and
(d) nothing, in which case it prints a default serif font
(=Times new roman).
-- In other words, xprint understands only more or less "raw" font
names, such as found in fonts.dir files. It already chokes on
names beginning with a capital letter.
Of course I do not know how to fix this. It must have something to
do with fontconfig. At the moment in Debian, Mozilla's display
function is cleverer at understanding font names than xprint is.
The non-Debian version is not so clever but forces you to use
these "raw" names for the display, which automatically also makes
xprint work.
Regards, Jan
Reply to: