Re: X fonts

[Liam O'Toole <liam.p.otoole@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 07 Nov 2006 15:20:15 -0800
Dan Serban <dserban@lodgingcompany.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> I've been using debian for ages it seems now and have one question
> that's been nagging at me for a while.
> 
> Through X and in some cases on a local tty I get some odd characters.
> 
> This usually happens in a terminal in X (any of them) and when
> viewing web pages through firefox or epiphany.
> 
> In the case of a browser, the best example is http://wikipedia.org
> where the different languages are displayed. I see large hollow boxes
> with four values such as x, 0, 5 etc.  As well as solid diamonds with
> question marks in them.
> 
> In the case of a terminal, running sensors displays RPM and
> temperature values, when it displays the temperature I see either an
> empty box or a filled in character with a question mark in it (for
> the circle that represents degrees).
> 

[...]

Those extra characters are usually provided by bitmap fonts, which
fontconfig disables by default. To see the difference, run sensors in
an xterm window (which does not use fontconfig) as opposed to
gnome-terminal (which does use fontconfig). Assuming your browser is
one of firefox, epiphany, mozilla, or konqueror (and probably others),
browsing will be affected by fontconfig too.

To change the fontconfig settings run as root:

    dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig          # stable
    dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config   # testing/unstable

A side effect will be that bitmap fonts such as Helvetica and Courier
will occasionally show up in web pages. Many regard this as
undesirable, and set up truetype aliases for those fonts.

-- 

Liam