Wrong fonts showing with msttcorefonts

[Bill Moseley <moseley@hank.org>]

I'm not sure if this is a problem with X or with the way the msttcorefonts
are setup.  If I had a bit of debugging knowledge and a better
understanding of how fonts are selected it might help determine where the
problem is.

I'm running an up-to-date Debian Testing laptop with the XFree86 debian
package 4.2.1-0pre1v2.

I've also installed the MS TrueType package msttcorefonts, and with those
installed Opera displays some fonts (e.g. <font face="Arial,Helvetica">) as
the wrong fonts.  Mozilla displays them correctly.

I'm not running a true type font server, but instead added to my
XF86Config-4 Files: section a line:

    FontPath        "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType"

Even after reading a few HOWTOs I have very little clue how font selection
actually works in X, so I see this as an opportunity to learn a little.

I guess what I'd like to learn how to find out is:

a) is it a problem with Opera?
b) is it a problem with my X setup, or with this version of X
c) is it a problem with msttcorefonts

I assume Opera is asking for a specific font to be displayed, so it would
be interesting to see if that's the same font request that other clients
(such as Mozilla) are requesting when they display the page correctly, or
how Opera is requesting the fonts differently.

Basically, I'm looking for debugging tips, and (probably beyond the scope
of this list) an overview of how fonts are selected by an application.

I'm also curious about the directory layout.

  /etc/X11/fonts/TrueType/msttcorefonts.scale 

why is that the same as:

  /usr/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType/fonts.scale


Thanks,

-- 
Bill Moseley
mailto:moseley@hank.org