Bug#585620: xterm: Please consider defaulting to freetype font rendering

[Roger Leigh <rleigh@debian.org>]

Package: xterm
Version: 259-1
Severity: wishlist

Hi,

Utilising FreeType is already done for most of the other common
terminal emulators in Debian, and looks vastly better, as well
as not using the archaic XLFD/X11 Core Fonts.

The following patch to /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm enables
font rendering with FreeType.  This is already done for most
of the other common terminal emulators in Debian, and looks
vastly better.

I'm not sure if faceNameDoublesize should also be specified,
since I just see boxes with or without (while XTerm is linked
with fontconfig, gnome-terminal/konsole display Japanese just
fine).  Is the FreeType/Xft support broken here?  This working
fine with the default X fonts (9x15), but not when using
-fa/.faceName.  Maybe I shouldn't be also using Monospace for
-fd/faceNameDoublesize, since this doesn't have the necessary
glyphs?

It would also be nice to display the menus in similar manner, but
I didn't find a suitable resource name for that--does one exist?
 

132a133,135
> *VT100.faceName: Monospace
> *VT100.faceSize: 14


Regards,
Roger

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (550, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages xterm depends on:
ii  libc6                     2.11.1-3       Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libfontconfig1            2.8.0-2.1      generic font configuration library
ii  libice6                   2:1.0.6-1      X11 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  libncurses5               5.7+20100313-2 shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libutempter0              1.1.5-3        A privileged helper for utmp/wtmp 
ii  libx11-6                  2:1.3.3-3      X11 client-side library
ii  libxaw7                   2:1.0.7-1      X11 Athena Widget library
ii  libxft2                   2.1.14-2       FreeType-based font drawing librar
ii  libxmu6                   2:1.0.5-1      X11 miscellaneous utility library
ii  libxt6                    1:1.0.7-1      X11 toolkit intrinsics library
ii  xbitmaps                  1.1.0-1        Base X bitmaps

Versions of packages xterm recommends:
ii  x11-utils                     7.5+4      X11 utilities

Versions of packages xterm suggests:
pn  xfonts-cyrillic               <none>     (no description available)

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm changed [not included]

-- no debconf information