Here are some pages that describe how fonts work, and how to set up nice fonts on your system.

Note: the FreeType library (for displaying TrueType fonts) has recently started using FontConfig? for configuration rather than XftConfig, which is now obsolete.

BitstreamVera is a free TrueType font specifically developed for FreeSoftware by GNOME and Bitstream (a company that makes fonts). They look much nicer than the default Luxi fonts (especially sans-serif) that Red Hat use, so you can replace them with a simple substitution, either system wide in /etc/fonts/local.conf or ~/.fonts.conf for your user alone. (Google, find this page on how to change the default KDE font please!)

<alias>
    <family>sans-serif</family>
    <prefer>
        <family>Bitstream Vera Sans</family>
        <family>Luxi Sans</family>
        <family>Albany AMT</family>
        <family>Verdana</family>
        <family>Nimbus Sans L</family>
        <family>Arial</family>
        <family>Helvetica</family>
    </prefer>
</alias>

Change the ordering to suit!

Disable hinting

Put the following into your ~/.fonts.conf to enable or disable automatic hinting. If you set it to false, fonts look very crisp. Set it to true and the fonts look smoother.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <match target="font">
    <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>
</fontconfig>

Thanks to GNOME Hacks.

Miscellaneous Technical Notes:

In the fonts.dir file, you can point different encodings (charsets) to the same physical file, BUT ONLY FOR SCALABLE FONTS. I spent quite a while trying to determine why my characters were wrong when I tried to do this for a bitmap font (eg a 75dpi one). It is the scalable font backends that do the magic here, not X itself.

See also

• Using AntiAliasedFonts in graphical applications. Laptop users might also be interested in SubPixelAntiAliasing.
• See UnicodeNotes for hints about font support for unicode applications.
• OpenOfficeFonts? to install new fonts under OpenOffice
• Font HOWTO gives lots of background and overview about the different kinds of fonts (Type1?, TrueType), faces (serif, sans-serif), and basically everything you ever wanted to know.
• TrueType Fonts with XFree86 4.x mini-HOWTO describes setting up your XServer to use true type fonts, such as those used by MicrosoftWindows.
• TrueType Fonts in Debian mini-HOWTO describes true type fonts for Debian users, including viewing on screen via applications such as X, groff(1) and tex, as well as printing via GhostScript.
• The XFree86 Font De-uglification HOWTO is probably the most up-to-date/relevant infomation for setting up fonts under recent (XFree86 4) distributions.

CategoryXFree86Notes