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!

Enable or disable hinting

Put the following into your /etc/fonts/local.conf or ~/.fonts.conf to enable or disable automatic hinting. If you set it to false, fonts don't scale very well (it often defaults off for patent reasons). 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.
• Introduction to Fonts in Linux - overview of font systems

CategoryXFree86Notes