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).

Using AntiAliasedFonts in graphical applications.

Laptop users might be interested in SubPixelAntiAliasing.

See UnicodeNotes for hints about font support for unicode applications.

And some how-tos:

• OpenOfficeFonts? to install new fonts under OpenOffice
• HowToFontHOWTO? 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.
• HowToTTXFree86? describes setting up your X server to use true type fonts, such as those used by MicrosoftWindows.
• HowToTTDebian? 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 (HowToFDU? or http://feenix.burgiss.net/ldp/fdu/) is probably the most up-to-date/relevant infomation for setting up fonts under recent (XFree86 4) distributions.

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.