XFree86 Font De-uglification HOWTO
note - you might find a more recent version at 
http://feenix.burgiss.net/ldp/fdu/
See also FontNotes.
v1.95, 11 February 2002
How to improve X Window fonts. Various tips for improving font handling for XFree86, including sections on font servers, !TrueType fonts, Netscape, and related topics.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1. Conventions Used in this Document
1.2. Change Log and What's New
1.3. New Versions
1.4. Copyright
1.5. Credits
1.6. Translations
2. X Server Configuration
2.1. Setting The !FontPath?
2.2. X Server Command Line Options
3. !TrueType Fonts
3.1. Making !TrueType Fonts Available
3.2. Font Servers
3.3. The fonts.alias File
4. XFree86 4.x
4.1. Anti-aliasing
4.2. Red Hat 7.x Differences
5. Adjusting Fonts in Specific Applications
5.1. Netscape
5.2. Mozilla
6. Odds and Ends
6.1. Notes
6.2. Links
An often heard complaint is the poor default fonts and font settings of X as implemented by many Linux distributions. Some programs use fixed width default fonts when a variable width font would be more appropriate. Other programs use fonts that are so small as to be practically unreadable. Many of the fonts that are bundled with XFree86 are not of the same quality as found on some other platforms. XFree86 does come with a halfway decent courier font, but its Times and Helvetica fonts are simple bitmap fonts that pixelize when scaled. This is changing for the better recently, but a default Linux desktop still often needs some tweaking to get the best fonts possible.
This HOWTO attempts to show how to adjust various font settings, install new fonts, and a few other things that should greatly improve the appearance and readability of fonts on the X Window Desktop. This is done by adjusting the
adding switches to X server command line in startx or xdm (and variants), by adding new fonts, and by making sure a !TrueType font server and fonts are installed. !TrueType does indeed make a huge difference in many applications.
Comments, corrections, additions and critiques are always welcome. You can reach the author at `hal@foobox.netb. Contributions are also welcomed. Especially anyone who really stays current with KDE and/or GNOME issues!
http://freshmeat.net/webFonts4Linux. A few other odds and ends.The pre-release versions of this document can be found at http://feenix.burgiss.net/ldp/fdu/index.html.
Copyright © 1999 by Doug Holland.
Unless otherwise stated, Linux HOWTO documents are copyrighted by their respective authors. Linux HOWTO documents may be reproduced and distributed in whole or in part, in any medium physical or electronic, as long as this copyright notice is retained on all copies. Commercial redistribution is allowed and encouraged; however, the author would like to be notified of any such distributions.
All translations, derivative works, or aggregate works incorporating any Linux HOWTO documents must be covered under this copyright notice. That is, you may not produce a derivative work from a HOWTO and impose additional restrictions on its distribution. Exceptions to these rules may be granted under certain conditions; please contact the Linux HOWTO coordinator for more information.
In short, we wish to promote dissemination of this information through as many channels as possible. However, we do wish to retain copyright on the HOWTO documents, and would very much like to be notified of any plans to redistribute the HOWTOs, this one in particular! Web page authors are free to link to this HOWTO without restriction, though the author would appreciate an email informing him of this, just so he can boost his ego by knowing who else reads and links to this document.
Many of the terms mentioned in this document are trade names. Unless otherwise stated, all trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Original author: Doug Holland.
Email: meldroc@frii.com WWW:
Updated and maintained by Hal Burgiss.
Email: hal@foobox.net WWW:
Special thanks go to:
Chinese: http://www.linux.org.tw/CLDP/mini/FDU.html by Yu-Chia Chang.
There are a few simple configuration tweaks that will help X do its job better.
The first place to look for curing font problems is the XF86Config file. /usr/X11/lib/X11/XF86Config or /etc/X11/XF86Config are the common locations. (This may be XF86Config-4 for XFree86 4.x.) If you haven't guessed already, the most important part of this file relating to fonts is the !FontPath?. Before we get into that, this would be a good time to check the other parts of your X configuration. Bad monitor settings can be even more of a headache than bad fonts, so make sure your refresh rate is as high as your monitor can handle (85 Hz is great, 75 Hz is OK, 60 Hz is painful.)
Use your favorite text editor and edit XF86Config. Near the top of the file in the
This much should be the same, or at least similar, for both XFree86 3.x and 4.x. The !FontPath? tells X where to find the fonts it uses to render text on your display. Order is important -- when an X application asks X to render some text, the X server usually has some leeway to choose the font that is used. The X server then goes through the
X client's criteria, and then displays it. (Note that Red Hat's xfs for versions 6.x and later has a different way of setting the !FontPath?. See the Section 3.2.2 below for more on xfs.)
If the 100dpi fonts are not listed, they probably did not get installed for whatever reason, so you may want install them now. Default installations may put 75dpi fonts before the 100dpi fonts. If you have a high resolution display (1024x768 or higher), this means very tiny fonts. If this is the case, the first tweak you'll use is to switch the 75dpi and 100dpi
Next, specify that you prefer to use unscaled bitmap fonts. If you've ever used Netscape or any other program that displays titles using big fonts, you'll likely notice that those fonts are pixelized. This is ugly and needs to be corrected. So add :unscaled to the ends of the misc, 100dpi and 75dpi fonts. You can even use both unscaled and scaled fonts if you want, just put the unscaled !FontPath? lines first to
After making these changes, restart X (and your font server, if installed). Doesn't the desktop look better already?
The next thing you need to do is adjust the command line options for the X server. You'll want to use the -dpi switch which specifies the display resolution in dots per inch. As a lot of systems use high resolution displays these days, chances are they'll be working at 100 dpi.
Or these options can be stored in /.xserverrc. See the startx and xinit man pages for more on this.
If you use xdm (or friends such as gdm) for graphical logins, you'll want to edit your /usr/X11/lib/X11/xdm/Xservers file (or possibly /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers) which will have the
Note that there is no magic to "-dpi 100". Choose something higher if your hardware will support it -- like "-dpi 120".
More information is in the X, Xserver, xdm, xinit, and startx man pages.
Historically, the Unix world relied on Type 1 fonts for high quality scalable fonts. Linux supports Type 1 quite well, both for printing and for screen output. But, Type 1 never was widely adopted by web designers, and on other platforms. !TrueType, due to its association with Windows, is the preferred web font.
Because the boys at Redmond are very concerned with the appearance of their software (as opposed to the internal workings ;), they built !TrueType font support into Windows. And of course no big surprise, but they got the idea from Apple. In fact, !TrueType is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. Windows 9x, NT, 2K and nearly every other incarnation of Windows comes with Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier New, which are roughly equivalent to Helvetica, Times and Courier. !TrueType fonts are scalable, so they look good in large sizes, and they are well hinted, so they are readable at small sizes. Many windows applications come with dozens more !TrueType fonts. Don't microwave your Windows CD yet, you'll want to get those fonts first!
Any recent distro will have one or more font servers included. And XFree86 4.x does have built in support for !TrueType (see Section 4). You won't find many decent !TrueType fonts included with any distribution, however. The reason is that there are not many quality !TrueType fonts available under a suitable license at this time. Many distributions are including tools for automating the process of adding
route.
XFree86 3.x does not come with built in !TrueType support, so you'll have to add it yourself if you are using a 3.x version. This will mean installing a font server that does support !TrueType. And, of course, installing the fonts themselves (see below).
Let's start with the fonts first. Any !TrueType font included with the various MS Windows incarnations should work. Don't forget word processors and other apps that may include their own fonts. MacOS fonts will only work if converted to a usable format. (See the links section for converter packages.) There are also some 'free' !TrueType fonts available for download if you have already nuked that CD (see links section).
Many distributions are now bundling tools for automating the process of including quality !TrueType fonts. SuSE, Debian, and Mandrake do (Red Hat 7.x does not at this time). See what packages you might have for this as this will be the most painless way to go. Essentially, these tools help migrate fonts from a Windows installation, or download those available from Microsoft, and then handle the installation and configuration all in one neat utility. If you do have such a utility, the below information may not be necessary!
In order to use !TrueType, the fonts will have to be always accessible to X. This means they will have to be on a filesystem that is always mounted. This can conceivably be a Windows partition on a dual boot system. Alternately, the fonts can be copied to
Then, add the fonts to this directory, either by copying them from your
or by downloading those available directly from Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/default.htm.
These fonts are in self-extracting zip archives. The ones labeled for use
with Windows 3.1 can indeed be unpacked under Linux with the Linux
The '-L' option will convert to lower case font names (this may be necessary for
some versions of xfsft and Red Hat's xfs). Note that the current Linux zip
utility does not work with the 32 bit Win9x cab font archives. (It also looks
like Microsoft no longer has the 16 bit Arial, Courier and Times-Roman on
this site.) But these can be unarchived under Linux with
cabextract, which can be found
http://www.kyz.uklinux.net/cabextract.php3.
This would now seem to be the best way to go since there is a better
selection of fonts.
A slick solution to this from Sebastiano Vigna is his
the downloading, extracting and installation of the Microsoft fonts all in one neat package.
Or you can get an RPM of !WebFonts? that contains some of the MS 'Web'
ftp://ftp.rpmfind.net/linux/contrib/noarch/noarch/webfonts-1-3.noarch.rpm.This has enough basic fonts to keep Netscape and other web browsers happy.
Something similar for Debian is http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/msttcorefonts.html.
This does not include the actual fonts, but facilitates the installation.
If doing it yourself, you will also have to include the new !TrueType directory(s) in the X server's fontpath. So with your text editor of choice
There are several font servers available that will do the job: xfstt, xfsft, and Red Hat's patched version of xfs based on xfsft. While these names are all too similar, these are different packages. One, or more, of these should be included with any recent Linux distribution, and you may have one installed already. If so, use which ever one your distribution is set up to use.
Historically, font servers were used to serve fonts over a network. Font resources could then reside on one host, and clients could access them as needed. But, the developers have enhanced these to include features such as the ability to render !TrueType fonts. (XFree86 4.x has this ability included already, and thus an additional font server is not really needed solely for the purpose of having !TrueType support.)
One such font server is xfstt. xfstt was designed specifically with !TrueType
fonts in mind.
3.2.1.1. Installation
xfstt is very easy to install and configure. If it isn't
already installed, you'll want to download the tarball, or check your CD. The
most current version can be found at http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/fonts/
Then build and install it. Read the INSTALL file for quick instructions, but it's a no brainer.
From the xfstt directory is all you have to do.
xfstt should be started before the X server starts. Once you have this working correctly, you can add the above lines to /etc/rc.d/rc.local, or other suitable start up file. Then
to your XF86Config to tell X about the font server. Rerun xfstt --sync any time the !FontPath?, or contents, change.
3.2.1.2. Adjusting the Default Font Size
If your !TrueType fonts appear to be very tiny, the following commands may help.
Add the -dpi switch to your X server command line (see section 3 above to do this.)
Use the --res switch to tell xfstt to increase the default resolution. Use the following command line.
As of Red Hat Linux 6.0, Red Hat based distributions (Mandrake, etc) have included a specially patched version of xfs, the XFree86 Font Server, and patched X servers as well. Red Hat's xfs includes the xfsft patch set which in turn is built upon the !FreeType Font library. Red Hat's xfs provides similar functionality to xfstt. xfs is able to serve both !TrueType and Type 1 fonts, as well as legacy X fonts.
If you are using a Red Hat based distro, you should have xfs installed already. If not, it is in the XFree86-xfs*rpm. To make sure it runs as one of the default services, either use
Now xfs will start every time you boot.
----3.2.2.1. Setting the xfs !FontPath?
The default Red Hat installation of xfs serves fonts via a Unix Domain Socket. We'll need to tell the X server where to look for xfs, and thus fonts. The
At least for a default configurations. This is a reference to the socket where xfs is listening. You may include additional !FontPaths?, but these will be handled by the X server, and not xfs. A clean install of Red Hat 6/7 should have this already set up, but if you are upgrading from an older version, you may have to change this yourself!
xfs then has its own, separate !FontPath? stored in /etc/X11/fs/config. This is where it will look to find fonts. This is over and above the X server's !FontPath? in XF86Config. You can either add the new path(s) with a text
The !FontPath? must exist before running chkfontpath. The relevant section of /etc/X11/fs/config should now look
catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled, /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled, /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1, /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo, /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc, /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi, /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi, /new/font/path
When adding a new !FontPath? for !TrueType fonts, you will want to do this step after installing and preparing the fonts. See the next section.
----3.2.2.2. Getting the Fonts Ready
We still have a bit of work to do before we can actually use any !TrueType fonts. xfs requires a few things to be in order. First, all font files must have lower case names for xfs. Secondly, they shouldn't have embedded spaces. And then, we will need to create a couple of files to make things go.
Su to root, and change to the directory where the !TrueType fonts are.
If there are any upper case font names, you can use the following script to
#
ls * | while read f
do
if [ -f $f?; then
if [ "$f" != "`echo \"$f\"?; then
- Note that 'This' will overwrite 'this'!
mv -iv "$f" "`echo \"$f\" | tr A-Z a-z`"
fi
fi
done
Note the punctuation -- the backquotes are important! Remove any spaces from font names too. Once the !TrueType fonts are properly installed, you must create both fonts.dir and
As of Red Hat 7.1, the above commands are run from the xfs init script. So restarting xfs (/etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs restart) will accomplish the same thing.
You should now have fonts.dir and fonts.scale files in your !TrueType font directory. ttmkfdir is in the Freetype RPM, and must be run before mkfontdir. With Debian based distros, there is a similar utility called mkttfdir, and is in the fttools Deb package. Though this apparently does not generate as many encodings as ttmkfdir. These commands may not always report errors, so verify that they were created and are not
$ ls -l fonts.*
If you encounter any problems, try ttmkfdir with the - m switch. This will discard bad characters from the font file. Specify a number such as 50 or l00 (ttmkfdir -m 50). The files themselves are text files.
$ less fonts.dir
114 webdings.ttf -microsoft-Webdings-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-microsoft-symbol verdanaz.ttf -microsoft-Verdana-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-ascii-0 verdanaz.ttf -microsoft-Verdana-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-fcd8859-15 verdanaz.ttf -microsoft-Verdana-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15 verdanaz.ttf -microsoft-Verdana-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-9 verdanaz.ttf -microsoft-Verdana-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
[...?
or check them out further with xfontsel, or gfontsel. If they are visible to xlsfonts, then they are available to X and vice versa. If they are not there, try restarting X with Ctrl-Alt-BS.
xfsft is a !TrueType solution from Juliusz Chroboczek. xfsft is based on the
essentially is a patch for XFree86's xfs and related libraries -- xfs + ft. Red Hat's xfs is essentially xfsft with a few minor modifications. Also, XFree86 4.x includes the freetype font module which is also the result of Juliusz's work, and is one of the !TrueType solutions available for XFree86 4.x.
Building xfsft requires having at least some of the XFree86 source available, in addition to xfsft itself, so this is not for the faint of heart. Instructions for building and configuring xfsft are in the tarball, so I won't go into details here. They are pretty straight forward. There are links to binaries available at the xfsft home page (see above).
Note that you must also create
fonts.scale and fonts.dir files for
xfsft. fonts.scale can be created manually (ugh!), or with
the ttmkfdir utility. This is not included with xfsft but
you can get it here: http://www.joerg-pommnitz.de/!TrueType/ttmkfdir.tar.gz,
or probably on many Linux archives sites too. Red Hat has this as part of the
Freetype RPM. And for Debian it is called
mkttfdir and is in the fttools
package.
clone-self = off use-syslog = off
client-limit = 20
catalogue = /usr/local/share/font/ttfonts
error-file = /home/jec/fonts/xfs.errors
default-point-size = 120
default-resolutions = 100,100,75,75
If all goes well, you could then add this !FontPath? to XF86Config.
fonts.alias is yet another font configuration file that can be used to tweak how fonts are handled. Like fonts.scale and fonts.dir, fonts.alias must be in the same directory as the fonts you are aliasing. It is not mandatory however, but does solve certain potential problems. Here is an example from the first line of/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/fonts.alias on
fixed is the 'alias' here. Any time this is requested, we actually get the font definition from the second column. Font too small? Just change the definition. (Warning: this is a critical file, at least on Red Hat.) The same principle applies to all fonts, including !TrueType. In fact, if you don't have !TrueType, you could conceivably use this trick to have a comparable Type 1, or other, font aliased as a !TrueType.
fonts.alias is important for some applications that don't handle the data provided by fonts.scale well. Most notably here is Netscape. Without a fonts.alias you will find that Netscape will only show point sizes of 0 and 12 available. fonts.alias fixes this. You might also find that if you a specify another size with the scalable font option under Preferences, Netscape will not remember this setting. Annoying! This is also fixed. So we really need this file. Sample excerpt from
These are scalable so we don't get any predefined point sizes. We will need to create our fonts.alias something like this excerpt for
monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--6-60-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 \
- monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--7-70-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 \
- monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--9-90-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--8-80-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 \
- monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--9-90-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 \
- monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--11-110-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--10-100-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 \
- monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--11-110-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 \
- monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--12-120-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 \
- monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--13-130-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 \
- monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--13-130-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--14-140-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 \
- monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--14-140-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--15-150-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 \
- monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--15-150-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--18-180-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 \
- monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--18-180-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--24-240-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 \
- monotype-Arial-medium-r-normal--24-240-75-75-p-0-iso8859-1
(Please note that I have split each line for readability. There should be two columns all on one line, without the "\", and separated by at least one space.) This will keep Netscape happy. Also, if font names should have embedded spaces, then you should enclose the filename in quotes. You might also note the pointsize discrepancy between the first and second columns of the first few rows. The first column of the first entry has a '6', whereas this is aliased to a '9' in the second column, and thus '9' point. This is by design and is an excellent way to overcome the Netscape 'damn tiny fonts' syndrome. Adjust to suit your tastes, resolution, and eyesight.
This file can be created manually with a text editor, or conceivably with some
fancy sed or awk scripting. There is an excellent discussion of this file,
and other font related topics at Kristin Aanestad's site at
http://home.c2i.net/dark/linux.html. There is
also a link to a python script which can reportedly automatically generate
a fonts.alias file at this same site. Thanks to Kristin
whose work and insight was the inspiration for this section!
Another potential use of fonts.alias would be to map one font to something quite different. Say you don't have !TrueType fonts, and didn't want to install Microsoft's. You could alias nice, scalable Type 1 fonts to a !TrueType. That way when the system (or some web page) wants a
doesn't scale well.
Note that with XFree86 4.0.2 and greater, there are new font handling mechanisms available via the Xft extensions. Font aliasing is done in Xft's own configuration file: !XftConfig?. This is the preferred method where anti-aliasing, and the other new rendering features are desired. See the Anti-aliasing Section for more on this and de-mystification. This is only true where the application (i.e. the toolkit, e.g QT) itself supports the new extensions! At this time, not all do (yet).
XFree86 4.0 introduced native support for !TrueType fonts, along with other new features. The enhanced font support is based on xfsft from Juliusz Chroboczek, which in turn is based on the !FreeType font library originally from Mark Leisher, so the configuration is similar to xfsft and Red Hat's patched xfs. As of 4.0.2, XFree86 begins to support anti-aliasing which is a technique for smoothing font outlines (see section below).
The !FontPath? is still in XF86Config, as always. For Red Hat 6/7 using a stock XFree86 4.x (i.e. NOT the Red Hat 7.x supplied version), this will mean moving the Red Hat xfs
to XF86Config. A separate font server is no longer needed just for !TrueType support. You may disable it, unless it is needed to serve fonts to other clients in a network environment. See the section below for Red Hat 7.x specific configuration issues.
Section "Files"
FontPath? "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled"
FontPath? "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
FontPath? "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath? "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
FontPath? "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
FontPath? "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo"
FontPath? "/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1"
FontPath? "/usr/local/share/fonts/ttfonts"
FontPath? "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
FontPath? "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
EndSection?
In order to use !TrueType, you must also specify which font module the X server should be using in the "Module"
Section "Module"
Load "freetype" Load "speedo" Load "type1" <load other modules....>
Note that there can be only one 'Module' section, so include any other modules here as well.
You also must to create fonts.scale and fonts.dir file for each !TrueType font directory, just like for xfsft and Red Hat's xfs. ttmkfdir will come in handy for fonts.scale. See the xfs Section 3.2.2 above for more details and examples.
xtt is another available !TrueType module that is best known for supporting ideographic (Oriental) type fonts. You can use either, but only one at a time.
Anti-aliasing is a technique for producing even smoother, crisper looking fonts by subtly softening the sharp, jagged edges. This has long been a feature of Apple and Microsoft font rendering, and is now making it's way into X via the X Rendering Extension specification thanks to Keith Packard. The new extensions provide other benefits as well. Distributions that support anti-aliasing with their stable/official versions are now being released.
That is the good news. The bad news is that not all drivers support anti-aliasing yet. This is a moving target, so you will have to dig around to find whether your chipset is supported or not. The recently released 4.2 should have near universal support. More not-so-good news is that few applications are actually taking advantage of this yet. We will have to wait for the various toolkits (TK, GTK, Xaw, etc) to catch up.
If you are reading this long after the publication date (February 2002), hopefully most of these shortcomings will have been overcome. All hardware will eventually be supported, mainstream distros will have shipped releases that include the new extensions, and they will be enabled by default. Many apps will look better since they will be "AA" aware, and we won't have to jump through any configuration hoops just to make it work. In the meantime, read on ...
Minimum requirements for Anti-Aliasing:
http://www.freetype.org, and also now bundled with XFree86. XFree needs to be linked against this, so install and build first if building from scratch. Your distro should have Freetype packages as well. Just make sure it is freetype-2.http://trolls.troll.no/lars/fonts/qt-fonts-HOWTO.html.Keith Packard has a very brief summary of the steps required for building,
installing and configuring from source at http://www.xfree86.org/keithp/render/aafont.txt. No need to reprint it here.
Newer distro releases are likely to have the foundation support for anti-aliasing available now. Red Hat, for instance, has it available as of Red Hat 7.1.
To verify the necessary components, first make sure the "freetype" module (and any others) are loaded. Check the X
(II) !LoadModule?: "freetype" (II) Loading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/fonts/libfreetype.a (II) Module freetype: vendor="The XFree86 Project"
compiled for 4.0.3, module version = 1.1.9 Module class: XFree86 Font Renderer ABI class: XFree86 Font Renderer, version 0.2
(II) Loading font !FreeType
Then verify if the "RENDER" extension is available, either check with xdpyinfo, or check the X server log, typically
If "RENDER" is there, anti-aliasing and the other advanced rendering extensions should be available.
By Danny Tholen <obiwan@ mailmij.org>
Xft is an interface to the freetype rasterizer written by Keith Packard, member of the XFree86 Project, Inc. It allows applications to use fonts from the new X render extension using a unified font naming scheme. In /etc/X11/!XftConfig? (or /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/!XftConfig?) you will find a configuration file which can be adapted to suit your personal taste. In this section I will explain the syntax and demonstrate some things you can do with this file.
The following information is based on 4.0.3. 4.1 is just released, and there may be a few new wrinkles not touched on here.
----4.1.3.1. !XftConfig? Structure
The basic structure revolves around a 'pattern'. A pattern is a set of name/value-list pairs, each value-list contains one or more typed values. A
A size 12 arial font in latin-1 encoding. The Xft extension will now try to patch this pattern to all of the fonts available in the system. And selecting the one with the best score. Before the matching is done Xft looks in !XftConfig?. The requested pattern can here be extended
This will enable anti-aliasing for all fonts of the family Arial.
Also, the X server is queried to list all of its fonts; the XLFD contains just enough information to match fonts roughly.
Here's a list of attributes used in matching fonts (in priority order, this
foundry font foundry (string, like "monotype") encoding font encoding (string, like "iso8859-1") spacing font spacing (integers or proportional (0), mono (100),
charcell (110))
bold is the font bold? (boolean) italic is the font italic? (boolean) antialias is the font anti-aliased? (boolean) family font family (string) size font size (double) style font style (string, like "Bold Italic") slant font slant (roman, italic, oblique) weight font weight ( integers or light, medium (100), demi-bold,
bold, black)
rasterizer not yet used (probably "!TrueType", "Type1", ...) outline are outlines available? (boolean)
----4.1.3.2. !XftConfig? Syntax
;!dir; Adds a directory to the list of places Xft will look for fonts. There is no particular order implied by the list; Xft treats all fonts about the same.
match qual FIELD-NAME COMPARE CONSTANT
where qual is either any (matches one specific font)
match all foundry=="monotype"
which will match (and edit) all fonts belonging to the foundry
"monotype".
match any family=="arial"
will match (and edit) one specific font with the family name
"arial".
FIELD-NAME is any one of the properties found in the
pixelsize font size in pixels (integer) charspace character space (integer) minspace minimal spacing (integer) rgba color hinting (string "rgb" or "bgr" and
vertical hinting "vrgb" "vbgr"), aka sub-pixel hinting
xlfd x server font (string, type xlsfonts to
see a list of your xlfd strings)
file the font file (string) core use X core fonts? (boolean) render use render fonts? (boolean) index I have no idea what this does:) scalable is the font scalable (boolean) scale scale the font (integer) charwidth character width (integer) charheight character height (integer) matrix no idea (not really at least)
COMPARE can be `,
b, or ==.
CONSTANT is the value of the field-name in the
appropriate type (see above section Structure).
You can use multiple matches before you use the "edit"
edit FIELD-NAME ASSIGN EXPR SEMI
Where ASSIGN can be one of =,
, the matching value in the pattern will be replaced by the given expression. + or =+ will prepend/append a new value to the list of values for the indicated field.
EXPR sets the FIELD-NAME to a value.
SEMI is a semicolon (;). You can
use multiple instructions, separated by a semicolon. See below for examples if this is confusing.
*
----4.1.3.3. !XftConfig? Examples
And now I'll try to list a few useful configurations and explain them. Note
that it is configured for my system, and I may use different fonts than you, so try to adapt the examples to your own needs.
dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1" dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/drakfont"
includeif "/.xftconfig"
to your standard !XftConfig?. This will enable a user specific configuration file, but it will not complain if there is no such file.
match any family == "fixed" edit family =+ "mono"; match any family == "console" edit family =+ "mono";
match
any size > 8 any size < 15
edit
antialias = false;
match
any family == "mono"
edit
spacing = mono;
# #
My Symbol, Webdings, etc. fonts do not show up!
For some reason some (symbol) fonts are not correctly recognized, and Xft
will show your default font, or a font which has the closest match (which is generally not what you mean at all). For Adobe Symbol and MS-webdings I
match
any family == "webdings"
edit
antialias = false; encoding += "glyphs-fontspecific";
match
any family == "symbol"
edit
antialias = false; encoding += "glyphs-fontspecific";
This will generate a lot of output, especially if you have many fonts, because it lists the properties and scores of every font available. You can also use other values. For a nice summary of what happens (requested font,
you can use XFT_DEBUG=2.
match edit rgba=bgr;
or use rgb if you have a different type of monitor. For vertical AA you can try vbgr and vbgr.
undef TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER
to:
and rebuild with this modified source. See the freetype2 README file for details. Adobe Courier looks terrible on my system, so I made an alias so that Lucida console is displayed instead. If anyone can get it to display nicely I would appreciate knowing about it.
#
#
#
#
dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1" dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/drakfont" dir "/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1"
#
# match any family == "fixed" edit family =+ "mono"; match any family == "console" edit family =+ "mono";
#
# includeif "/.xftconfig"
#
#
match
any family == "mono"
edit
family += "lucida console"; spacing = 100;
#
# match any family == "Charter" edit family += "Bitstream Charter"; match any family == "Bitstream Charter" edit family =+ "Charter";
match any family == "Lucidux Serif" edit family += "!LuciduxSerif?"; match any family == "!LuciduxSerif?" edit family =+ "Lucidux Serif";
match any family == "Lucidux Sans" edit family += "!LuciduxSans?"; match any family == "!LuciduxSans?" edit family =+ "Lucidux Sans";
match any family == "Lucidux Mono" edit family += "!LuciduxMono?"; match any family == "!LuciduxMono?" edit family =+ "Lucidux Mono";
#
# match any family == "Comic Sans" edit family += "Comic Sans MS"; match any family == "Comic Sans MS" edit family + "Comic Sans"; match any family == "Trebuchet" edit family + "Trebuchet MS"; match any family == "Trebuchet MS" edit family + "Trebuchet"; match any family == "Monotype" edit family =+ "Monotype.com"; match any family == "Andale Mono" edit family + "Monotype.com"; match any family == "Monotype.com" edit family =+ "Andale Mono";
#
match
any size b 8 any size ` 15
edit
antialias = false;
match
any family == "courier"
edit
family += "courier 10 pitch";
match
any family == "webdings"
edit
antialias = false; encoding += "glyphs-fontspecific";
match
any family == "symbol"
edit
antialias = false; encoding += "glyphs-fontspecific";
match
any family == "Standard Symbols L"
edit
antialias = false; encoding += "glyphs-fontspecific";
match
any family == "dingbats"
edit
antialias = false; encoding += "glyphs-fontspecific";
match
any family == "Cursor"
edit
antialias = false; encoding += "glyphs-fontspecific";
match
any family == "Arial" any size > 7 any size < 15
edit
antialias = false;
As mentioned above, KDE and QT do have solid anti-aliasing support with recent releases. GNOME, however, does not support anti-aliasing natively in stable releases (as of Feb 2002). But it is under developement and will be available when 2.0 is released, which should not be far away. If you are adventurous, you might consider getting the current development snapshot, and play with that.
In the meantime, there is the gdkxft project available at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gdkxft/.
This will add anti-aliasing support to GTK+ 1.2 applications. This is a
stand-alone library and not a patch. It will only effect GTK+ widgets (many
of them but not all). There are some limitations, but mostly it works as
advertized. Read the included README closely. An initial
installation provides a good starting point. I used some of Danny's
suggestions above, and it seems to work mostly.
Even with the latest Mozilla (widgets only AFAICT)! GNOME users will need to
use the "gdkxft" supplied theme.
For RPM users, there is a spec file in the tarball, and an RPM can be built with "rpm -tb `tarballb.tgz". Then install the binary RPM that is produced from that.
You've gone through all the steps, and verified that the "RENDER" extension is available, but you don't perceive a difference? Well, maybe the applications themselves just aren't there yet, and are not able to utilize these new features. Netscape, for instance, is not able to take advantage of anti-aliasing.
So how to know what does and does not make use of anti-aliasing? A quick test is to use something like xmag, or gimp, and enlarge the text considerably. Look for diagonal lines, and if they are clearly stair-stepped with no softened edges. If so, then while anti-aliasing is technically available, it is not being used. With anti-aliasing you should see gradients instead of well defined sharp edges. You can compare this with xterm and
One final point: anti-aliasing and !TrueType are completely separate issues. One does not depend on the other, though both together can can enhance appearance significantly. Especially, with good quaility !TrueType fonts!
Red Hat 7.0 introduced some changes to X configuration over previous Red Hat versions. It is also different from the stock XFree86 configuration as addressed above. Notable differences:
previous versions (i.e. Red Hat 6.x).
Let's face it, Netscape is an important application in Linux. We all use it, and we all need it, so let's look at it specifically for a minute. An out of the box Netscape installation is prone to the font problems we've discussed -- large fonts that get pixelized, splotchy looking fonts, fonts so small they are unreadable. In short, ugly. Maybe this is why you are here?
Hopefully, at this point you have followed the above suggestions. These steps can help greatly. !TrueType font availability is almost a necessity, and you need a !TrueType font server for this. Many web pages specify font families -- like Arial -- that are not typically available to Linux users. This is bad design, but having some of the basic !TrueType fonts available will help greatly in overcoming the short-sightedness of some designers. Microsoft -- can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.
Assuming you have !TrueType working, from the Netscape menu select Edit -b Preferences -b Fonts. Open the Variable Width Font droplist on the right side of the window. Your !TrueTypes? should be there along with other fonts. Choose which ever one suits your fancy as the default. Check the Allow Scaling checkbox too. If the available point sizes are 0 and 12, you can go down and, and enter your desired point size in the box to the right and click on the OK button. The down-side to this is that Netscape will not remember these settings, and you will have to do this each time you start Netscape. Unless -- you have fonts.alias set up already. Then this will solve these problems. See Section 3.3 for more on fonts.alias.
You might consider experimenting with some /.Xdefaults (or
Netscape*!DocumentFonts?.sizeIncrement: 10 Netscape*documentFonts.maximumPoints: 240 Netscape*documentFonts.xResolution*iso-8859-1: 120 Netscape*documentFonts.yResolution*iso-8859-1: 120
The 'sizeIncrement' controls how much of a jump Netscape makes when different
for instance. The default is '20', which is a pretty good jump. Changing this
can help Netscape from scaling to too large and too small of a font. The x and y resolutions are roughly equivalent to 'dpi' settings. Any random number within reason can be used here. Experiment.
(or .Xresources as the case may be) and restart Netscape. There are many settings that can be tweaked or altered this way. Look at the Netscape.ad (app defaults) file that should be included with Netscape packages.
If this approach does not get the job done as far as the 'tiny fonts' problem in Netscape, then see the fonts.alias section above. You can really fine tune many things with this approach.
Mozilla configuration should be roughly the same in many respects. You might find, however, that Mozilla does a much better job of handling fonts, and pages will look better overall. Highly recommended! The only caveat is, it seems to need a fairly fast system. It may be pretty sluggish on older systems.
Also, user preferences can be stored in "user.js". Not to be confused with "prefs.js". Put user.js in whatever directory you find prefs.js in (this is not a consistent location). Attempt
(Applicable only to XFree86 v.3.x.)
http://home.c2i.net/dark/My_Mozilla_FAQ.html.http://www.paulandlesley.org/linux/xfree4_tt.html and for 3.3.x: http://www.paulandlesley.org/linux/debian_tt.html.http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/msttcorefonts.html is a similar package for Debian.http://freshmeat.net//webFonts4Linux automates the downloading, extracting and installation of the Microsoft fonts all in one neat package.http://www.macinsearch.com/infomac2/font/util/tt-converter-15.html and http://www.netmagic.net/evan/shareware/#TTFontConverthttp://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Unicode-HOWTO.htmlftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/communicator/extras/fonts/windows/Cyberbit.ZIP. And Lucida Sans Unicode, which is included in IBM's JDK 1.3.0beta for Linux, and covers Roman, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, combining diacritical marks. This can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.maths.tcd.ie/Linux/opt/IBMJava2-13/jre/lib/fonts/ as !LucidaSansRegular?.ttf and !LucidaSansOblique?.ttf. Thanks to Tzafrir Cohen for these references. He also has a nice page on Hebrew fonts and related topics at http://www.iglu.org.il/faq/?file=133.No other page links to HowToFDU yet.
