[gentoo-dev] TrueType Fonts in X

[gentoo-dev] TrueType Fonts in X

[Christopher Dudley]

Greetings,
    I noticed recently that when Gentoo installs X, it also installs a big 
bunch of TTF fonts along with it. (From the Microsoft Free Font collection, 
nice. :).

   The problem is, while it installs the fonts, there does not seem to be a 
way to use them. When you run the xfontsel program, it only lists the BDF 
fonts or whatever it is that X comes with.

   Any ideas why this happens or how to fix it? It could be using the TTF 
fonts already, but does it somehow map them to other names?

Anyway, this should be an interesting one. :)
    -Chris

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Re: [gentoo-dev] TrueType Fonts in X

[Alan]

On Wed, Nov 06, 2002 at 12:22:58AM -0600, Christopher Dudley wrote:
> Greetings,
>     I noticed recently that when Gentoo installs X, it also installs a big 
> bunch of TTF fonts along with it. (From the Microsoft Free Font collection, 
> nice. :).
> 
>    The problem is, while it installs the fonts, there does not seem to be a 
> way to use them. When you run the xfontsel program, it only lists the BDF 
> fonts or whatever it is that X comes with.
> 
>    Any ideas why this happens or how to fix it? It could be using the TTF 
> fonts already, but does it somehow map them to other names?
> 
> Anyway, this should be an interesting one. :)

You need to add them to your fontpath so that they are avilable to
applications in X.  There are a couple of ways to do this:
 - at the command prompt type 
 		xset fp+ /path/to/the/truetype/fonts
		xset fp rehash
	This will only work for that session though. 
 - the better way to do this is to add them to your /etc/X11/XF86Config
   file.  Close to the top there'll be something like:

Section "Files"
	FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
	FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"

	Just add the directory with the fonts there.

Another thing to do is add the font path to the /etc/X11/XftConfig file.
Just add it at the top in the same format as the rest of the lines:

dir "/some/path/to/fonts"

Also, search for 'truetype' at forums.gentoo.org and you'll find lots of
help there as well!

alan

-- 
Alan "Arcterex" <alan@ufies.org>   -=][=-   http://arcterex.net
"I used to herd dairy cows. Now I herd lusers. Apart from the isolation, I
think I preferred the cows. They were better conversation, easier to milk, and
if they annoyed me enough, I could shoot them and eat them." -Rodger Donaldson

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