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Fonts On XSummary:
Font Anti-AliasingFont anti-aliasing (AA) works by adding shaded pixels to font outlines, thus making the font look smoother. This feature has been introduced in XFree 4.0.3 via the 'RENDER' extension and the X ~FreeType interface library (Xft). To get AA on your desktop, you first have to test if XFree offers the needed RENDER extension for your graphics card. Run this command in a terminal: xdpyinfo | grep -c -i render If you get a '1', you can go on. If not, you'll have to wait until XFree offers RENDER for your card, too. Enabling AA on KDE is very easy: Open the 'Control Center': '~LooknFeel' - 'Fonts', mark the field 'Use Anti-Aliasing for fonts', save, logout and in again. Et voila, anti-aliasing. With GNOME and GTK it's a tiny bit more complicated. Get the RPM from the gdkxft home page and install it. Select the 'gdkxft' theme from GNOME's Control Center. If you are not going to use GNOME, copy the file '/usr/share/themes/Gdkxft/gtk/gtkrc' to your home directory and rename it to '.gtkrc'. Add the lines LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libgdkxft.so.0<br> export LD_PRELOAD to your '~/.bashrc', log out and in again and your GNOME desktop or GTK applications will be anti-aliased. To tweak the font sizes which are a bit odd (especially for menu titles), edit your '~/.gtkrc' and reduce font sizes. You also might want to set the 'menu*' styles to 'lil-sans'. General settings can be applied either to '/etc/X11/~XftConfig' or to a local '~/.xftconfig' file. One thing you should do in any case is to put a hash (#) in front of all the listed directories in '~XftConfig' which are not present on your system. This will have a positive effect of the time applications need to start. Read the KDot tutorial on How to configure your Anti-Aliased desktop for an overview on the syntax used in '~XftConfig'. Notice that there is a hacked version of libXft which turns off the sub-optimal hinting. "My Fonts Are Too Small1.1 "You can fix this on two or even three levels: on a system level or on an application level. If your are using a desktop environment like KDE or GNOME , you can change the default font sizes from their respective Control Centers. On the system level, small fonts can be caused by the X font server (xfs) loading a smaller set of fonts first or by a wrong DPI (dots per inch) setting or both. The font server configuration file is '/etc/X11/fs/config'. The directories listed under 'catalogue' are searched one after the other for a font requested by X, i.e. the first font that matches, 'wins': /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled,<br> /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled, This loads the (smaller) 75 DPI fonts first. If you reverse the order of these entries, the bigger 100 DPI fonts will be used instead. If you can't find an entry for the 100DPI fonts, you have to install them first (package 'XFree86-100dpi-fonts'). Traditionally, X assumes a DPI setting of 75. Most modern monitors however follow the Windows standard and use 96 DPI. To find out your current DPI setting, run: xdpyinfo | grep dots XFree 4 offers an option to correct this setting. Open '/etc/X11/XF86Config-4' as 'root' in an editor, scroll down to the 'Monitor section' and add below the 'Model Name' line this: ~DisplaySize xx yy Substitute 'xx' with the width of your screen in millimeters, and 'yy' with the height. Save and restart X. Adding FontsUsually you want to use '~DrakFont' for this via the Mandrake Control Center ('System' - 'Fonts'). It's not only more convenient, but also does some sanity checks. But if you what to do it the hard way or if ~DrakFont doesn't seem to work for you, follow these instructions: ~PostScript (.pcf)
~TrueType (*.ttf)
You'll still get the errors but your fonts should get added to the 'fonts.scale' file." You might not be able to use those fonts in all applications, though.
Caveats:
Font ViewersThe 'Mandrake Control Center' includes a font viewer ('System' - 'Fonts'), and if you are using a desktop environment, you can either use the respective fields of their Control Centers or the standard font preview field available from the configuration dialog of most applications.
Font Resources~TrueType's 'Great ~TrueType Fonts' page lists all major resources for TT fonts. Fonts packages available at the RPM repository at Rufus.Org in RPM-Format. Shareware Typefaces is a large, search-able collection of freeware and shareware fonts. A similar resource is available at Font Freak . The fonts page of GIMP.org lists some packages useful for GIMP. If you've ever encountered those annoying script-fu errors because of missing fonts, this is the place to go1.1 Freshmeat lists font packages and font applications . Related Resources:KDot: How to configure your Anti-Aliased desktop Revision / Modified: June 11, 2002 Legal: This page is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License . Standard disclaimers of warranty apply. Copyright LSTB and Mandrakesoft. |