The Static Page: Fonts; Another Linux hurdle.

Post #13,094 by static 10/12/01 8:13:17 AM Reply	The Static Page: Fonts; Another Linux hurdle. [link\|http://yceran.org/cgi-bin/qompose.icx/static/article.qf?article_page&anotherlinuxhurdle\|Fonts: Another Linux hurdle] I've found what might be Linux's next hurdle: fonts. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #13,099 by admin 10/12/01 9:24:51 AM Reply	I have yet to figure out... Why none of the distributions seem to properly set up fonts. Why do I always have to set up TrueType fonts and the like? This should be done by the distro. Regards, -scott anderson
Post #13,156 by kmself 10/12/01 3:03:27 PM Reply	Copyright & URW Fonts The problem with fonts is that the font shaping programs (though not the fonts themselves) are subject to copyright. This limits the distribution of high-quality fonts. The problem, of course, is that these days resolution of fonts is done in a distributed manner, not at specific printing locations, and more and more often, fonts are being resolved on free platforms for which proprietary distribution terms aren't applicable. This is a huge problem, and one that I've bitched about in the past. One suggestion I made at an OpenOffice presentation at SVLUG was that Sun take their fonts and place them under X rather than install them within OO, in part to answer this issue. Microsoft themselves recognized this with their TT fonts, and made the fonts liberally available for users so that documents produced with their software would be broadly useable. This is the source of TT fonts most GNU/Linux users seem to use. Of course, liberally avaialble != free software, and most GNU/Linux distros don't include these fonts. One possible solution are the so-called [link\|http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/fonts/urw.html\|URW fonts], which are packaged for various GNU/Linux distributions as part of the GhostScript font selection. The Debian package is `gsfonts-x11`, check your distro for equivalents. `-- Karsten M. Self [link\|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com\|kmself@ix.netcom.com] What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?`
Post #13,161 by admin 10/12/01 3:54:10 PM Reply	That's all well and good... ... but (at least some of) the distros don't even bother to set up TrueType support in X! I've had to set it up in every installation I've ever done, in both RedHat 6.X/7.X and SuSE 7.2. Regards, -scott anderson
Post #13,100 by jb4 10/12/01 9:30:52 AM Reply	Wade, Meet J. R. User Well, I don't want 60 zillion fonts, but I do have several nice sets of True Type fonts, some of which I will not do without. For instance, I require (New) Century Schoolbook for documents, Lucida Sans Typewriter for text editors ,code editors, etc. and Comic Sans for miscellaneous things. Trebuchet is also nice. But more than that, I require the ability to scale fonts on the fly. Right now, I'm using a combination of Windows, Solaris, and QNX. The font support for both the nixes is as you'd expect...crap! Having a limited number of bitmapped fonts is a noticeable downgrade from the Win "experience". It's not quite enough to dissuade me from Linux, but that plus the drastic paucity of tools (editors, IDEs, etc.) is sufficient to dissuade me from switching. So what we first need is a requirement that all windowing front-ends for Linux seamlessly, and automatically, accept and render TrueType fonts as hinted, vector fonts (not by rendering them as a pile of arbitrarily-sized bitmaps.) Can you get on that for me, please? ;-) As far as your article is concerned: head of nail...meet hammer! jb4 (Resistance is not futile...)
Post #13,281 by static 10/15/01 3:15:39 AM Reply	What I've discovered so far, in more detail. Firstly, TrueType support is in XFree and font servers are also available that can do TrueType. The bad part of that is that RedHat has almost no signs saying "Put your TrueType fonts here and then do A B C". (BTW, in RedHat, the utility to create the metadate - i.e. fonts.scale - is called ttmkfdir) Theoretically, if you can run such a font server, you can get TrueType support in any modern X server, but I have no way of trying it. Secondly, don't expect to get bold or oblique versions of your font without bold or oblique versions of your font files. X will not "bold" or "oblique" a font for you, unlike Windows. Thirdly, don't expect font smoothing. Currently, XFree supports it as an extension, which means applications have to know to ask for it. I think support for it in GTK/GNOME is experimental but coming. Fourth, the font-hinting in X is pretty bad. This is exacerbated by the fact that most TrueType fonts have no or poor hinting, despite the fact the TrueType hinting can be so much better than Type 1. Fifth (!), there are broken TTF files around that Windows will work with but X won't. So far, my solution is to run a [link\|http://ttf2pt1.sourceforge.net/\|Type 1 conversion utility] and use them as Type 1. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #13,285 by pwhysall 10/15/01 7:36:26 AM Reply	Re: What I've discovered so far, in more detail. Thirdly, don't expect font smoothing. Currently, XFree supports it as an extension, which means applications have to know to ask for it. I think support for it in GTK/GNOME is experimental but coming. Both [link\|http://www.kde.org\|KDE] and [link\|http://www.gnome.org\|GNOME] support antialiasing (which, incidentally, is NOT the same thing as font smoothing and is not quite the same thing as ClearType as found in Windows XP). KDE does it natively if your X server supports the RENDER extension, GNOME does it via a little library called [link\|http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/~josh/gdkxft/\|gdkxft]. Fourth, the font-hinting in X is pretty bad. This is exacerbated by the fact that most TrueType fonts have no or poor hinting, despite the fact the TrueType hining can be so much better than Type 1. Hinting is a marriage between properly hinted fonts and a font rasterizer that can understand those hints. Most popular TTF fonts are very nicely hinted for the screen - Microsoft's [link\|http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/default.htm\|core fonts for the web] are a good example of this - the X font rasterizer renders them very nicely. Most T1 fonts are horribly hinted for the screen, if at all, but look better on printed output. Interestingly, with a properly antialiased display (such as that provided by gdkxft, and in stark contrast to the font-shape-munging fontsmoothing of pre-XP Windows), those horrid-looking T1 fonts come back into their own, as the AA performs "hinting on the fly", producing the best possible representation for any glyph, regardless of hintedness. Fifth (!), there are broken TTF files around that Windows will work with but X won't. So far, my solution is to run a Type 1 conversion utility and use them as Type 1. Well, I've not encountered any fonts that I can't use, but then, I don't really stray far beyond the core T1 fonts that came with Red Hat 7 and the MS core web fonts. I don't doubt that they exist; there are enough shonky TTF editors for Windows out there that probably produce extremely iffy TTF output... Peter Shill For Hire [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal]
Post #13,456 by static 10/15/01 10:01:21 PM Reply	Hinting and AA/smoothing. There is a multitude of terms and misunderstandings surround anti-aliasing and font-smoothing. I used Microsoft's term for whatever they do in Windows. I know "ClearType" is in a separate category, though. It's encouraging that AA is coming along so well under X. I know Microsoft spent a lot of effort in properly hinting their fonts. I should have said. I went rummaging in the newsgroups and in search engine for Type 1 fonts. Most of them are TrueType, though. That's where I found the broken one I referred to. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #13,525 by pwhysall 10/16/01 3:30:05 AM Reply	:heh Well, I'm a bit of an AA snob (no, really I am :-), as I'm originally from the Acorn scene, where RISC-OS had actual sub-pixel-antialiasing and fully hinted (for screen AND print) outline fonts as part of the OS from 1988 onwards. When a 1MB, 8MHz home computer did it properly nearly 14 years ago, and the penny is only just dropping in the all-powerful Windows and UNIX scenes... well. "About bloody time" is a phrase that leaps to mind. And neither platform (nor the Mac, either) has the single, equally-suited-for-screen-and-print outline font technology that RISC-OS had... BTW, ClearType (as practiced by XP) doesn't look so hot on a CRT (at least to my eyes). Where it comes into its own is on a laptop, where it looks absolutely fab. /me goes off to fire up his A5000 just to see Fonts Done Right. Peter Shill For Hire [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal]
Post #13,530 by static 10/16/01 3:46:42 AM Reply	Ah - retro-computing is a wonderful thing. Mind you, it does point out that not only has Microsoft stagnated the computer industry, but also that the Linux and BSD et al communities are only competing against Microsoft's fairly mediocre and out-of-date technologies. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #13,531 by pwhysall 10/16/01 3:48:50 AM Reply	nogsh Peter Shill For Hire [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal]
Post #13,580 by inthane-chan 10/16/01 11:50:27 AM Reply	Cleartype on CRT. I'm actually using it here at work - and the main advantage isn't that it looks good at traditional resolutions - it's that you can get "smaller" resolutions that are readable without killing your eyes. My "host" machine (the machine I don't screw with for testing purposes - houses e-mail, bug tracking software, etc) has a 15" monitor attached - I keep the 17" for doing my main work. I used to run it @ 800x600, because my eyes hurt when I ran it @ 800x600. With Cleartype, I can run it @ 1024x768, and it works fine... "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Post #13,554 by jb4 10/16/01 9:30:35 AM Reply	gdkxWTF??? Wade, here's the next frontier for Linux (and any other UNIX wannabe): Drop the bullshit TLAs (4LAs, 5LAs, etc.) and speak fucking English (or some other recognizable tongue). gdkxft??? nogsh??? What the fuck is that unintelligble gibberish? Linux will never take over the desktop until its users can pronounce its vocabulary. And all this random place-a-buncha-letters-in-a-blender-and-see-what-comes-out bullshit that makes the geekazoids feel oh-SO-cool about themselves is just so much pud-pulling. Complain about DCL's verbosity all you want, but anybody could look at a DCL script and tell what it did even if it was/in spite of whether it was written by a former UNIX geek! jb4 (Resistance is not futile...)
Post #13,558 by admin 10/16/01 9:57:22 AM Reply	nogsh: stands for "nog that shit"; it's an emote from IWETHEY Interactive. Nog, incidentally, is a typoed version of "nod" that took on a life of its own. So, nogsh is slang for "yes, I agree totally". :-) Can't help you on the other one. :-) Regards, -scott anderson
Post #13,559 by pwhysall 10/16/01 10:10:21 AM 10/16/01 10:11:40 AM Reply	Re: gdkxWTF??? DCL is never intelligible, here's a fragment : $! IF f$getdvi(F$trnlnm("MT_TK70"),"EXISTS") .EQS. "TRUE" $! THEN $! IF first_drive .EQS. f$getdvi(F$trnlnm("MT_TK70"),"FULLDEVNAM") $! THEN $! init 'first_drive' 'tape_id'-01 $! fnd_drv=1 $! mount/noassist/foreign 'first_drive' $! ENDIF $! ENDIF Yes, it's nicely indented. Yes, I do know what it does. Can you tell that this particular code fragment is actually commented out? (This is from our site backup script, btw) gdkxft is a small library that hooks up GDK to the Xft extension of XFree86. All you need to know is that you get luvly antialiased fonts. Peter Shill For Hire [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] Edited by pwhysall Oct. 16, 2001, 10:11:40 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #13,561 by pwhysall 10/16/01 10:13:39 AM Reply	nogsh Is the "Agreement" shell, found on Snobbian 2.2 systems especially. Of particular note is the fact that nothing you can do is actually wrong. Peter Shill For Hire [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal]
Post #13,697 by static 10/16/01 10:27:06 PM Reply	Understanding the technology. People who are going to insist Linux behaves largely the same way as Windows are going to have the most trouble. That includes the terminology of both. Now, that said, I don't think you're in that category, but I do see you have a genuine problem. I can't see font-management and all that goes along with it on Linux approaching the way Windows works. Part of that is the multi-user, network-oriented approach to it all that Windows simply does not do well, but part of that is it is simply The Linux/Unix Way to expose a lot of the underlying modules. So, X11 has a font server, Gnome and KDE have font-smoothing modules, and GhostScript also has it's own font renderer are going to remain public knowledge for quite a while. I don't think all that many people will have problems with knowing this. Of course, they shouldn't need to know quite all of this. At the very most, none of this need be visible unless they want to add a font. Then a font-installer should handle the rest of it. All other detailed knowledge should be optional. That means that if you don't need or want to know that Gnome uses a particularly library by a particular name to enable font-smoothing, then yes, those that are comfortable with module names need to get more in the habit of saying "Yes, Gnome can do anti-aliasing. If you're curious, the module is called gdkxft" or something like that. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #13,111 by Andrew Grygus 10/12/01 10:37:53 AM Reply	Don't hold your breath. I've been griping about this in various discussion forums for years. The answer from the "community" is always exactly the same. "Read the fsk'n HOWTO." You don't need nice fonts to write code, and if it isn't code it's irrelevent and not worth doing. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #13,174 by Ashton 10/12/01 5:36:12 PM Reply	Heh.. {sigh}\ufffd Just this little glitch alone.. culled less clearly than above - from previous font-rants over past year or so: Is why I haven't ordered that el-cheapo eMachine box to commence, dev/self-flagellation/security/modem?/fonts??/null (Of course as even the dejunked W98SE-lite.. becomes a poisoned well, with the Bataan Death March >>> 6X6P6 - I shall have to bite all the bullets, revamp brain cache from \\ to / and eat the above kinds of Stupid Omissions of Basic Functionality [SOBF \ufffd] since.. Never would I remotely consider use of any next M$ atrocity beyond 98-atrocity; especially after peering into the guts of W2K-Server for no-fun and no-profit) Sheesh - what fools these mortals be.
Post #13,280 by static 10/15/01 3:04:09 AM Reply	Community's answer worse than usual. It would be nicer of the HOWTO ripped into how bad it all was as well as told you how to live with it, because then the people responsible might have some impetus to fix it. And for the record, I myself found the HOWTOs considerably less than normally useful. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #13,505 by deSitter 10/16/01 2:23:32 AM Reply	Amazing Haven't I been bitching about this for years now? Linux sucks as a client WS. Windows already has CoolType in Acrobat. Sure it sucks, but it looks GOOD. Linux WS - proof that hackers are - hacks.
Post #13,514 by static 10/16/01 3:01:22 AM Reply	Clarification. Linux sucks as a client WS. Windows already has CoolType in Acrobat. Sure it sucks, but it looks GOOD. No: Linux sucks for this currently. But it is getting better with time. It was only several years ago that X didn't support TrueType. And it was rather more recent that people were saying that anti-aliased fonts were impossible in X. Yet Xfree v4 now supports it and as Peter pointed out, both GTK and KDE support it. What is yet to happen? Font management for printing has to merge with the font management for the X Server. This can be done several ways, but I can see gnome-print heading that way with the idea of a shared directory structure. The other player in that arena, GhostScript, also needs to come to the party. Then lastly we have the other applications like StarOffice and WordPerfect who have to come to the party. Again, there are several ways to do this, but retaining separate font management is not going to work. Yes - it sucks right now. My point was that it needs to be fixed before it becomes a bigger problem than it is right now. And of course, if you don't need or want to diddle with the fonts, then Linux is perfectly adequate right now. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #13,517 by deSitter 10/16/01 3:07:12 AM Reply	Never The people who develop it are hacks - as in, BAD HACKEY PROGRAMMERS and IDIOTS. Linux is fine for character mode UNIX but of course it's for that very reason about 20 years out of date. Fine for a server, sucks as a WS. Ghostscript? What a piece of shit compared to real PS work like Acrobat.
Post #13,522 by static 10/16/01 3:22:21 AM Reply	Lose the lemon. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #13,524 by deSitter 10/16/01 3:26:04 AM Reply	Why? Why not tell the truth? I spend my time mostly with a monopolist POS dungpile called Windows, because the "community" solution is an even bigger POS. People are mostly too stupid for words and communities make it worse.
Post #13,527 by static 10/16/01 3:38:52 AM Reply	Because your invective is not helping. You want some truth? The truth is that using Linux as a desktop has gotten measurably better over the years. Much faster than X Windows on traditional Unix, in fact, due largely to the communities. That, too, is fact. The current problem I was highlighting is that there is still major development to be done. And the sooner the better. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #13,533 by deSitter 10/16/01 3:53:37 AM Reply	Won't Happen Why not admit the truth? The IT industry is a developing disaster precisely because the movers and shakers in the "community" are ineffectual idiots who prefer insipid mentalized appearences to food-on-the-table reality. The reality is, the worst guy won - Microsoft. Nice guys finish last. Nice guys go hungry. Nice guys never get laid.
Post #13,537 by static 10/16/01 4:15:51 AM Reply	Go away. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #13,538 by static 10/16/01 4:15:55 AM 10/16/01 4:16:22 AM Reply	Or go up in flames, I don't care. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!" Edited by static Oct. 16, 2001, 04:16:22 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #13,523 by pwhysall 10/16/01 3:24:26 AM Reply	Hah. In one exchange with me you've already proved that you know fuck all about Linux, and fuck all about fonts. Why would anyone trust your opinion of Ghostscript, given this record? Anyway, piss off. There are people in this thread having a constructive discussion about stuff they find useful. You're just pissing in the barrel for no apparent reason except to be a fucking drama queen. Peter Shill For Hire [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal]
Post #13,526 by deSitter 10/16/01 3:31:23 AM Reply	Actually.. ..it's 3 in the morning and I'm completely fucked up and bored beyond tears and it's amazing I can even type. I'm always at arxiv.org, I know PS that works, and GS isn't it. It's the typical hack-ass shit, good for nothing, tossed together, no skill, no art. Sorry I rode you about FIPS. You're a good guy, if a little too buttoned up.
Post #13,528 by pwhysall 10/16/01 3:39:38 AM Reply	FFS I'm sick to the fucking back teeth of this bollocks. You give people a hard time, and they do one of three things. One, they just go away quietly. Two, they apologise and try to bridge the gap. Then you show how terribly tortured you are by kicking them when they're down. Three, they FUCKING BITE BACK. I don't care, Ross. You can't get to me by telling me how fucked up you are, or how much your life sucks. You've done this pattern with me at least twice now (Ross says/asks "blah", Peter goes "foo", Ross goes "Whine that's not enough/not right", Peter goes "What the fucking fuck [insert long, tedious argument about fonts here]", Ross goes "Aw, sorry, you're a good guy but [insert random insult here]"). Either contribute to this community, or fuck off. What you're doing now is taking away, and that WILL NOT DO. Peter Shill For Hire [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal]
Post #13,529 by deSitter 10/16/01 3:46:07 AM Reply	You're Supposed to Be Friends So let me melt down - is it hurting you? No. At least I can generate a few BeVs of emotion, even if completely despairingly fucked up, once in a while instead of more randomized engrammatic pattern matching.
Post #13,534 by pwhysall 10/16/01 3:55:51 AM Reply	As I said Contribute, or fuck off. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm a loyal friend - but I don't put up with bullshit. I don't go onto (small, close-knit) online communities and tell people that I consider them to be diahorrea stains. Or that they're two-thirds dead maggots, because they're atheist. I actually support and promote my friends, Ross, because - news flash - they're people I LIKE and I want THEM to like ME. And that's how it works. I suggest, if you want to have anyone left in this community you can call a friend, you start doing the same. You wanna melt down? Go ahead. Be my guest. Doesn't bother me. But stop shitting on people. Peter Shill For Hire [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal]
Post #13,911 by deSitter 10/18/01 1:33:18 AM Reply	No Stones You're too frigid to conjure a real emotion, like the rest of the dead weight in IT. If it's not in the user's manual of fake patterned responses, it doesn't exist. Reality is a collating sequence and you've got an MCSE in interpretation of the ultimate code stream - right?
Post #13,917 by pwhysall 10/18/01 2:53:28 AM Reply	Pogue Mahone Too frigid. Yeah. Tell my son that, you wanker. Peter Shill For Hire [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal]
Post #13,932 by CRConrad 10/18/01 7:04:34 AM Reply	POAD, asshole. What's that, if not "real emotion", you stupid wank-stain? You think I'd say stuff like that if I didn't genuinely feel it?!? Ah, OTOH -- who gives a fuck, any more, what you think... Just POAD. Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Knows Too Fucking Much About Walking Assholes
Post #13,650 by marlowe 10/16/01 5:51:53 PM Reply	What else is amazing. We've got a couple couple here really bugged by deSitter, turning this into a much bigger thread than it has to be. Now deSitter doesn't really bug me. Don't ask why, I can't explain it. There are things that really bug me, but this isn't one of them. But the resulting flameage is kinda, well... boring. And boringness bugs me, a bit. If you boys have got to have a flamewar, couldn't you try to make it witty or insightful? I always try to do that when I flame. If you're gonna insult somebody, do it with panache. [link\|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html\|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html] Sometimes "tolerance" is just a word for not dealing with things.
Post #13,668 by Ashton 10/16/01 8:06:57 PM Reply	Well if I had to settle for a toasted marlowe-mello for fulfilling a desire to poke into the embers, I'd consider that a matter of duelling with the unarmed. There are some things you're not s'posed to do - like poke a possum with a sharp spear - to see if he were daid afore ya poked. As fer panache.. that possum's got integrity! (er is That what you meant?) :-\ufffd
Post #13,838 by marlowe 10/17/01 5:42:39 PM Reply	Mello? Me? I have never been mello. I have never tried to find a comfort from inside me. I have never been happy just to hear my song. I have never let someone else be strong. [link\|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html\|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html] Sometimes "tolerance" is just a word for not dealing with things.
Post #13,841 by Another Scott 10/17/01 6:00:03 PM Reply	An Oliva fan, eh? That explains some things... :-)
Post #13,846 by Ashton 10/17/01 6:17:00 PM Reply	Then it's Liebestodt fer you, kid (er -marsh)mallow :-P
Post #14,124 by deSitter 10/19/01 3:12:52 AM Reply	ROFL Sometimes when we touch, the honesty's too much.. HEY! You got tomato sauce on my Blue Oyster Cult t-shirt! BitacH!
Post #13,698 by static 10/16/01 10:29:25 PM Reply	Yah - we let it get on a bit. Shoudn't happen again. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"

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