Following on from my testing with xorg-server-1.19.0 and libXfont2,
a couple of comments on the old Xorg bitmap fonts, another on the
Type1, and then (at last - I got distracted by other things) my
proposal to deprecate bitmap fonts in the book.
Bitmap fonts
------------
I have long thought it was stupid to build both 100dpi and 75dpi core
fonts - yes, when distros used the core fonts they needed both, but
anyone building their own system would not lose anything by only
building the appropriate size. And now that only xscreensaver (which
ignores fontconfig) and tigervnc seem to benefit from them, I believe
that *only* adobe-100dpi will be adequate.
If people do build the old bitmap fonts, some such as Helvetica are
likely to be used by fontconfig when a web page asks for that. But
the bitmap fonts often look horrible in a browser. If you do have
any of them installed, the following will stop them being used by
fontconfig.
cat > /etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf << 'EOF'
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<!-- /etc/fonts/conf.d/no-bitmaps.conf -->
<fontconfig>
<!-- Reject bitmap fonts -->
<selectfont>
<rejectfont>
<pattern>
<patelt name="scalable"><bool>false</bool></patelt>
</pattern>
</rejectfont>
</selectfont>
</fontconfig>
EOF
Arguably this should be in /etc/fonts/conf.avail with a symlink from
/etc/fonts/conf.d, but cups-filters has been writing directly to
/etc/fonts/conf.d since at least 2012 and for BLFS the overhead of
an extra directory doesn't make a lot of sense.
NB creating 70-no-bitmaps.conf is NOT part of this proposal, it will
come when I make proposals for improving how we deal with TTF/OTF
fonts, de-emphasising the bitmap fonts is just a step on the way
towards that (and a *lot* of that is about fontconfig).
Type1
-----
These are scalable and work fine with fontconfig, but the names of
the packages and the font files are not always informative, so here
I'd like to provide a record of what they provide -
font-adobe-utopia-type1 : Utopia
font-bitstream-type1 : Bitstream Charter, Courier 10 pitch
font-bh-type1 : Luxi (also available as TTF in font-bh-ttf)
font-ibm-type1 : Courier
font-xfree86-type1 : Cursor
And guess what - some (perhaps all) of those duplicate bitmap fonts.
Except Courier they are not commonly specified by web pages.
Proposal to deprecate the Xorg bitmap fonts, etc.
-------------------------------------------------
I was initially going to suggest separating libXfont-1 onto its own
page, and similarly bdftopcf, and then splitting Xorg fonts into two
pages (progs and Type1, bitmap fonts), and putting a comment on the
l ibXfont-1, bdftopcf, and bitmap fonts pages that most modern
desktops will not need these [ but referencing them, with a
qualification, from xscreensaver, and from the old xorg-server in
tigervnc ].
1. But I think it will be cleaner to just move the various items to
a page called, for example, Xorg Bitmap Fonts. That page could
then have an introduction something like
"Xorg originally provided bitmap fonts, and a tool (bdftopcf) to
assist in their installation. With the introduction of
xorg-server-1.19.0 and libXfont2 many people will not need them.
There are still a few old packages which might require, or benefit,
from these and so the following packages are shown here."
Packages on this page:
1.1 libxfont-1.5.2
Dependency - Xorg Libraries
Because this is a single package, a straight
./configure $XORG_CONFIG --disable-devel-docs && make
then install as root
1,2. bdftopcf-1.0.5
Dependency: libXfont
Again, straight ./configure $XORG_CONFIG && make
then install as root
1.3. font -
Dependency: Xorg fonts (for font-util, encodings, font-alias),
bdftopcf
I am inclined to mention only font-adobe-100dpi here. This
provides Courier, Helvetica, New Century Schoolbook and Times
which I assume are adequate for anything still relying on bitmap
fonts. Please note that xscreensaver does manage to display
its output without this: for people who want that to be bigger,
100dpi should be fine.
Again, straight ./configure $XORG_CONFIG && make
then install as root
If I can, I would like to index the contents of the adobe-100dpi font
here (not sure how well that will work).
1.4. Other fonts - note that Xorg provided other bitmap fonts which
are listed in version 7.10 of this book on the Xorg fonts page and
can be found at http://ftp.x.org/pub/individual/font/
2. For xscreensaver link to Xorg Bitmap Fonts as optional at
runtime, 'to enlarge the splash screen, error messages, and password
prompt'.
3. For tigervnc link to Xorg Bitmap Fonts as required.
I have no understanding about how tigervnc is used, but I guess
those limited fonts will be adequate : or maybe it only needs
libXfont ?
4. xterm: add dependency on 'a TrueType monospaced font' (for the
moment link to xorg-config.html, ideally to the DejaVu paragraph).
We already configure it to use such a font.
5. Xorg libs - change the case statement to apply to libXfont2-[2-9]*
[ it appears to still be valid, but the current statement will ignore
libXfont2 ]. **required** even if the rest of this proposal is
rejected.
6. Xorg Applications - remove bdftopcf.
7. Xorg fonts - reduce the packages to font-util, encodings,
font-alias, the type1 fonts and the TTFs (font-bh-ttf and
font-misc-ethiopic). And for Short Descriptions deviate from what we
normally do and document what each of the retained fonts installs (if
possible - again, the indexing might be fun)
ĸen
--
`I shall take my mountains', said Lu-Tze. `The climate will be good
for them.' -- Small Gods
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