On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 02:12:32PM -0500, Rev. Ferret spake thus: > Hi, I'm trying to get true type fonts working on X on my laptop. I > install the xfs-xtt server that comes on the potato disks. I used > mkttfdir to make a fonts.dir in the directory with my tt fonts, I put > unix/:7100 as a fontpath in my XF86Config, and I added the path to my > true type fonts in /etc/X11/xfs/config. I only have the one entry in > my > XF86Config for my fontpath, so I know it is serving up fonts. For > some > reason though, it won't serve up the true type fonts? Am I forgetting > something? I tried to make a fonts.scale, but ttmkfdir doesn't seem > to > be present in any of the debian packages. What am I missing? Where > did > I go wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated. > > Thanks, > Steve >
Hi Steve, I recently set up my laptop (mostly potato) to use TrueType fonts, and took some notes on what I was doing so I could easily add new fonts in the future. The info in this posting comes directly from my notes, but much of it originated with various other sources. Particularly helpful were these two: XFree86 Font Deuglification Mini HOWTO http://feenix.eyep.net/ldp/fdu/index.html TrueType Fonts in Debian mini-HOWTO http://gusp.dyndns.org/doc/HOWTO/en-html/mini/TT-Debian.html Throughout, I use "bash#" as the prompt to denote a command that should be run as root, and I use "bash$" as the prompt to denote a command that should be run as a "normal" user. Note excerpts: To use TrueType fonts you need to run both the regular font server (xfs) and a TrueType font server (xfstt). Both are started from /etc/init.d/ The version of xfstt that we're currently running (0.9.10-6) requires that all of the TrueType fonts (those that have .ttf extension) be located in /usr/share/fonts/truetype It also seems to work ok if you want to keep your fonts in other locations (like under /usr/local) and just make symlinks to the .ttf files. NOTE: the 'mkttfdir' tool in the following step is from the fttools package on Debian 2.2 (potato) After copying your .ttf files to /usr/share/fonts/truetype (or linking to them), you'll need to run bash# cd /usr/share/fonts/truetype bash# mkttfdir ./ to recreate the fonts.dir file. You'll also want to create a fonts.scale file (which has the same format as the fonts.scale file mkttfdir just created, so you can just copy it if you don't already have a "hand carved" fonts.scale file). bash# cp -p fonts.dir fonts.scale NOTE: If you have customized fonts.scale, do /not/ do the above cp step!!! You'll have to edit fonts.scale by hand. Currently, it doesn't seem adequate to have a Section "Files" FontPath "unix/:7101" FontPath "unix/:7100" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/" EndSection section in /etc/X11/XF86Config; it seems that each user needs to add the TrueType font server to the font path explicitely (this all doesn't seem correct to me, but don't have time to track it down right now). The kluge is to place the following line at the top of $HOME/.xsession xset fp+ unix/:7101 Then you'll need to bash# xfstt --sync or, perhaps even better bash# /etc/init.d/xfstt force-reload NOTE: On Debian 2.2 (potato), the /etc/init.d/xfstt force-reload calls does the 'xfstt --sync' step and restarts the daemon. You'll still need to restart X for the client apps to be able to use the TrueType fonts (I think --> I have not yet found a fullproof way to not, anyhow): So... 1) shut down X 2) stop the xfstt daemo bash# /etc/init.d/xfstt stop 3) restart the xfs daemon bash# /etc/init.d/xfs restart 4) start the xfstt daemon again bash# /etc/init.d/xfstt start 5) start X again (via startx) bash$ startx -- -bpp 32 root can test the fonts from the TrueType server like this: bash# fslsfonts -server unix/:7101 -ttf-arial black-medium-r-normal-regular-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 TTUP020B0A040201020202040_Arial Black ... bash# users can check that they can see the ttf fonts like this: bash$ xlsfonts | grep ttf -ttf-arial black-medium-r-normal-regular-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 ... bash$ The TrueType fonts should now show up in the font selection menus of programs such as the GIMP or Netscape. It's not the cleanest configuration, but it works. HTH, -Al
