I tried to send this message earlier but didn't get it back via the list
the way I normally do, so I'm trying again. Apologies if you got it the
first time.
The X window system has two different mechanisms for supplying fonts to
programs that put characters on the screen (see, e.g.,
https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/xorg-docs/fonts/fonts.html). Xved only
uses the older core X11 font system, and not the newer xft system, which means
that it cannot use a lot of the fonts available to, say, xterm, rxvt or
browsers. For instance, I use DejaVu Sans in my terminal windows and firefox,
but I can't get it for xved.
In specifying a font for an xterm window, either in a resource file or as an
option on the command line, you give just the name for a core font, or prefix
the name with xft: for an xft font, e.g.,
xterm -fa "xft:DejaVuSansMono:pixelsize=18" -geometry 80x30
Xterm uses the presence or absence of xft: to decide whether to make calls to
functions in libXft or the older libXfont.
I don't know whether xterm has to do anything differently when printing
characters from the two different kinds of fonts. It would seem to be
reasonably straightforward for xved to look for xft: in a font specification
and then make libXft calls analogous to the libXfont calls that it makes now to
take advantage of xft fonts. But if adjustments have to be made for layout or
something for the new kinds of fonts, that could get a lot more complicated.
Does anyone know?
If xft fonts were available, xved would become usable for people whose
languages require fonts not included in the core set.
Steve Isard
