Fontconfig - Nov 2005 - Fontconfig in Slackware 9

On Tuesday 13 May 2003 02:28 pm, Internet user wrote:
*snip*
>I upgraded my fontconfig to 2.2, and surprise, the
> applications works. But the fonts on my screen are not well rendered and
> in Koffice or other similar applications most of the fonts from a family
> looks the same on the screen. Not mentionig that all the "courier type
> fonts appear witha very large kening (large spaces between letters,
> expanded) What sould I do? Do I have to install other font applications?
> Where are many of my fonts from /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts? I had a lot
> and now I see just a few. How can I install Adobe type 1 fonts and to
> have it displayed correctly using fontconfig? Why is Gnome related with
> fontconfigand KDE could work without it (I could simply delete or move
> /etc/fonts and I do not have the problem of displaying fonts, but
> Mozilla and Gftp woun''t work)
>
> Could you guide me also to some documentation? (please, don''t do
ONLY
> this.)
>
> Thank you in advance
> Cristian
> Bucharest
I have been running slackware for a few years now.  I usually don''t
upgrade
between versions, jut mainly kind of follow -current and compile myself.  I 
did install Slack 9 on another box though and saw the horrid font rendering 
problems.  As it turns out, it isn''t fontconfigs fault.  The default 
installation of X on Slack 9 uses the included X11 freetype sources, which 
are rather old.  On the Slack 9 install, I recompiled Freetype 
(--prefix=/usr) and then compiled the fontconfig 2.2 release 
(--prefix=/usr/X11R6) against the newly installed Freetype.  This took care 
of my font rendering problems right away.

As for the amount of fonts you had.  I am not sure on this one.  Slackware by 
default comes with few fonts.  You will need to add fonts yourself.  I 
created /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype, downloaded the corefonts project 
from corefonts.sourceforge.net, and manually extract the fonts and put them 
in the truetype folder, and then issued mkfontscale and fc-cache.  After 
that, just a simple edit to the XF86Config file and I was in business.

I can''t really throw any documentation your way, but I hope the above
helps
you a bit.

Jef

Hello,
I upgraded from Slackware 8.1 to 9.0 (following the instructions 
provided by Slackware upgrade) After I finished, I upgraded my KDE 
(primary GUI) to 3.1.1.and then to 3.1.1a. Now, Mozilla, Gftp and some 
other Gnome applications (including Gnome itself) could not be started 
at all. I checked the logs and I saw there was a problem with fonts that 
could not be found. I upgraded my fontconfig to 2.2, and surprise, the 
applications works. But the fonts on my screen are not well rendered and 
in Koffice or other similar applications most of the fonts from a family 
looks the same on the screen. Not mentionig that all the "courier type 
fonts appear witha very large kening (large spaces between letters, 
expanded) What sould I do? Do I have to install other font applications? 
Where are many of my fonts from /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts? I had a lot 
and now I see just a few. How can I install Adobe type 1 fonts and to 
have it displayed correctly using fontconfig? Why is Gnome related with 
fontconfigand KDE could work without it (I could simply delete or move 
/etc/fonts and I do not have the problem of displaying fonts, but 
Mozilla and Gftp woun''t work)

Could you guide me also to some documentation? (please, don''t do ONLY 
this.)

Thank you in advance
Cristian
Bucharest