Fontconfig 2.0 Released

david_g writes "Keith Packard released version 2.0 of Fontconfig. Fontconfig is "a library for configuring and customizing font access". It can "discover new fonts when installed automatically, removing a common source of configuration problems", among other nifty functionalities. It comes with Xft2, and there are patches for GTK, Mozilla, and QT3 being readied. Another small step towards world domination..."

Comments

Care Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

Post experimental surgical recovery monitored by: The post-experimental monitor
Frequency of animal assessment: #times per day: 3 # of days: 465
Assessment performed by : vet
Special housing/caging/equipment: I like them to live in habitrails

Now all we need is....

[Angry White Guy]

An easier way to configure printers, complete M$ Office interoperability, and a stronger add hardware system, and we're desktop ready!

Re:Now all we need is....

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE's kprinter printer configuration application along with CUPS as the print service provide a M@cro$oft-like "u$er experience"

Re:Now all we need is....

[unixmaster]

Easier Printers ? www.cups.org
Complete M$ Office ? Nearly there www.openoffice.org

Better Add Hardware System ? Any ideas? :-)

Re:Now all we need is....

[EllF]

An easier way to configure printers, complete M$ Office interoperability

You mean aside from CUPS and Crossover Office?

CUPS has a number of front-ends to it that are *very* easy to use, and provides an easy, GUI-oriented way to deal with printers - as its freshmeat writeup says, "it has been developed to promote a standard printing solution for all UNIX vendors and users."

Crossover Office isn't Free (and I don't run it for precisely that reason), but if the only thing tieing you or your company to Windows is the need for complete Office support, it's the most promising option out there. General word processing is better served by AbiWord, in my opinion, but this is not a sticking point of any note anymore.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Angry White Guy]

I have used cups, as well as various lp programs, and it always seems to be more of a "server" app rather than a client configuration. I understand that M$'s print spooler is technically a "server" app, but it really doesn't have that feel. You don't need to know anything to set up a winblows printer, and albeit windows printers are a bit more limited for cross-network printing (not much, but a little), they are easier to set up (mostly due to HW manufacturers actually supporting drivers for them).

And OpenOffice.org is almost there, but there is no Exchange client, and the imports are just a little bit off. No biggie on the imports, but I am a very big proponent of Exchange in the enterprise, and I am not alone (althouh for the internet, Exchange is a whore!).
My vision of Linux is a drop in replacement for many NT services, both server and desktop, as well as have the ability to interoperate with existing infrastructure. Microsoft is attempting to pull users to their servers with their Unix services for Windows package, Let's keep them here by giving administrators the flexibility that they need to provide a complete solution for business needs. This means opportunity to choose the OS that they feel is best for the job, without having to change over the whole camp!

Re:Now all we need is....

[mshiltonj]

My wife won't run Linux until there's a WYSIWYG HTML editor to replace DreamWeaver.

Re:Now all we need is....

[NonSequor]

CUPS isn't enough. Last night I suffered the fury of a thousand hells when I tried to get a document document from Perseus to print properly. Postscript fonts can't handle unicode and Ghostscript doesn't handle TrueType fonts well. The best I was able to do was to get it to print the unaccented characters, but that was only a third or so of the characters in the document. It displayed perfectly using a unicode TrueType font, but Ghostscript couldn't do it right even when I set it up to print with the same font it was displayed with.

Ghostscript is also very slow loading TrueType fonts. Since it looks like TrueType fonts are going to continue to dominate desktop computing, Ghostscript needs to handle them better. Your printouts will never look the same as what's on your screen if Ghostscript can't render all of the fonts that X can.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Anonymous Coward]

CUPS sux. Very little hackability. System V has this part right. Shell scripts all the way.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Fizzol]

Dreamweaver 4 is working or very nearly in Crossover Office, it's not yet officially supported though, perhaps the next release.

Re:Now all we need is....

[n3m6]

one reason why i can't get out of my windows either. anybody know of any progress in this area ..?

Re:Now all we need is....

[hetfield]

I've always found that the best configuration tool for cups is cups itself...

http://localhost:631

This works by default on Gentoo, I would hope that this is the same for any distro using cups.

Re:Now all we need is....

[JohnMunsch]

Hardly... You forgot a strong equivalent to DirectX to give games a place to migrate to (sorry, a mix of OpenGL + some sound library doesn't equate to DirectX).

Then there's _one_ unified sound standard (I think Linux has four or five now), because a sound card cannot serve two masters. Single standards for the clipboard, adding/removing menu items from the desktop "Start" menu, mime type associations, adding of control panels, event sounds, display of notification icons in the desktop toolbar, registration of keyboard shortcuts that cut across all applications (e.g. Ctrl+Shift+I means "get the next instant message" and it will get back to the right program no matter if I'm in OpenOffice right now or Mozilla). And all of those standards have to be agreed upon and fully supported by both KDE and Gnome so I can know that all my applications will cooperate nicely with one another and my choice of desktop doesn't equal choice of application interoperability.

Desktop success for Linux is not impossible, far from it, but few people are paying attention to the mounds of things that are _really_ important to giving a typical end user a choice other than Windows vs. Mac OS X (a battle that we already know who wins 95% of the time).

Re:Now all we need is....

[abischof]

I'm considering trying to switch to Linux and CUPS sounds interesting. I also happen to be in need of a new printer (I currently have an HP 5L, but it jams if I insert more than one sheet at a time).

So, can anyone recommend a laser printer with high (or perfect) compatibility with Linux? I'm looking for one that can do at least 10 ppm and 600 dpi (though 1200 dpi would be preferable). Price is not so much a concern, though I would prefer one < $400.

Re:Now all we need is....

[_Knots]

Simple Direct media Layer (SDL) and OpenGL not good enough for you? Why not?

There are a handful, yes, but ALSA is going to be the new kernel standard in 2.6 and will allieviate the need for oss (current kernel code), esd, artsd, etc - at least as far as "many people writing to /dev/dsp at once."

Your choice of desktop never determines your application compatibility - I'm running Galeon right now under KDE3. What's the problem?

Now, that said, I hope KDE and GNOME both drop their VFS layers and encourage the use of something like LUFS that's much more general and will result in less code duplication. We've already seen GNOME and KDE work out a lot, together - like say the XDnD system. These days it seems like the only "war" between the two is in the minds of the non-developers.

--Knots;

Re:Now all we need is....

[twistedcubic]

I have the Samsung ML-1210, which has been discontinued, but you can probably find it in stores. There is the ML-1250 (I think) which is probably the same and hasn't been discontinued. I paid $150 for mine. Samsung even wrote a gui printer dialog for the latest version of cups. very, very nice. In the gui dialog there is even an option to print 1-4 pages on a single page. This is probably the chepest laser printer you can get with excellent linux support.

Re:Now all we need is....

[elphkotm]

Any Postscript printer, basically...

Re:Now all we need is....

[dinivin]

There are a handful, yes, but ALSA is going to be the new kernel standard in 2.6 and will allieviate the need for oss (current kernel code), esd, artsd, etc - at least as far as "many people writing to /dev/dsp at once."

Not true... Alsa only supports multiple access to /dev/dsp* if the hardware supports it. If the hardware doesn't support it, you still need a software mixer.

Dinivin

Re:Now all we need is....

[ChrisJones]

However (and correct me if I'm wrong here), ALSA can do that transparently, removing the need for pretty much forcing esd or similar on users.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ctrl+Shift+I means "get the next instant message"

No - you want to bind something - like say the "windows" key - to a shortcut app, then you configure windows-i to do whatever you want.

Re:Now all we need is....

[mshiltonj]

On freshmeat, there's a new(ish) project called Ginf (for 'Ginf Is Not Frontpage') -- it's a GTK-based WYWIWYG HTML Editor. All I've looked at so far is the screenshots. Looks pretty basic right now, but could be the start of something good. Wish I knew C, because that's definitely an itch I'd like to scratch.

Re:Now all we need is....

[micahjd]

You're forgetting SDL... SDL along with OpenGL (which it interates with very nicely) provide pretty much the same scope of functionality as DirectX.

Plus, by using SDL your app is portable to Windows, BeOS, MacOS, etc. (in theory)

I've done some DirectX programming a while ago and a good bit of SDL programming recently. The SDL and OpenGL APIs are much cleaner and easier to use than DirectX.

Re:Now all we need is....

[oever]

Mozilla has a nice built-in WYSIWYG editor. It's one of the few WYSIWIG editors that writes standards compliant HTML.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Anonymous Coward]

CUPS isn't enough. It's only part of the solution.

The other part is kdeprint, i.e.:

http://printing.kde.org/

KDE has had a *real* printing infrastructure since version 2.2. Since then, we have had the under-the-hood plumbing, the universal printing API for end-user applications and the end-user standardized front-ends (ie.: dialogs et al) to manage your printers, print jobs and all that jazz, like what is taken for granted under MacOS and Windows. It's not perfect yet, but KDEprint *is* a Godsend for *nix end-users. No need to be a Uber-geek to do real-world end-user printing under *nix anymore.

BTW, is there an equivalent for GNOME? Way back when (~ dec. 1997), there were rumblings of GNOME-print, but I'm not aware if that ever really materialized.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Angry White Guy]

The HP family of printers are actually great printers. I am not farmiliar with the 5L, but the 6L and 1100 were gravity-fed styles. Avoid these like the plague. We use old 4L's (they're tanks) and 1200's (new, about $650 cdn) and they are great under Linux using 4L drivers. These also speak native postscript, pcl5, and pcl6 for the 1200. Very compatible with almost everything.

Re:Now all we need is....

[yog]

Lexmark's low end Postscript printers are advertized as Linux compatible. check out www.lexmark.com for latest models. I love my 320.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Zigg]

Yes, gravity-fed do usually suck. However, the one I bought real cheap ("broken") was fixed with a cheap separator pad. Shortly after I bought the pad, HP offered me one for free. Shortly after that I got notice of a class action lawsuit against HP regarding the problem the original owner had experienced. :-) That was an 1100.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Anonymous Coward]

its called SDL. very nice. it is your directx.

www.sdl.org

Re:Now all we need is....

[Lord Ender]

Samsung has great Linux compatability and they have some good USB laser printers for under $200.

Re:Now all we need is....

[be-fan]

SDL is just a wrapper over underlying sound mechanisms. Plus, while SDL and OpenGL may be cleaner (okay, the are definately cleaner) they are far less powerful than DirectX. Now, with OpenGL 2.0 coming out and if OpenAL and OpenML get integrated into SDL, things might change, but as yet, there is still not real competition to DirectX.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Hugonz]

Well, they're Linux compatible because they have a PostScript interpreter. I have a Laser printer from Lexmark and they're great.

Re:Now all we need is....

[abischof]

Could a broken separator pad be the problem I'm having in my HP 5L? Would that be something that could cause it to jam if more than one sheet is inserted at a time?

Re:Now all we need is....

[Angry White Guy]

Damn, why wasn't I let in on that suit? We bought half a dozen of them at our office when they first came out! We went through the pad thing, then replaced them with the 1200's when they were available. I still have 2 working 1100's here somewhere....

Re:Now all we need is....

[Grech]

That is exactly what the pad drying out causes. There is a goofy-looking cardboard syringe tool that HP will send you for free to fix the problem. Their website has the details, but you will have to search for it.

Back on topic, there needs to be more cleanly accesible Font server information available. For example, I'm not completely sure my own system has less than two running. :(

Re:Now all we need is....

[PD]

Easiest printers: pdq

I was a die hard lpd user for many years, but last week I tried out pdq and had my printer working perfectly (both text and Postscript) in less than 5 minutes. Use xpdq to do the configuration.

Re:Now all we need is....

[mejh]

"but there is no Exchange client"

It may not be part of OpenOffice but what about Evolution with Connector?
It connects with Exchange 2000 and is a great email client on its own too. Evolution is free, Connector costs $69, but that's still a lot cheaper (and with much less chance of a vulnerability or viral infection) than Outlook.
I know a very (until now) Windows-using friend of mine saw this running and said to me "this is the missing link" in people moving from Windows to Linux in the corporate environment.

Cheers,
Mark.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you point me towards a particular document which doesn't print well?

Re:Now all we need is....

[spitzak]

I think you have a pretty good list. Almost all of them fall into the area of needing a standard location for configuring the X window manager. My comments on these:

I don't know anything about it, but it sure sounds like SDL and ADSL is the agreed on thing for games and sound. I would dearly love to see Linux do better than Windows and actually make an interface that is usable for *both* games and regular programs, but it looks like that ain't going to happen.

Single standard for the clipboard: it exists now. The problem is older programs that don't know about CLIPBOARD. There is no way to fix this. Windows would have the exact same problem if somebody decided to make drag-less drag & drop, which is really what the middle-mouse cut & paste is.

Adding/removing menu items from the Start menu. I believe there is a standard that KDE and Gnome follow. But good luck trying to find it described anywhere. There is a serious need for this to be documented in a simple and obvious way with explicit "it is in this file and here is an example", without the need for Qt or any library to read it (the library is also a fatal problem on Windows). Without this other window managers and other programs will not use it.

Mime type associations. This could also be done with more config files, but I would really like to see a more Unix solution, which is the addition of a simple "open" command-line program. Any GUI that wants to "open" a file just runs this program. It can do anything it wants. There should also be simple "mail" and "print" programs that take the data in stdin and do the right thing, it is quite annoying that Mozilla knows how to mail on my machine but the "mail" program does not. In a similar vein, I would like to see the prefixes like smb: and html: on files be handled by the glibc library level so that *ALL* programs can read/write these without linking in Qt libraries.

By "adding control panels" I think you mean adding stuff to the "configuration" application. One idea is to make a tiny extension to the Start menu, so that if you have a program lying around that "configures" something, it can appear where the user will look for it, in the list of stuff in the configuration program. It does not really matter if this opens another window. I would avoid any complexity about describing the questions or imbedding panels and other than this "run some other program" leave the design and implementation of configuration up to the programmers. Windows and Mac have fallen into the trap of making a seperate app for each part of configuration, this artificially seperates concepts into program packages, which does not necessarily agree with how users catagorize concepts.

I don't think event sounds are a big deal. Looking at Windows you can see that virtually all event sounds are specific to each application. I would consider this part of the application's configuration and as a beginning user would expect to find it there.

Display of notification icons in the desktop toolbar: here I would disagree. One thing I would like to see is the ability to change GUI ideas. If applications can assumme a toolbar it is bad news, we will never be rid of it. I think the ultimate interface will someday get rid of all things on the screen other than the data being worked on, but stupid stuff like this is what is keeping us frozen with ideas from 1985...

Registration of keyboard shortcuts is exactly the same as the "Start" menu stuff, and should be stored in the same place. One big help is that there be no difference between "applications" and "actions" so that either can be on a start menu or on a shortcut. Windows also blows in this area. "Getting back to the right program" is a window manager issue and is true whether a shortcut of a menu item or typing a command brought up the new program. Windows also screws up here, worse than most X window managers, if you have ever closed two nested modal control panels you know what I mean.

So we need a "start menu configuration" which in my opinion should be the union of a directory in your home and a system-wide directory. Each file and subdirectory describes a single "item" or a submenu. There are special names to make menu items appear in different places such as the configuration application or in the popup, or as a shortcut key. The files should be trivial to parse without using a library. It should be trivial to locate documentation describing every detail of these files without going off into unrelated areas of the desktops.

We also need command-line tools that appliations can use in place of libraries. We need "open", "mail", "print", etc. We also need a unified file interface where "http:" and other prefixes work for every program like cat and the shells.

Re:Now all we need is....

[CoolVibe]

Then your beef isn't with CUPS, it's with Ghostscript. CUPS is great. It also works great on my Mac running OSX Jaguar. And I have _no_ problems rendering TrueType fonts, but that's apple's fault :)

Re:Now all we need is....

[JohnMunsch]

Can I ask that this reply be modded UP, for some reason it got modded down to zero?

This is actually an excellent idea although I'd modify it to say that you should be able to publicize all of the shortcuts that you want your application to have cut across the OS (much like you can register sound events with Windows and I think Gnome as well) and then the user could decide how to assign his/her keyboard to those shortcuts. Then the OS's shortcuts and application shortcuts (at least the ones that cut across all applications) are maintained in exactly the same way.

If I look at my KDE control panel it looks like it already has support for this key binding idea but it's not obvious that third party applications have a way to register their shortcuts into the system.

Re:Now all we need is....

[13Echo]

What? How can it get any harder than the KDE printer configurator? It is butt-simple. Just choose your model, a driver, and that's it. You can even print over an NT netowork to a shared SMB printer without any problems.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Anonymous Coward]

giving a typical end user a choice other than Windows vs. Mac OS X (a battle that we already know who wins 95% of the time).

Yep, definitely agreed... anyone who sees and uses an OS X machine is drawn to its obvious elegance and polish. If more people were exposed to OS X, MS wouldn't have the monopoly that it does.

Re:Now all we need is....

[13Echo]

If ALSA also doesn't do what you want, www.opensound.com has AWESOME commercial drivers that can mix over 50 PCM streams at one time, real time, with low CPU utilization. It works just like directsound.

Plus, SDL is cross-platform and does most of what DirectX does, using open standards and OpenGL for 3D accelleration.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Anonymous Coward]

SDL may not be completely equivalent to DirectX yet. However, its API doesn't suck, isn't loaded with cruft, and isn't controlled in a single interest.

There is plenty of room to grow in the future, so I prefer the open solution to the controlled one.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Angry White Guy]

Call me an idealist, but I see replacing closed source with closed source as robbing Peter to pay Paul

But in a pinch...

Re:Now all we need is....

[Anonymous Coward]

If your printer is supported...

Re:Now all we need is....

[Enahs]

If you need Exchange compatibility, quitcherbitchin and pay for the Evolution extension. Yeah, it's proprietary, but so's Exchange.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Enahs]

I don't know if you're trolling or just dumb, but the last time I checked there was one true standard for Linux audio right now. I don't know where you're getting your four or five. Okay, so there's commercial OSS, there's OSS/free, there's, um, whatever the kernel uses (thought it was still OSS, but they've got a separate config in the kernel now) which is OSS-compliant and there's ALSA, which is OSS compatible.

Okay, so if you want to write audio apps, there's OSS. Okay, if you want to get down to it, GNOME and KDE have their own sound *servers* which communicate with OSS/ALSA/whatever. Doing it that way just makes *sense* because KDE and GNOME run on more than one platform, not just Linux. Linux ain't the only game in town, and neither is Windows. MS forgets that and foists Windows-only, x86-only crapola like DirectX on us.

And if you want to target Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc. DirectX is a poor choice. Heck, if you want to target something other than Windows DirectX is a stupid choice. SDL targets a number of platforms and will even work with OpenGL (which is an open standard, and even has MS as part of its steering committee.)

Re:Now all we need is....

[Enahs]

Erm, and what is DirectX other than a wrapper over underlying systems?

Damn, you kids gotta learn how to troll. Come up with something harder to refute, man!

Re:Now all we need is....

[noda132]

There are several apps that do this. I use bbkeys (since I use blackbox). The thing more apps should have is a command-line option to attach to the existing process and send it a signal - that way you could bind "gaim --get-next-message" and your gaim window would listen (galeon has this to some extent, and you can bind a key to create a new empty tab or resize the window to a pre-specified geometry, for instance).

I never use a keyboard or mouse. I just run "Meta-E" for e-mail or "Meta-G" for galeon, "Meta-X" for xterm... or as a last resort "Meta-R" for bbrun (insert your favorite launcher here) then I type in the name of the program.

I have no idea why the KDE guys haven't added this kind of keybinding configuration yet.

Re:Now all we need is....

[NonSequor]

I guess I phrased it wrong. I don't have any problem with CUPS. I should have said that CUPS alone is not enough. It solves one problem, but not the deeper problems caused by having two completely different systems for video and printing. It may be possible to modify Ghostscript to fix these problems, but I think that the possibility of creating a new printing architecture from scratch needs to be considered.

Re:Now all we need is....

[LittleBigLui]

well.. i know this is far from anything serious yet, but i'm working (in my rather limited free time only) on such a program. The project's in planning stage right now, and it would benefit from people posting suggestions at this forum. Wether it's stuff that annoys you in other HTML editors, or features that an already existing editor got particularly good - any help is appreciated.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks very much for that information. I've got an HP 1100, and that page feed problem has been bugging me for a while. I was about to take the printer apart and try to fix it myself, but now I'm having HP send me one of those free kits.
</offtopic>

Re:Now all we need is....

[NonSequor]

It's here. You need to follow the "Configure display" link and set it to "Unicode (UTF-8)" or "Unicode (UTF-8) with precombined accents". Neither of these printed properly for me. Interestingly enough, Unicode with precombined accents isn't displaying properly under Windows even though I'm using the same font.

Re:Now all we need is....

[be-fan]

Windows-only, x86-only crapola like DirectX
>>>>>>>
DirectX might be Windows only and x86 only, but it isn't crapola. Give good technology the respect that it deserves.

Re:Now all we need is....

[be-fan]

Umm, DirectX isn't a wrapper. DirectX is an independent system that bypasses a lot of antiquated Windows functionality. DirectX is usually supported at the driver level, existing alongside Windows APIs like GDI and Win32 audio. SDL is a wrapper over whatever services are native to the platform. On Windows, SDL is a wrapper over DirectX. On Linux, its a wrapper over OSS and the XInput APIs.

Re:Now all we need is....

[be-fan]

The DirectX API

A) Doesn't suck.
B) Isn't loaded with cruft. Thanks to COM interface versioning, the newest DirectX interfaces are comparitively clean. It just seems much junkier than it is due to MSs way of naming fields and methods and its insistance on using structures to pass API parameters.
C) It isn't controlled by a single interest. Its the result of a lot of back and forth between MS, hardware manufacturers, and software developers.

I despise Windows as much as the next guy, but lying about its strenghts doesn't help.

Re:Now all we need is....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the gnomeprint API is well established. Although such things as printer queues are left to the distro or Unix system... hence the reason GNOME is a UNIX desktop and not just a Linux one, like KDE.

Re:Now all we need is....

[dinivin]

However (and correct me if I'm wrong here), ALSA can do that transparently, removing the need for pretty much forcing esd or similar on users.

ALSA itself does not do software mixing in the drivers.. A 3rd party app (such as esd, arts, or even an alsa specific one) would be needed to do this and audio applications would have to be written to support it.

Only hardware mixing would be truly transparent (or, possibly, software mixing in the drivers).

Dinivin

Re:Now all we need is....

[ChrisJones]

That's quite poor, if it decides the card can't handle multiple sources (which I guess would be fairly easy at the driver level), it should really start some kind of software mixer automatically.
As it happens I'm using commercial OSS anyway, but that's not the point ;)

Re:Now all we need is....

[LF11]

I searched long and hard for something that would grab keyboard shortcuts across all the different WMs I use. That something I found a few months ago, and it is "xbindkeys". Grabs keyboard shortcuts somewhere between keyboard and focused application. Wonderful program. No GUI config, but still an answer to my prayers.

Dunno about various sound platforms. I only use XMMS, the CD player, and games (it was no different in windows; I turned all the sounds off). Games seem to use the standard OSS system, so I just keep ESD and similar ilk firmly dead. Problem solved (for me).

Dunno about DirectX, but if the comparison from the programmer's point of view between DirectX and OpenGL+SDL is similar to VBscript vs. perl+python+shell, or MySQL vs. Access, then any developer not programming OpenGL+SDL already is subject to a PHB.

Complete world dominance is only a matter of time. Progressive, cooperative software development works. Instead of re-writing software, build it and let it grow. Thus, what we lack in quality and quantity now will be supplied by time.

Including a suitable replacement for XFree86.

I don't know when you started in Linux; I started with RH4.2. I've seen this phenomenon, and I'm totally thrilled.

Weeza gonna rule youza! Heh! Don't complain though, 'cause it's really liberation. :)

Chris

Wrong Site...

[derrickh]

For a second, I thought I had clicked on my shortcut to freshmeat.net

D

Re:Wrong Site...

[tushar]

./ geeks don't call it 'shortcut', it is called the 'bookmark':)

All we need is....

[Anonymous Coward]

something that's as usable, functional, stable as Windows XP, then we might be close to wasting time on.

Linux is only free if you time is worthless.

Re:All we need is....

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is only free if you time is worthless.

Old quote.

Use FreeBSD

Re:All we need is....

[Lussarn]

xboxonline.com(tm) is reporting that the most common hardware change in a Windows XP box is the reset button closely followed by the ctrl/alt/del keys.

Can you explain that?

Linux is only free if you know your shit!

re: Fonts

[sp00nfed]

Fonts have never really been a strongpoint in Linux, Linux users have generally relied upon the kindness of Microsoft for the free download of their fonts, however these have been tricky to install at best.

This should make it possible to steal fonts from windows just that little bit easier, now we just need some GPL fonts :p

good grief

[budalite]

As a junior CSE major, I dearly dread the day that this sort of information becomes important to me... May that day never come. :P

Re:good grief

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, better switch tracks while you can, then.

These announcements will be the sole pleasure in your life, soon enough....

With Debian...

[IkeTo]

I use dfontmgr and defoma. Anyone knows how the two systems differs structurally and in practice?

Microsoft web fonts

[Zigg]

Hmm, the fontconfig page has the withdrawn Microsoft web fonts.

Re:Microsoft web fonts

[EllF]

If so, there was *no* need for them to do so. The EULA that comes with the fonts specifically states,

"You may reproduce and distribute an unlimited number of copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT; provided that each copy shall be a true and complete copy, including all copyright and trademark notices, and shall be accompanied by a copy of this EULA. Copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT may not be distributed for profit either on a standalone basis or included as part of your own product."

Re:Microsoft web fonts

[Zigg]

No need for Keith Packard to distribute them? Or no need for Microsoft to pull them?

The move on Microsoft's part was good strategy -- they've effectively broken all those font installers that previously used www.microsoft.com as their download site. Of course, it won't be long before they're updated, but they've made installers released before that date break.

Keith Packard's distribution of them is also a good thing. The EULA permits it, so why not mirror it all over the place?

I guess I don't understand what you're getting at.

Re:Microsoft web fonts

[EllF]

I was responding to the original poster's claim that the fontconfig site had removed access to the MS Web Fonts on their server. The specific line was :

Hmm, the fontconfig page [fontconfig.org] has the withdrawn Microsoft web fonts [slashdot.org].

Obviously, this is an untrue statement.

The EULA permits it, so why not mirror it all over the place?

This is the point I was making - that according to the EULA, this is legal.

Re:Microsoft web fonts

[ChrisJones]

Obviously you don't know English very well ;)

"X has the withdrawn Y" means that entity Y, which was withdrawn, is available from X.

You are thinking that he wrote "X has withdrawn the Y" - moving 'the' makes it completely different.

Re:Microsoft web fonts

[gowen]

I was responding to the original poster's claim that the fontconfig site had removed access to the MS Web Fonts on their server. The specific line was

Hmm, the fontconfig page has the withdrawn Microsoft web fonts

Note the word order: that does not say "the fontconfig page has withdrawn the Microsoft web fonts".

Re:Microsoft web fonts

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that you are not a native english speaker?

[I] The Fontconfig page has the withdrawn Microsoft web fonts

is very different to what was NOT said

[II] The Fontconfig page has withdrawn the Microsoft web fonts

[I] is talking about "withdrawn web fonts", with withdrawn as an adjective describing a vague status of the web fonts - and yes, they were withdrawn by Microsoft. Just because they're still available and licensed for redistribution does not mean MS did not withdraw them from their original well-known URL location.

[II] if it had been said (which it wasn't), would have meant that the fontconfig page had withdrawn the fonts - withdrawn being used as a verb.

English is complicated. It is the antithesis of Latin, in that in English word order is extremely important, but words change little, if at all, for different verb tenses, cases, etc.

Re:Microsoft web fonts

[EllF]

My, my.

English is not a problem - I speak it quite fluently, along with German and Spanish. Friday mornings, on the other hand, aren't quite so easy to cope with.

Smack me with the cluestick. I deserve it. :)

Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

I finally got KDE to look all pretty (and it really does look nice), but Mozilla's font rendering looks like dog doo. Glad to hear there's patches in the works to make it use X font rendering, which (in my case) is much better.

"These are Microsoft web fonts"?!

[CryptOntology]

And distributed in a .tar.gz format too.

Hmmm, wonder how long /that/ will stay up before
the Microsoft EULA lawyers have their say.

Re:"These are Microsoft web fonts"?!

[inimicus]

As the download page said: "Did you read the license?"

1. (item 2) Reproduction and Distribution. You may reproduce and distribute an unlimited number of copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT; provided that each copy shall be a true and complete copy, including all copyright and trademark notices, and shall be accompanied by a copy of this EULA. Copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT may not be distributed for profit either on a standalone basis or included as part of your own product.

Hahaha...

[_Neurotic]

I just can't get over the fact that the year is 2002 and a story like this actually is a big deal for Linux desktop zealots!

Of course, because something seemingly basic and implied in a GUI, decent cross-application fonts, is nothing short of mind numbingly difficult to pull off for your average user (read Grandma)

Atrociously ugly web pages in Netscape 4 is what made me give up on Linux as a desktop years ago and I haven't looked back.

Mind you I still run my business off a Redhat server, but my desktop is, well, a desktop oriented OS.

Re:Hahaha...

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, you're an idiot. But you knew that, right?

There's been a lot of progress since "years ago" when you left. Netscape (now Mozilla -- forget Netscape 7) is actually one of the last apps to get decent fonts. I've had beautiful anti-aliasing in KDE (including the excellent web browser Konqueror) and Gnome since well before Windows XP came out, and there was no worthwhile antialiasing in Windows before that. Linux is NOT lagging in this area, nor, indeed, in any other aspect of desktop usability.

I've had great anti-aliasing even in Mozilla since well before this, with an earlier version of the Xft hack. Frankly it should've been mainstreamed long ago, but certain of the Mozilla developers have obstructed it.

Re:Hahaha...

[_Neurotic]

> OK, you're an idiot. But you knew that, right?

Touchy... Yes, you are right, I have an IQ of 70. All people who aren't Linux desktop zealots must have low IQ's right?

> There's been a lot of progress since "years ago" when you left....

Etc, etc. I'm well aware of many of these improvements. I do read Slashdot you know. I am also a Linux user, just not on the desktop. All these individual, fragmented improvements do little for someone that either:

a) Isn't capable of digesting, configuring, upgrading etc on their own

-or-

b) Doesn't have someone readily available to do it for them.

> Linux is NOT lagging in this area, nor, indeed, in any other aspect of desktop usability.

ROFL! You're kidding right? No, I forgot, you're just a zealot... Please, I'm sure you'll get little agreement on this attempt at absolution.

Re:Hahaha...

[_Neurotic]

Ooh, looks like the zealots are out in full force today! Two Flamebaits in less than 10 minutes! Wow! What an honest and open group of people. I can feel the sense of "community" already.

Losers... Go hug your Mozilla plush toy and stop trying to squash the opposite point of view.

Re:Hahaha...

[TheWickedKingJeremy]

Go hug your Mozilla plush toy ...

Fine - I will!

*storms out of room*

Re:Hahaha...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla toy? Where? I want one!

Re:Hahaha...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm more interested in the super monkey ball!

Re:Hahaha...

[Anonymous Coward]

There really hasnt been a focus on Linux as a desktop OS until the last few years. The niche was always in the server market, but recently things have gotten better with a lot of hard work by a lot of people and despite the shitty basis, X, its really a pretty stable and usable desktop OS if you configure it right.

The thing is that MS have recently started grumbling about people not paying licensing fees and running pirated copies of their OSes on their business machines. Enter software audits on schools and Software Assurance, the XP licensing scheme (should I go on?). Suddenly there opens up a niche for selling a stable desktop OS for all those now very expensive seats.

Mark my words, now that there's money to be made, there will be people on it. Just look at StarOffice, Ximian Gnome (plus Evolution and related prods) and SuSE to name a few.

I give it 2 years at the most before there's at least one offering that surpasses XP (which is still going to be MSes offering then)in every way. From features to ease of configurability. Hell, with the combo above, you're not far off it now!

bad design

[sstory]

if this works, linux enthusiasts will no doubt have to find new ways for linux to look amateurish.

Re:bad design

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux IS an amateur OS. But unlike you, I don't mean that as a put-down. Look up the definition of "amateur"... Linux is done for love, not for money.

hheehehe

[Anonymous Coward]

your right, this is funny. Most linux desktop people still haven't figured out they are wasting their time supporting X. No one uses that at home.

Re: Fonts

[Anonymous Coward]

Many fonts are freeware.

Derrr...

[KFury]

Which platform?

Is this news?

a step toward world domination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which world are you speaking about? :( Do not you know the linux desktop is dead. I am not trying to be flaming or troll. In some sense, the microsoft has won the desktop. Rasterman stated such. Linux best hope is to become a server. The future of unix desktop is the mac os not linux.

Re:a step toward world domination?

[OrangeSpyderMan]

MacOS the Future? Steve Jobs? Is that you? Great to see you again Steve... I haven't spoken to you since, err, well when you were saying much the same thing about NeXT :-D

Re:a step toward world domination?

[thesadmac]

It'd be nice if you could actually run MacOS on things other than Macs then. Or if I could afford a Ti Book; either will do nicely.

(yes I know that Apple 'reportedly' have an x86 port they keep in sync with the Mac version, but I take that 'report' with a pinch of salt)

Re:a step toward world domination?

[OrangeSpyderMan]

Of course, as they say, MacOS on anything else would just be OS :-)

Re:a step toward world domination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as OSX is NeXTStep, he isn't contradicting himself at all.

Re:a step toward world domination?

[OrangeSpyderMan]

Seeing as OSX is NeXTStep, he isn't contradicting himself at all.
Lest we forget how anal a NeXT fan can be.. ;-)
I guess if MacOSX is the future in the way that NeXT was, we can expect they'll do nothing with it for 10 years sell it on for a huge lump of cash and it'll still be the future...
We have a saying - MacOS is the future, and will always remain so :-)

Re:a step toward world domination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes you wonder why there is no X86 port?

Mac users always say there hardware are superior to X86, still the argument for not supporting X86 is that noone will buy Macs anymore.

The answer to this question probaly is: who cares

Re:a step toward world domination?

[ChrisJones]

what is this thing "the desktop" people talk about? It's not like there is some old grandma being kept in front of WinME at the standards institude in Paris to be trundled out as "the desktop" should anyone need to see if they are it or not.
There are (at least) two desktop markets, home and office. They are extremely different.
I doubt Linux can ever take on the home PC market in any useful way without PC's getting a lot simpler.
The office desktop market, however, is a bit different and is something that Linux is already creeping into, much as it did with the server market. How effective it will be overall against Windows is obviously unknown, but if it knocks their market share down even half as much as it did in the server market, well, there'd be a whole heck of a lot more competition in that market than there is right now!
Several factors have come together this year to make the Linux office desktop considerably more appealing (aside from the fact that this is really the first year that the software has been evolved enough to be viable). Microsoft are doing stupid things with their licenses which a lot of users (more often than not out of a general dislike of MS) aren't taking kindly to. Also, the price of a PC, especially a not-kitted-out-for-Doom-III office PC, is getting lower and lower, the margins are squeezed tighter than a duck's butt. You can now buy a PC for the same or less than a copy of Microsoft Office.
Just as Microsoft has commoditized the hardware market out from under the IBM's and Dell's and HPaq's of the world, so things like Linux and Star/OpenOffice are commoditizing the software market out from under Microsoft.
I'm really looking forward to the work between the StarOffice team and OASIS - an agreed standard for XML based office documents provides the opportunity for pretty much all of the not-Microsoft companies who produce office suites to present a united front. Who knows if they will, but the opportunity is there if they want.

Re:a step toward world domination?

[Eric Damron]

I always find it amusing when I read a "Linux is dead" post. On the desktop or server it doesn't really matter the statement is flawed.

On the server Linux is plodding along taking more and more market share and slowly winning. On the desktop Linux has not really been born yet but it is plodding along getting better and better. Eventually it will start taking market share in that area as well. You see, Linux can't really be stopped. There is no way to buy it, crush it, intimidate it or otherwise derail it. Microsoft has tried all of there tricks but in the end there it is plodding along getting better and better.

No, Microsoft can't win against Tux. They can only delay the inevitable.

World Domination?!

[gergi]

World Domination?! Is that was this is all about? I thought it was the ticket line for LotR: Two Towers... damn, now I have to find the real line and start all over again!

Re:World Domination?!

[Buck2]

Before you get out of line, remember that if you do successfully dominate the world you could watch The Two Towers as a live reenactment put on by your slaves^H^H^H^H^Hminions^H^H^H^H^Hadmirers.

X font problems...

[Lumpy]

every font problem stems from one simple problem... People and programs throw fonts anywhere and everywhere...

if you forced everyone to put fonts in /usr/lib/X11/fonts/ or wherever the Xfree86 people say then the problem is solved.. the font server can easily look for new fonts.

Linux and X suffer from the fact that too many people are allowed to do it their way... it's time to start forcing things to make simple things like fonts easier.

Re:X font problems...

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be /usr/share/fonts.

Re:X font problems...

[Anonymous Coward]

Naah. A standard $XFONTPATH environment variable is the way forward. Pity Linux has no concept of Amiga Assigns, or we could just stick everything in FONTS:, which could be a path.

Re:X font problems...

[sc0rpi0n]

I prefer to install my fonts into /usr/local, like any other stuff that's not part of my distribution.

Now we just need fonts!

[dspeyer]

Seriously, all distros I've tried (RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, Slackware, SuSe) ship with a woefully inadequate supply of fonts. There are thousands of quality free (roughly speech) fonts out there, and I at one time simply ran through free font sites downloading them. While I'm not 100% clear on copyrightability of fonts, there are plenty distributed un-encumbered by their authors. Why doesn't RedHat or somebody pick them up?

Re:Now we just need fonts!

[ChrisJones]

Finding fonts that are Free enough to allow commercial redistribution (ie put in a distro that will be sold in a box on a shelf in a store, etc.) is actually quite hard.
Making a font is extremely hard work, especially if it's a good one, which is why fonts are such well guarded property.
However, that doesn't mean they can't make it easy for users to find and include decent fonts. If all distros can agree on a single directory within which they will keep all fonts then it becomes the job of the various font servers and fontconfig to track and maintain the font lists.
Actually, I think the time has come for font servers to die - they make the job a million times more complicated than just using the font support already in XFree (which of course now includes TTF support). Even if you go by the argument that a font server is useful for serving the same fonts to lots of client machines over a network, the same would be true of a public ro nfs share of the fonts directory.
It would then be really easy to have a button somewhere that says "Get me more fonts" and takes the user to, say, fonts.themes.org and offers them a bunch of fonts to download in a consistent archive format which can be automagically whisked away into the font directory and fontconfig called to automatically update it all.

Re:Now we just need fonts!

[Captain Pedantic]

In addition to what the other chap said, the fonts that you find for free are more "Banner" fonts - the kinds of things that you would use for a title, but you wouldn't format a paragraph, let alone a whole document with them.

In answer to your point, someone from Debian is trying to get permission to use some of these fonts.

Re:Now we just need fonts!

[A-Tech]

Sorry, there aren't thousands of free "quality fonts" on the web:

1) Most of them are decorative or banner fonts which are not suitable for longer documents or any kind of high end postscript.

Try it - take a doc with some of these fonts and then try to output either clean postscript or send it to a RIP. Do not be surprised when it pukes..

2) Many of them are made by well meaning designers, who sometimes lack important technical skills in font making. They rely on the abilities of fontographer to compile everything correctly. So, quality is a mixed bag.

3) Many of these fonts have incomplete glyph sets and can be difficult to use in non iso-88591-1 encodings.

Making good fonts is really really hard and time consuming. (The guy who created Verdana for Microsoft spent more than a year just on that one font.) The new Luxi TTfonts which come with the more recent XFree86 packages is the right direction - well constructed, professionsally designed fonts. Luxi Sans is a good screen font if freetype is setup correctly.

The "problem" with the latest ghostscript fonts is they are not really great screen fonts, but most of them are excellent printer fonts.

Anti-aliasing is not the long term solution either. It just covers for the lack of hinting in a font. Freetype is getting much better though..

A font is in a sense a mini program and they have bugs. Just like other code - debugging them is not for kids.

Re:Now we just need fonts!

[TobyWong]

If you switch distros every time you can't find a font you like I would hate to hear what you do when you run into a REAL issue.

Re:Now we just need fonts!

[Alan]

Well, from an end user perspective, this is a real issue. If you load up your new linux peecee and start up a browser, and all your favorite sites look like shit because there are only 5 fonts installed on the system, suddenly, this new "better" OS has a degraded user experience, and therefor the the 90% market currently under Bill's control, worse. The underlying technology may be better, but as we've learned time and time again, they aren't the one that wins...

Re:Now we just need fonts!

[13Echo]

There is one good use for that old Windows 98 CD. Download CabExtract and rip those beautiful Windows TTFs right off of your disk.

Then, your fonts can look like this.

KDE's standard fonts look good with MS's Arial. Times New Roman is good for web browsing. Opera works well with the same fonts as used in the Windows version, but you need to tweak the font sizes a bit.

It's a bit of trouble, but works nicely on the Linux desktop. Until we can come up with some great GPLed TTFs, then this is the best that we've got.

Make sure it is Windows 98 though. I think that new EULA tells you that you can't do this stuff with newer Windows releases. :) J/K

Re:Now we just need fonts!

[rainwalker]

Exactly which cab file are the fonts in? I'm not especially interested in digging through all of them...

Re:Now we just need fonts!

[Anonymous Coward]

In case anyone is interested I have released a number of GPL fonts. Most are "banner" fonts, but one (Dustismo) I made in an attempt to provide a good high quality sans-serif font for linux. you can check them all out at cheapskatefonts.com.. Be warned that I made Dustismo with embedded bitmaps which Linux does not support yet (you'd think I would have checked before I went to all that trouble :).

Re:Now we just need fonts!

[13Echo]

It takes a few minutes, but you can extract the contents of all of them at the same time by using "cabextract *.cab /destination" or something like that. It takes a minutes or two for them all to extract. Than, just copy all of the ttf files (*ttf) out of that directory to your TTF destination.

It sounds like a pain, but really isn't that difficult. It is a lot faster than it sounds, really.

Re:Now we just need fonts!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh...that made my eyes hurt...too blury...

If they're truly good fonts then they don't need antialiasing.

Re:Now we just need fonts!

[13Echo]

It can be adjusted. I originally turned off the antialiasing for 12 pt and below (like with Windows), but found that I was just too used to the antialiasing.

It is too blurry for some people, which has also been a complaint about OS X, but it really doesn't take too long to adapt to it.

It's a matter of preference, though.

Re:Now we just need fonts!

[dvdeug]

There are thousands of quality free (roughly speech) fonts out there,

Nope. There are thousands of fonts out there, given away for free, but most of them don't allow distribution (at least not commerical, and many not at all), most of them aren't quality (tiny character sets, low quality glyphs, no hinting or kerning at all) or are very decritive and limited use. I can count the number of open source font makers on one hand.

Good work!

[supabeast!]

If there's one thing that desktop Linux needs, it's straightening out the whole font/X mess. Nice to see some serious stuff getting done abouting. Propz, gratz, and thankz to the whole team.

The fonts are out there

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux CAN use TTF fonts, its just that they ship with obsolete CRAPPY UNSCALEABLE SHITTY X FONTS! Now if they Actually MADE SOME PROPER FONTS THEN THAT WILL MEAN PEOPLE WILL SHUT UP

Lameness filter encountered : Reason, don't use so many caps, its like YELLING

A real shame...

[jonathan_atkinson]

... that a project like this, which claims to "implement high quality, anti-aliased and subpixel rendered text on a display" can have such an ugly website without any screenshots.

--Jon (watches karma burn)

Re:A real shame...

[Adnans]

... that a project like this, which claims to "implement high quality, anti-aliased and subpixel rendered text on a display" can have such an ugly website without any screenshots.

Since fontconfig itself doesn't deal with font rendering / displaying it doesn't make much sense to have screenshots there. You should check out the Pango / Qt / GTK+ / etc. websites for screenshots. Or do you also expect screenshots of linux on kernel.org? :-)

-adnans

completely wrong

[Ender Ryan]

I agree with you that fonts in Linux are really messed up at this point, but your completely wrong about why. It has nothing to do with WHERE they are kept on a system.

No, the reason fonts are so messed up right now is that there has never been a good standard way of rendering fonts, forcing people to come up with their own solutions. So now, we've got tons of old programs using GTK This is all being solved now, but unfortuneately it is being solved woefully late in the game! This should have been addressed at least 5 years ago, and then now we would have this mess and every program/gui toolkit would render fonts in the same, sane manner.

Hopefully Fontconfig will help with straightening this mess out.

Re:completely wrong

[wilhelm]

You missed it too. It's not where or what format or how do they render, all those problems have been solved. My XFree86 installation will use all font types that most people have: TT, TypeI, Speedo, and all those funky bitmapped fonts that have come with X for years. And I didn't have to add any software to do it; it just works. If you don't like how they render, work on the renderer - it belongs in the X core, not some damn other program.

The problem is configuring X to use new fonts. If you hit the manpages a little, it's possible to tweak the fonts.dir and fonts.scale files to include new fonts. But how many people around here actually know how to do that? Probably not a whole bunch. What we actually need is something that can figure out all the XLFD fields from information in the font file, and tweak the files for us. There wasn't much info on the program in the article, so no telling if they've solved this problem or not.

Did anyone succeed in compiling CVS pango with it?

[mbyte]

Fontconfig did compile fine, but the CVS pango version seems borked ... too bad ... no nice fonts ;)

One problem.

[Christianfreak]

To use it you have to patch your QT, GTK and Mozilla. I'm not a very good programmer but why couldn't the API be the same so these apps would 'just work'? Maybe I just don't understand how it works.

All I know is that two big barriers to the desktop are fonts and printing. So I'm glad that things are being developed to make it easier.

Re:One problem.

[Darren Winsper]

Qt and GTK will have support in a future release (Probably the next point release wouldn't surprise me), but Mozilla's a bit undecided at this time. Red Hat have been pussing to get Chris Blizzard's work into the main tree, but there has been resistance to Blizzard's methods from a few Unix heads.

Re:One problem.

[spitzak]

I know some people are going to apologize, but I agree with this poster.

Though there are lots of reasons to add new interfaces, I find it inexcusable that XFree86 has not been fixed so that the old font interface draws the text anti-aliased.

Lot's of people then say "You don't understand X, it is impossible". But I do understand X. Yes, it will only work on trueColor. Yes, it probably needs to clip the antialiasing off at the edges of the glyph bounding box (I would enlarge the bounding box so this is not a problem). Yes, antialiasing will need to be turned off if they set Xor bitblt mode (I would ignore this problem, actually, nobody xor's fonts). Yes, it won't work with existing font servers. None of these are real problems.

The truth is that the innards of XFree86 are such a mess that nobody could figure out how to remove the 1-bit/pixel limitation from the pipeline between the font renderer and the screen. This is very sad and also indicates that X is very slow and bloated and that nobody will ever be able to fix it. It is also true that there is an incredible paranoia about back-compatability that must be overcome, in fact Linux's ability to ignore back-compatability somewhat is a big advantage over Windows.

I also want to point out that MicroSoft successfully updated their interface to use antialiasing, and they had all the same issues as X did. In case you forgot, originally Windows did not do antialiasing. They changed it and all the old programs started using it *without* being rewritten! The fact that X could not do this same sort of fix is far worse than the delay it has taken to get antialiasing.

Re:One problem.

[keithp]

"You don't understand X, it is impossible".

The original X graphics infrastructure was pretty badly broken, worse in some ways than the Windows API. X doesn't provide any color information about pixels, so it's actually not possible to know what colors different pixel values mean in different contexts. The only place you can be sure is when drawing to windows, and you can only generate intermediate color values for TrueColor windows.

The Windows API provides color information everywhere instead of pixel information; applications select the color for text, not the pixel values. Each pixmap contains information about what colors are represented by pixel values. This makes anti-aliasing quite possible and ensures that drawing in different contexts will generate consistent results.

If you're interested in bit-level pixel manipulation and complete control over the hardware colormap, then the core X rendering system is just the ticket. All of the limitations we're running into now were caused by compromises necessary to support commercially important applications in the era X was developed; now that hardware is 1000 times faster, we can emulate those tricks and still provide new capabilities.

However, it's even more important to realize that anti-aliased text is only a side-effect of the real benefits that Fontconfig and Xft bring to X. The core protocol font handling has never been sufficient to support sophisticated text display. Every sufficiently powerful text rendering engine based on X has had to give up on the core fonts and implement text entirely in software. From TeX previewers to commercial publication systems, none of them gain any benefit from the hardware acceleration and network bandwidth optimizations of the core text primitives.

Furthermore, the core protocol font support cannot handle Unicode encoded fonts -- character codes are limited to 16 bits and Unicode requires 24. Even if you limit applications to the Unicode basic multilingual plane, the metrics information cannot be compressed as it is delivered over the wire or stored in Xlib making applications consume huge amounts of memory storing arrays full of zeros.

It is possible to kludge in AA text support for applications using the core protocol, but the results would be inconsistent on the screen and such support would not do anything to fix the worst limitations of core fonts.

As Xft2 now supports legacy X servers (without Render support), it is now reasonable to consider jettisoning any support for the core protocol fonts and switch to only supporting client-side fonts. Servers with Render will get good performance while servers not yet fixed will still work reasonably well.

The last step to take is to make all of the core bitmap fonts available as Unicode bitmap fonts through Fontconfig. The original plan was to make FreeType able to read the existing compressed bitmap font file formats that XFree86 uses. Those formats still suffer from the encoding assumptions that drove the massive space consumption in the core protocol metrics data, plus such fonts are consistently encoded in Unicode.

The new plan is to reencode the existing core fonts as TrueType fonts with only bitmaps for each glyph. The TrueType spec has explicit support for such fonts. Reencoding the fonts will significantly reduce the amount of disk space consumed by the fonts, eliminate all of the existing bitmap readers from the X server (and font server) and simultaneously make the fonts available to fontconfig/xft2-based applications.

Re:One problem.

[spitzak]

Thanks for the reply.

I was hoping for the "kludge in AA text support for apps using the core X protocol". I expected that all the old fonts would disappear at that point and only the TrueType fonts would be accessable, and they would all advertise as scalable fonts in ISO-8859-1 encoding. I don't really see much need to make the bitmap fonts accessible.

But you are right that the Xft extension is being written (by you, I think) to emulate itself on older X servers, which is excellent (I have used this plenty in fltk btw). All new programs should use this. Is this going to be true of the other XRender extensions as well, such as the shape drawing? It would seem that it can draw an aliased and non-transparent simulation pretty well. This would be very exciting because we could ditch all the X drawing code completely.

Always?

[thesadmac]

I'm a Mac user. My hardware is definitely not faster or more powerful than a good PC. More reliable maybe, but not faster, etc.

Indeed an x86 version of OSX would be great, but Apple would have a hard time becoming a software based company, owing much of their cash to overpriced hardware.

Not force, standards.

[Anonymous Coward]

What I want to know is why the LSB or the FHS doesn't specify a specific location for fonts? Forcing people to do things the One Correct Way is only going to make us look bad. Instead, define a standard and let people decide for themselves whether or not to conform. I doubt that people who defy the standards will do so for long; they'll get sick of the flames.

--
Villan Antagonist

Re:Not force, standards.

[Anonymous Coward]

what you do is instead of allowing X to specify 700 different #fontPath variables allow only ONE.. and then post in your faq that if you dont like it then go use microsoft windows...

yes forcing it a good idea, the morons that wrote AbiWord didnt put them in the right spot, distors throw them into random directories, and users just plop them wherever /usr/bin/farheat/quake3saves/fonts/x11/ is bullshit... X needs to ignore any and all fonts that are not at /x/y/z/ as specified on the one and only fontpath line.

Why this is really important

[A-Tech]

This really great news. Linux and X have badly needed a unfied way to handle fonts for a long time.

fontconfig adds:

1) Excellent Unicode handling for developers.

2) This resolves the need for developer hacks and workarounds for accessing and displaying available fonts. For programs like Scribus - a Linux Desktop Publisher this will make life much easier in the future.

3) Makes adding and fonts much easier. Now we need a good GUI front end so installing fonts is as easy as Win/Mac.

For desktop linux this is as important as having TCP/IP for networking. (You need good plumbing underneath.)

Re:Why this is really important

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't talk for GNOME (any GNOMer can pipe in on this, please?), but KDE 3.x already has a font installer utility/control panel. Now, it's just a question of time before KDE's font facility takes advantage of fontconfig. But I guess we'll have to wait for Qt to add fontconfig support before we see KDE itself use Keith P.'s new creation... ;-)

Man, we *are* getting closer and closer to The Desktop!

Re:Why this is really important

[CoolVibe]

3) Makes adding and fonts much easier. Now we need a good GUI front end so installing fonts is as easy as Win/Mac.

What i'd really like to see is being able to just copy off a whole ream of fonts in the $X11BASE/lib/x11/fonts dir and have them Just Work (tm).

Sure, a nice GUI type app to tweak stuff like antialiasing and the XftConfig would be nice, but that's not enough.

Re:Why this is really important

[sirinek]

They have that. Its the fonts module in the KDE Configuration program.

You have to copy them to that directory then use this wizard-like tool to install them, but its easy enough for a windows user to do without having to RTFM.

siri

Re:Why this is really important

[Anonymous Coward]

What i'd really like to see is being able to just copy off a whole ream of fonts in the $X11BASE/lib/x11/fonts dir and have them Just Work (tm).

I don't know about other distros, but for Red Hat 7.x just copy the font files into their folders and run:

service xfs reload

(as root). This will go through all the directories in the font server path, create the fonts.dir (including TrueType fonts), and the new fonts will be available. Take care not to use "restart", as that will probably crash every running app that depends on the font server.

Yes, having a separate font server may seem redundant, but keep in mind that in a large professional installation it can be very useful to have a single, dedicated font server machine on the network with thousands of fonts loaded than to have each and every workstation (or render node) have its own font server and font folders.

Kernel Config Should Use Hardware Info Config File

[Josh]

I'm not should what the poster meant by an "add hardware" but I've long thought that the kernel distribution could and should help get the ball rolling by referencing a stand alone file containing hardware config information about the target machine that persists across different kernel builds/versions, with some easy format that trusted applications could modify.

nope, you're wrong

[Ender Ryan]

Configuring X to use new fonts isn't the problem at all, there are already solutions to that particular problem, you simply don't know about them. Sorry, I can't help there, I know how to configure everything manually.

The current problems are exactly what I stated, myriads of programs rendering fonts in myriads of different, incompatible, non-extensible manners.

So now we have tons of applications that can't take advantage of the new TT, AA, etc. rendering features.

Currently, there are thousands of programs written in GTK 1.x, Qt 1/2.x, Motif, etc., all of which render fonts in different manners, using different font configurations of their own, etc.

Plus the lack of good, standard, open source fonts included with distibutions.

DirectX & clipboard

[FooBarWidget]

"Hardly... You forgot a strong equivalent to DirectX to give games a place to migrate to (sorry, a mix of OpenGL + some sound library doesn't equate to DirectX)."

How about OpenGL + SDL? Easier and just as powerful as DirectX. SDL handles everything from video to threads to sound to CD-ROMs.

"Then there's _one_ unified sound standard (I think Linux has four or five now),"

Check reality! There are TWO standards: OSS and ALSA.
If you want compatibility with other Unix platforms, use OSS and forget about it. ALSA has OSS emulation. If you want power, use ALSA, which is only available on Linux.
Again: if you want compatibility, use OSS. Or if you're creating a game, use the sound API in SDL! Then you doesn't have to worry about the underlying sound system at all.

"Single standards for the clipboard,"

Has been there for ages. http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/clipboards.tx t
Why do people keep mentioning this? Clipboard support has been fixed since KDE 3.0!!!

Re:DirectX & clipboard

[JohnMunsch]

Good, then maybe as a forced user of Debian (it's the "official" distribution at work) I'll have that in a couple of years :)

I have high hopes that Debian will ship KDE 3.0 before KDE 4.0 comes out.

Re:DirectX & clipboard

[WWWWolf]

"Single standards for the clipboard,"

Has been there for ages.

Yeah, any application that doesn't copy text with left mouse button and paste with middle button is probably a broken and hideously ugly freak. Text copying/pasting in X is confusing at first, but obvious afterwards - I don't know why people are complaining =)

As for graphics or sound, well, I have not found too much good use for graphics or sound on clipboard. Sure, the stuff I could do back in the wild Windows days in OLE2 was pretty nifty, but it became a compatibility mess soon. I soon learned to link to embedded images/data through the applications themselves (which does work just fine in X apps too).

Something standardized to deal with formatted text (font data etc) would be neat, as would unicode awareness (automagical conversion) stuff, but hey, these are Not Required That Often, and are often better handled by applications themselves through file import/export...

Re:DirectX & clipboard

[damiam]

Stop whining and get the unofficial KDE3 debs (do a google search for em).

Red Hat has it in beta

[salimma]

One of the highlights of the current Limbo/Null beta (shaping up to be the upcoming 8.0 release) is that it includes Xft2/fontconfig.

AFAIK the Mozilla shipped is bog-standard, however, if you want to try fontconfig without too much hassle, I really recommend (null).

Get it from your favourite Red Hat mirror - I personally use rpmfind.net

Cheers,

Michel

I almost forgot that...

[Pope Raymond Lama]

Drakfont comes standard only in Mandrake Linux distro, just
as I forgot what it used to be configuring fonts before that.

No kidding. It's well over a year installing fonts in my desktop
system is as easy as reading e-mail.

Now please, no hard feelings. I am pro free software, and had volunteered
for an upcoming Debian install fest. My ego needed the distro
boasting, but I am quite happy with this new achievement.

Re:Kernel Config Should Use Hardware Info Config F

[FooBarWidget]

Bad idea. Hardware should be autodetected.

Anyone got this working yet?

[Alan]

I thought that this is great, finally all my fonts will work. Well, download, and here is what I see...

• no documentation... there is a tiny .tex file in the fontconfig directory telling you what it does, but no main README, no instructions for install/configuration...
  
• of the 4 directories that are created from the tarball, only two compile. fontconfig and Xft compile and install just fine, Xft1 and Xrender fail, and use the very old Imakefile (xmkmf) setup. As there is no readme, I have no idea if these are needed or not.
  
• No change for the installed system. There were no instructions on how to run the program, if there is any thing to run. I downloaded and ran the mozilla version which looked great, but didn't use any of the many hundred extra fonts I have installed (though it did render the default fonts nicely).
  

That, and I don't see any difference in applications... is this suppose to be transparent (I assume so), or do apps have to be written specifically to use Xft2.so? If the latter, isn't this kinda useless as a "real" solution, as then it's just another way of configuring/rendering fonts that is mentioned above :(

Re:Anyone got this working yet?

[FooBarWidget]

"no instructions for install/configuration..."

Read the website! It tells you to ./configure --prefix=/usr/X11R6 && make install.

"That, and I don't see any difference in applications... "

Of crouse not.
1. Fontconfig is a font configuration system. It provides information of installed fonts to applications. It's not a user-visible thing.
2. The rendering is done by Xft/FreeType/Whatever, not by fontconfig.

Perhaps you would know that if you read the website.

"If the latter, isn't this kinda useless as a "real" solution, as then it's just another way of configuring/rendering fonts that is mentioned above :("

This is by no means useless. Fontconfig isn't "another" configuration system. And it sure is *not* a rendering system. Fontconfig is a step towards a *good* configuration system, not "another" one.
Apps don't support it now, but that's not a big deal. The most important thing is that developers have a sane font configuration system now to develop for.

"That, and I don't see any difference in applications..."

Like I've said before (and like the website says): fontconfig does *not* do rendering! Rendering is done by Xft/FreeType/Whatever.
Fontconfig and Xft2 don't make your fonts suddenly look better, font quality depends on the font itself.

Re:Anyone got this working yet?

[keithp]

Fontconfig is just a standalone library. The benefits of the system will only be realized as applications and other libraries take advantage of the capabilities.

The documentation included in this release is aimed at helping get applications ported to the library, not at helping get systems configured to use the library. That kind of documentation is needed, but it just hasn't been written yet.

Fontconfig has been released, but that's only relevant to application development right now.

Come... Join Us....

[Anonymous Coward]

Your desires are irrelivant.
Resistance is futile...
You Will Be Assimilated...

recompile.org

Re:a step toward world domination?-average.

[Anonymous Coward]

"what is this thing "the desktop" people talk about? It's not like there is some old grandma being kept in front of WinME at the standards institude in Paris to be trundled out as "the desktop" should anyone need to see if they are it or not."

Of course there is. She's sitting right next to "average user". Who also gets trotted out for the same show. After all there are "arguments" to win, and POV's to enforce, for both sides.

Pro MS:"'The desktop' will never be conquered by Linux because the 'Average User' doesn't have what's (s)he's used before."(Were's my Word?, Start Menu?, IE?)

Pro Linux:"The 'average user' will not use a Linux 'Desktop' till there's little difference between the two." (Hey, we need DirectX!)

So when do we get to see...

[xealon]

... cleartype support for X?

oh wait

--
Once in the wilds of Afghanistan I lost my corkscrew and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.

Re:So when do we get to see...

[be-fan]

Actually, the current X implementation of subpixel rendering isn't nearly as good as Cleartype itself. This is speaking from personal experience. I've got a 133 dpi laptop screen, and Cleartype makes fonts look like I'm reading a piece of paper. Sub-pixel AA in Xft has less color fringing for certain fonts, but overall the edges look harsher, and in many cases the type is rendered much more lightly than Cleartype renders it. This becomes quite a problem with italic fonts. The italic fonts on /.'s front page, for example, are really hard to read because Xft renders them one-pixel thick, which is very hard to see when the pixels are so small. Cleartype renders it with more fuzz (magnified) but the letters look much more substantive. Also, there are a lot of tricks with partial hinting and gamma correction that Cleartype does and Xft doesn't.

Re:So when do we get to see...

[tempfile]

Be sure to have enabled the patented (and therefore by default disabled) hinting mechanisms in your libfreetype. They improve antialiased TT rendering quality quite a bit.

Re:So when do we get to see...

[be-fan]

Been doing that for years. Its not the quality of the rendering (glyph shapes) its the quality of the smoothing mechanism.

Network transparency

[tempfile]

Something I couldn't find on the website - is fontconfig network transparent? I.e., is there a way for a remote application to render fonts stored on the local system, or would it have to resort to core X routines?

configuring printers

[Rizzer]

Xprint is one path to help smooth out the mess with using printers in application. See xprint.mozdev.org. I'll soon be uploading it to Debian.

Drew Parsons

Related Project (Standard Type Services Framework)

[nanick]

Not only it does font management but it also
provides a nice complete API for text manipulation

Check it out :
http://stsf.sourceforge.net/