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* font question, xfs locally on cygwin?
@ 2012-01-17 19:07 mathog
  2012-01-17 19:58 ` mathog
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 4+ messages in thread
From: mathog @ 2012-01-17 19:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: cygwin-xfree

Short version:

Can somebody please point me to instructions for setting up xfs on 
Cygwin/X?  I especially need to know how
to set this up so that Courier fonts work properly for sizes for which 
there is no corresponding pcf file.  Is
xfs really needed, or is putting in the right libfreetype bits and 
pieces enough?  The files that go in
/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1 on Mandriva, for instance?

Long version:

Two machines both running Xorg, one is an old Mandriva 2008.0 machine 
with Xorg 7.2
on the console, and the other is a Cygwin machine using whatever Xorg 
version is current
on Cygwin/X.

In nedit they handle the following font differently:

-*-courier-medium-r-normal--17-120-*-*-*-iso8859-1

That works fine on the Mandriva machine X11 server, but uses some other 
font on the Cygwin X11
server (in both cases the Nedit client is on the Mandriva machine).  I 
don't know what font is actually
being used, but it isn't fixed (no error messages relating to this show 
up in the X.0.log file).

I looked through the fonts on the Mandriva machine and it does not 
actually have a 17 point Courier
font in the 75dpi directory, so it is coming up with that size on the 
fly, presumably through xfs, which is running there. Change to 14 pt 
(for which a pcf font file exists) then it is fixed width.  
Unfortunately that
font is much too small on the monitor in question.  Seems like font use 
on the Mandriva server is through xfs, but Cygwin/X client cannot use 
it, and isn't running its own copy.

The main server has in /usr/share/fonts:


100dpi/  75dpi/  cyrillic/  default/  fluxbox-artwiz-fonts/  misc/  
OTF/  Speedo/  ttf/  TTF/  Type1/

whereas the Cygwin variant has only the first two, and only the 75dpi 
has any fonts in it.

Presumably the Cygwin X11 server could be aimed at the Mandriva xfs, 
but for reasons I don't want to go into
here it would be much better if the Cygwin machine ran its own xfs.

How is this done?  (Pointer to instructions?)
Also, which part of xfs is coming up with the nice 17 point courier?  
What else, if anything, needs to
be added to get that functionality?

Or is xfs irrelevant and this is done through libfreetype?  The 
Mandriva machine definitely loads that, and
the Cygwin does not.  Moreover on the Mandriva machine there is a 
/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1/adobestd35/ directory with a .dir file 
that does include a Courier entry.

Thank you,

David Mathog
mathog@caltech.edu
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread

* Re: font question, xfs locally on cygwin?
  2012-01-17 19:07 font question, xfs locally on cygwin? mathog
@ 2012-01-17 19:58 ` mathog
  2012-01-19 14:58   ` Jon TURNEY
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 4+ messages in thread
From: mathog @ 2012-01-17 19:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: cygwin-xfree

On 17-Jan-2012 11:07, mathog wrote:
> Is
> xfs really needed, or is putting in the right libfreetype bits and
> pieces enough?  The files that go in
> /usr/share/fonts/default/Type1 on Mandriva, for instance?

So I tried copying the files from Mandriva over and dropping them into 
the
Cygwin distro.  That actually worked, in that the fonts then appeared 
and they looked
good on the screen.  Looks like xfs isn't needed.  However, there was a 
problem with the naming conventions.

This one works on the Mandriva X11 server

  -*-courier-medium-r-normal--17-120-*-*-*-iso8859-1

but it doesn't work on the Cygwin X11 server.  The file name there must 
be

-*-courier-medium-r-normal--17-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-13

The problem seems to be that the font naming convention is slightly 
different.  There
are 3 fields between 120 and iso8859 on the Mandriva machine, but 4 on 
Cygwin/X.  Change in
the font naming conventions between different Xorg versions???

Which Cygwin package would install /usr/share/fonts/Type1 properly?

Thanks,

David Mathog
mathog@caltech.edu
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread

* Re: font question, xfs locally on cygwin?
  2012-01-17 19:58 ` mathog
@ 2012-01-19 14:58   ` Jon TURNEY
  2012-01-19 16:37     ` mathog
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 4+ messages in thread
From: Jon TURNEY @ 2012-01-19 14:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: cygwin-xfree; +Cc: mathog

On 17/01/2012 19:58, mathog wrote:
> On 17-Jan-2012 11:07, mathog wrote:
>> Is
>> xfs really needed, or is putting in the right libfreetype bits and
>> pieces enough?  The files that go in
>> /usr/share/fonts/default/Type1 on Mandriva, for instance?

To address some of the questions from your previous email: xfs doesn't
magically make fonts scalable, or know how to read types of font that the X
server itself doesn't (now).

So there is no reason whatsoever to use a local xfs.  The same result can be
achieved (better), simply by adding the same directories to the X server's
fontpath.

There are also some technical difficulties in building xfs for cygwin, due to
libXfont's widespread use of weak symbols.

Furthermore, core (server) fonts are a legacy feature.  All modern toolkits
use Xft (client) fonts. (See [1])

For all of these reasons, we don't provide an xfs.

> So I tried copying the files from Mandriva over and dropping them into the
> Cygwin distro.  That actually worked, in that the fonts then appeared and they
> looked
> good on the screen.  Looks like xfs isn't needed.  However, there was a
> problem with the naming conventions.

> This one works on the Mandriva X11 server
> 
>  -*-courier-medium-r-normal--17-120-*-*-*-iso8859-1
> 
> but it doesn't work on the Cygwin X11 server.  The file name there must be
> 
> -*-courier-medium-r-normal--17-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-13
> The problem seems to be that the font naming convention is slightly
> different.  There
> are 3 fields between 120 and iso8859 on the Mandriva machine, but 4 on
> Cygwin/X.  Change in
> the font naming conventions between different Xorg versions???

These names should be XLFDs (X logical font descriptions [1]).

The first one doesn't look well-formed as it only has 13 fields.

> Which Cygwin package would install /usr/share/fonts/Type1 properly?

I think the fonts we talking about are the so-called 'URW fonts', donated by
the URW foundry to ghostscript.

These are packaged with ghostscript on cygwin, but it doesn't install them in
a place where they can be shared with other uses.

All other things being equal, it would be nice to have these fonts available
to X, although I don't know if it would be better to pick a some other fonts
to be aliased as scalable versions of courier etc.

Also, some investigation would be needed to discover if we should adjust the
ghostscript-fonts-std package, or make a separate package for these fonts for
the X server.

We would also need to make or obtain a suitable fonts.alias to map the font
names to the standard postscript font names (e.g. so URW nimbus mono l can be
accessed by the name courier)

[1] http://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.6/doc/xorg-docs/fonts/fonts.html
[2] http://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.6/doc/xorg-docs/specs/XLFD/xlfd.html

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread

* Re: font question, xfs locally on cygwin?
  2012-01-19 14:58   ` Jon TURNEY
@ 2012-01-19 16:37     ` mathog
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: mathog @ 2012-01-19 16:37 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: cygwin-xfree

On 19-Jan-2012 06:58, Jon TURNEY wrote:
> On 17/01/2012 19:58, mathog wrote:

>> This one works on the Mandriva X11 server
>>
>>  -*-courier-medium-r-normal--17-120-*-*-*-iso8859-1
>>
>> but it doesn't work on the Cygwin X11 server.  The file name there 
>> must be
>>
>> -*-courier-medium-r-normal--17-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-13
>> The problem seems to be that the font naming convention is slightly
>> different.  There
>> are 3 fields between 120 and iso8859 on the Mandriva machine, but 4 
>> on
>> Cygwin/X.  Change in
>> the font naming conventions between different Xorg versions???
>
> These names should be XLFDs (X logical font descriptions [1]).
>
> The first one doesn't look well-formed as it only has 13 fields.

Right.  Oddly it has been like that for, I don't know, 20 years?  
Searched for new fonts
and it came back with 13 fields.

Sent you a set of fonts.dir/fonts.scale for urw font names in a direct 
email.  (Didn't have
an actual fonts.alias, but should be easy to make one from these 
files.)

Thanks,

David Mathog
mathog@caltech.edu
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2012-01-19 16:37 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 4+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
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2012-01-17 19:07 font question, xfs locally on cygwin? mathog
2012-01-17 19:58 ` mathog
2012-01-19 14:58   ` Jon TURNEY
2012-01-19 16:37     ` mathog

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