widely-spaced characters in rxvt

widely-spaced characters in rxvt

[Daniel Barclay]

What causes rxvt to switch to displaying characters with lots of space in between
them?

I heard that there's some interaction between X11-mode rxvt setup and plain-window
rxvt setup.  I don't think I've installed any X11 libraries, servers, or even
fonts since rxvt was working right, but now rxvt is acting up again.

Daniel









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RE: widely-spaced characters in rxvt

[Dave Korn]

Daniel Barclay wrote on 12 May 2008 17:39:

> What causes rxvt to switch to displaying characters with lots of space in
> between them?

  Did you overlook Chuck Wilson's reply in our thread last week?

http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2008-05/msg00158.html

  Specifically the second paragraph.

    cheers,
      DaveK
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Re: widely-spaced characters in rxvt

[René Berber]

Daniel Barclay wrote:

> What causes rxvt to switch to displaying characters with lots of space 
> in between them?

The font it's using.

> I heard that there's some interaction between X11-mode rxvt setup and plain-window
> rxvt setup.  I don't think I've installed any X11 libraries, servers, or even
> fonts since rxvt was working right, but now rxvt is acting up again.

You have to check what's the default font [1] or if you changed it [2].

There was a thread on the list, long ago, about the default being a font 
that comes with the X11 fonts.  I'm not sure what's the case right now, 
but a widely-spaced font sounds like a font that you have installed but 
lacks the necessary hints (that's a X11 font term).

[1] /etc/defaults/etc/X11/app-defaults/Rxvt or URxvt;
[2] ~/.Xdefaults
-- 
René Berber


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Re: widely-spaced characters in rxvt

[Daniel Barclay]

René Berber wrote:
> Daniel Barclay wrote:
> 
>> What causes rxvt to switch to displaying characters with lots of space 
>> in between them?
> 
> The font it's using.
> 
>> I heard that there's some interaction between X11-mode rxvt setup and 
>> plain-window
>> rxvt setup.  I don't think I've installed any X11 libraries, servers, 
>> or even
>> fonts since rxvt was working right, but now rxvt is acting up again.
> 
> You have to check what's the default font [1] or if you changed it [2].

Damn!  It just changed again.

The main question question is why it keeps changing when I running the CygWin
installer even though I don't (as far as I know) touch its font settings or
touch the installer settings for which fonts are installed.

How do I get it to behave consistently (well, consistently with a good font,
rather than consistentl with a bad font).



Daniel


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Re: widely-spaced characters in rxvt

[Daniel Barclay]

René Berber wrote:
> Daniel Barclay wrote:
> 
>> What causes rxvt to switch to displaying characters with lots of space 
>> in between them?
> 
> The font it's using.

But why exactly would it display characters with lots of space between them?
Surely the font isn't designed that way.

What is actually going wrong?


> You have to check what's the default font [1] or if you changed it [2].

c:/tools/cygwin/etc/defaults/etc/X11/app-defaults/ says:

   Rxvt*font:		-bitstream-bitstream vera sans mono-medium-r-normal--*-160-*-*-m-*-iso8859-1

I have not ~/.Xdefaults

> There was a thread on the list, long ago, about the default being a font 
> that comes with the X11 fonts.  I'm not sure what's the case right now, 
> but a widely-spaced font sounds like a font that you have installed but 
> lacks the necessary hints (that's a X11 font term).

It sounds like a bigger problem than hints.  They're for kerning, making
small improvements to renderings, etc., right.  From the symptom I'm getting,
it seems that rxvt doesn't even know how wide the individual glyphs are.

Daniel




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Re: widely-spaced characters in rxvt

[Henry S. Thompson]

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Hash: SHA1

Daniel Barclay writes:

>   Rxvt*font:		-bitstream-bitstream vera sans mono-medium-r-normal--*-160-*-*-m-*-iso8859-1
>
> I have not ~/.Xdefaults

That's your problem.  Vanilla Windows does not have the bitstream
fonts at all.  Either

 1) Install the bitstream fonts (they are free now, use a search
    engine);
 2) Edit that line to use a font you _do_ have by default, for instance
     Rxvt*font:    Lucida Console-11

I recommend (1).  Even better, get the tweaked version of the
Bitstream fonts, which are called DejaVu.

ht
- -- 
 Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh
                     Half-time member of W3C Team
    2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440
            Fax: (44) 131 650-4587, e-mail: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk
                   URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/
[mail really from me _always_ has this .sig -- mail without it is forged spam]
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Re: widely-spaced characters in rxvt

[Daniel Barclay]

Dave Korn wrote:
> Daniel Barclay wrote on 12 May 2008 17:39:
> 
>> What causes rxvt to switch to displaying characters with lots of space in
>> between them?
> 
>   Did you overlook Chuck Wilson's reply in our thread last week?

No, I didn't.  That post didn't address why things were changing seemingly
randomly (as his more recent one now has).

Daniel





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