RXVT and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

RXVT and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

[Jeff]

Hi,

I use RXVT because it makes Cygwin accessible to me. Its color and font
support gives me a console window I can *see*, as opposed to the native
Windows console that BASH runs in by default, which I cannot see. Part
of my strategy to increase visibility is to specify a bold font for
-fn/font: and crank up the point size just as large as I can make it
and still have an 80x25 console fit on my screen.

I probably don't have to tell anyone who uses RXVT that Windows XP
ships with only two usable monospaced fonts: Lucida Console, and
Courier New; I probably also don't have to mention how well a
proportional font (doesn't) work with RXVT. I've been getting by with
Lucida Console-bold, but lately even that has become a little difficult
for me to see. So, I decided to see if I could find a more visible
font.

I found this useful page at http://www.lowing.org/fonts/ which lists
several monospaced fonts for coders/programmers, with Bitstream Vera
Sans Mono ranked as the best of them. The page provides links, too--
the Bitstream fonts are available at http://www.gnome.org/fonts/ as
advertised. I then noticed that this font is mentioned in the RXVT
README text, and saw it mentioned in a recent thread on this list as
being the default font in the current Cygwin RXVT.

After trying a few point sizes, I quickly determined that the largest I
could use and still have an 80x25 console fit on the screen was 24.
However, I got some really strange display anomalies at that point size
(and not at any other within the range of 22-28)-- and they occur in
all variations of the font: normal, bold, and oblique (Italic). I had
characters overlapping and obscuring each other. In joe, the text
editor I use, a line of text extended farther to the right than where
the cursor would land when given a "goto end of line" command. Any
attempt to edit under those circumstances caused characters to
disappear from the screen; it was necessary to move the cursor and
redraw the screen to see what I had there.

Setting the size to 23 works just great and is better than using Lucida
Console (or the other fonts mentioned on lowing.org, for that matter),
but 24 is significantly larger and would be easier on my eyes. I
thought it would be better to ask here first before contacting
Bitstream; the font seems to work just fine at that point size in MS
Word.

I'm running the latest Cygwin RXVT (2.7.10, or 20050409-4) in native
mode (I have no use for X11, since I run only console mode apps in
Cygwin) along with the latest cygwin1.dll release on Win XP Pro SP2
with all the latest updates. I have tried what I am describing and have
had the same results on three different computors, each running at a
different screen resolution and DPI setting-- the notebook on which I
am typing this maxes out (and is set at) 1024x768, and is set for
Normal size (96 DPI). BASH is my shell, and my .Xdefaults file is as
follows:

*background: #00008A
*foreground: #DADA00
*colorBD: #D0D0D0
*colorUL: #8CD70F
*font: "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono Bold-23"
*visualBell: True
*loginShell: True
*termName: rxvt-cygwin-native
*saveLines: 300
*geometry: 80x25

It makes no difference whether I just invoke RXVT and let it call BASH
by default (assuming that RXVT does not read the $SHELL environment
variable, which points to BASH), or make it explicit with 'rxvt.exe -e
bash -li'.

I hope someone (Charles?) can duplicate my results, and then figure out
what's causing it. Please let me know if any other information is
needed to troubleshoot this. My eyes will thank you, and so will I.

Jeff

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/

Re: RXVT and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

[Brian Mathis]

On Dec 6, 2007 4:04 PM, Jeff <for.listmail@verizon.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I use RXVT because it makes Cygwin accessible to me. Its color and font
> support gives me a console window I can *see*, as opposed to the native
> Windows console that BASH runs in by default, which I cannot see. Part
> of my strategy to increase visibility is to specify a bold font for
> -fn/font: and crank up the point size just as large as I can make it
> and still have an 80x25 console fit on my screen.
>
> I probably don't have to tell anyone who uses RXVT that Windows XP
> ships with only two usable monospaced fonts: Lucida Console, and
> Courier New; I probably also don't have to mention how well a
> proportional font (doesn't) work with RXVT. I've been getting by with
> Lucida Console-bold, but lately even that has become a little difficult
> for me to see. So, I decided to see if I could find a more visible
> font.
>
> I found this useful page at http://www.lowing.org/fonts/ which lists
> several monospaced fonts for coders/programmers, with Bitstream Vera
> Sans Mono ranked as the best of them. The page provides links, too--
> the Bitstream fonts are available at http://www.gnome.org/fonts/ as
> advertised. I then noticed that this font is mentioned in the RXVT
> README text, and saw it mentioned in a recent thread on this list as
> being the default font in the current Cygwin RXVT.
>
> After trying a few point sizes, I quickly determined that the largest I
> could use and still have an 80x25 console fit on the screen was 24.
> However, I got some really strange display anomalies at that point size
> (and not at any other within the range of 22-28)-- and they occur in
> all variations of the font: normal, bold, and oblique (Italic). I had
> characters overlapping and obscuring each other. In joe, the text
> editor I use, a line of text extended farther to the right than where
> the cursor would land when given a "goto end of line" command. Any
> attempt to edit under those circumstances caused characters to
> disappear from the screen; it was necessary to move the cursor and
> redraw the screen to see what I had there.
>
> Setting the size to 23 works just great and is better than using Lucida
> Console (or the other fonts mentioned on lowing.org, for that matter),
> but 24 is significantly larger and would be easier on my eyes. I
> thought it would be better to ask here first before contacting
> Bitstream; the font seems to work just fine at that point size in MS
> Word.
>
> I'm running the latest Cygwin RXVT (2.7.10, or 20050409-4) in native
> mode (I have no use for X11, since I run only console mode apps in
> Cygwin) along with the latest cygwin1.dll release on Win XP Pro SP2
> with all the latest updates. I have tried what I am describing and have
> had the same results on three different computors, each running at a
> different screen resolution and DPI setting-- the notebook on which I
> am typing this maxes out (and is set at) 1024x768, and is set for
> Normal size (96 DPI). BASH is my shell, and my .Xdefaults file is as
> follows:
>
> *background: #00008A
> *foreground: #DADA00
> *colorBD: #D0D0D0
> *colorUL: #8CD70F
> *font: "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono Bold-23"
> *visualBell: True
> *loginShell: True
> *termName: rxvt-cygwin-native
> *saveLines: 300
> *geometry: 80x25
>
> It makes no difference whether I just invoke RXVT and let it call BASH
> by default (assuming that RXVT does not read the $SHELL environment
> variable, which points to BASH), or make it explicit with 'rxvt.exe -e
> bash -li'.
>
> I hope someone (Charles?) can duplicate my results, and then figure out
> what's causing it. Please let me know if any other information is
> needed to troubleshoot this. My eyes will thank you, and so will I.
>
> Jeff
>

The Bitstream Vera fonts were released a long time ago, and AFAIK have
been mostly abandoned by Bitstream (at least you won't get any support
from them).  The successor to them which has had many updates since
their release is the DejaVu fonts.  I know they have had many releases
and fixed a lot of bugs, so that might resolve this problem you are
seeing.  You can download them here:
    http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/

Re: RXVT and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

[Thorsten Kampe]

* Jeff (Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:04:36 -0800)
> I use RXVT because it makes Cygwin accessible to me. Its color and font
> support gives me a console window I can *see*, as opposed to the native
> Windows console that BASH runs in by default, which I cannot see. Part
> of my strategy to increase visibility is to specify a bold font for
> -fn/font: and crank up the point size just as large as I can make it
> and still have an 80x25 console fit on my screen.
> 
> I probably don't have to tell anyone who uses RXVT that Windows XP
> ships with only two usable monospaced fonts: Lucida Console, and
> Courier New; I probably also don't have to mention how well a
> proportional font (doesn't) work with RXVT. I've been getting by with
> Lucida Console-bold, but lately even that has become a little difficult
> for me to see. So, I decided to see if I could find a more visible
> font.
> 
> I found this useful page at http://www.lowing.org/fonts/ which lists
> several monospaced fonts for coders/programmers, with Bitstream Vera
> Sans Mono ranked as the best of them. The page provides links, too--
> the Bitstream fonts are available at http://www.gnome.org/fonts/ as
> advertised. I then noticed that this font is mentioned in the RXVT
> README text, and saw it mentioned in a recent thread on this list as
> being the default font in the current Cygwin RXVT.

If you like Bitstream fonts then you will like DejaVu fonts - who are 
based on Bitstream - even more. But beware that your issue might be a 
issue similar to this:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10693

Thorsten


--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/

Re: RXVT and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

[Jeff]

On Thu, 6 Dec 2007 22:41:06 -0000, Thorsten Kampe <thorsten at
thorstenkampe dot de> wrote:

>If you like Bitstream fonts then you will like DejaVu fonts - who are 
>based on Bitstream - even more. But beware that your issue might be a 
>issue similar to this:
>
>https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10693
>
>Thorsten

Thanks for the link. My issue is similar, in that it seems to occur at
one size only, but what actually happens at that size is very
different.

I read the conversation in this bug report with considerable interest.
There are a few items that I would like to comment upon:

 ------- Comment #3 From Thorsten Kampe 2007-04-21 05:53:19 PST -------

>I think, this /might/ be a Cygwin/rxvt bug. Unfortunately I can't
>convince rxvt under Linux to use DejaVu Fonts ("can't load DejaVu Sans
>Mono-17") - so I can't tell whether it's just a Cygwin/rxvt thingy).

How strange... I had no problems getting my copy of rxvt to accept
'DejaVu Sans Mono-17', and found the "underscore not displaying" bug
you reported to be immediately reproducable. Note that the the issue I
described in my initial post to this list is identical when using the
DejaVu Sans Mono font. One only needs to read the status.txt file in
the DejaVu package to realize that a significant portion of the
original Bitstream Vera 1.10 font remains unchanged.

 ------- Comment #4 From Thorsten Kampe 2007-04-21 06:02:29 PST -------

>I wouldn't have a problem reporting the bug to the Cygwin rxvt
>maintainer - but as rxvt is AFAIK not actively maintained

Charles Wilson, the current maintainer of the Cygwin rxvt, appears to
be active on this list. According to the archive search engine, his
most recent post concerning rxvt was in response to the thread "[rxvt
packaging bug?] New rxvt introduces broken font default," which was
posted on Sun, 16 Sep 2007:
http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/2007-09/threads.html#00373

Then again, there is this, which describes both Cygwin rxvt and the
underlying W11 library as "moribund":
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-announce/2006-05/msg00004.html
However... "But don't worry: I've taken over maintainership of the
split-personality rxvt package, and it's not going anywhere. In fact, I
currently use 'rxvt' when native mode is good enough, and
'rxvt-unicode-X' when I want X support."

In /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/rxvt-20050409.README, Charles requests that we
"Please address all questions to the Cygwin mailing list ..."; in
respect of his wishes, I posted my issue here in the hopes that he
would see and respond to it.

>and other fonts (Fixedsys) don't show the behaviour I think he will
>classify this as "NOTOURBUG", too...

It is quite possible that the bug may not be in either rxvt or the
Bitstream/DejaVu fonts per se, but may very well be an interoperability
issue instead. The release notes for the Bitstream Vera fonts at
http://www.gnome.org/fonts/ include a comment that underscores this
complexity: "Font rendering in Gnome or KDE is the combination of
algorithms in Xft2 and Freetype, along with hinting in the fonts
themselves. It is vital to have sufficient information to disentangle
problems that you may observe."

It is a common human problem when interoperability issues occur,
fostered by our usual blame-based, CYA mode of problem solving, for the
involved parties to declare "NOTOURBUG" in chorus, and then point an
index finger at the developers of "that other product over there."
Under these circumstances, getting the developers of separate products
that are showing interoperability problems to cooperate toward finding
a uniform solution can be a serious challenge. The current situation,
where the DejaVu fonts seem to work well in any other application
(including native Windows GUI apps like MS Word) and rxvt seems to have
no problem rendering other monospaced fonts (such as Lucida Console and
Courier New) at any size, sounds to me very much like an
interoperability issue.

Then again, the bug may be in the underlying code bases and/or
development tools used to create these products. For example, the
release notes for the Bitstream Vera fonts at
http://www.gnome.org/fonts/ contain a detailed discussion of font
rendering setup in Gnome (including comments concerning the features
that the various font rendering components offer), and an advisory that
a partucular version of Freetype (one of the font rendering components
in Gnome) contains serious bugs. (At the top of this page is the
request that users "Please read the release notes before reporting
problems with the fonts," which in a sense is a step toward the
situation just described in the preceeding paragraph.)

This raises some questions with respect to Cygwin rxvt when run in
native mode: Does it rely on Windows font rendering, or does it have
its own font rendering engine (part of the W11 library, or-)? If the
former, why does a font that seems to display fine in native Windows
GUI apps have problems in rxvt? If the latter, is font rendering in
rxvt possibly provided by the buggy Freetype code mentioned above?
Finally, if the problem is with rxvt and/or W11, is there any
possibility of a fix?

I don't really want to think about this possibility, but the problem
could even be in FontForge, the app used to create the DejaVu (and
probably the Bitstream Vera) fonts...

 ------- Comment #13 From Thorsten Kampe 2007-04-21 07:45:28 PST -------

>(In reply to comment #12)
>> Then Denis was right, rxvt doesn't display the lowest pixel line at
>>that size 17 (15 ppem). But I have no idea why it would do that...
>
>Hm.
>
>I tried Fixedsys and Lucida Console (both size 17). If rxvt doesn't
>display the "lowest pixel line at that size 17 (15 ppem)" - then why
>only with DejaVu Sans Mono?!

 ------- Comment #16 From Ben Laenen 2007-04-21 08:02:46 PST -------

>So rxvt fixes the line height at 17 pixels there, and tries to select
>the appropriate font size to match it, but I have the impression it
>chooses wrongly, as the line height at that font size for DejaVu is 18
>pixels.
>
>Other fonts may only need 17 pixels at that size, or their underscore
>may be higher than in DejaVu...

So, they focused on line height (which is probably natural, given the
specifics of your report), and ignored your questions that raised
interoperability issues (which is also natural, though for different
reasons). Though my issue also involves the DejaVu/Bitstream font at
one specific size in Cygwin rxvt, it has, so far as I can determine,
nothing to do with line height. I'm thinking of posting a bug report,
which will hopefully stir up further discussion and investigation. I'm
not sure whether it would be better to add my information to this
report, or to create a seperate report and link it to this one (or--
other possibilities). Recommendations?

Thanks,

Jeff

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/

Re: RXVT and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

[Jeff]

On Thu, 6 Dec 2007 16:17:47 -0500, "Brian Mathis"
<brian.mathis@gmail.com> wrote:

>The Bitstream Vera fonts were released a long time ago, and AFAIK have
>been mostly abandoned by Bitstream (at least you won't get any support
>from them).

I was afraid of that, having noticed the final release date. Thanks for
the tip.

>The successor to them which has had many updates since
>their release is the DejaVu fonts.  I know they have had many releases
>and fixed a lot of bugs, so that might resolve this problem you are
>seeing.  You can download them here:
>    http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, the DejaVu Sans Mono font shows
exactly the same problem as the previous Bitstream Vera font. In
addition, the bug report that Thorsten links to in his followup post is
reproducable in the DejaVu Sans Mono font. Thanks anyway, it was worth
a try... :/

Jeff

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/

Re: RXVT and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

[Thorsten Kampe]

* Jeff (Fri, 07 Dec 2007 05:01:16 -0800)
> On Thu, 6 Dec 2007 22:41:06 -0000, Thorsten Kampe <thorsten at
> thorstenkampe dot de> wrote:
> >If you like Bitstream fonts then you will like DejaVu fonts - who are 
> >based on Bitstream - even more. But beware that your issue might be a 
> >issue similar to this:
> >
> >https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10693
> 
> Thanks for the link. My issue is similar, in that it seems to occur at
> one size only, but what actually happens at that size is very
> different.
> 
> I read the conversation in this bug report with considerable interest.
> There are a few items that I would like to comment upon:
> 
>  ------- Comment #3 From Thorsten Kampe 2007-04-21 05:53:19 PST -------
> 
> >I think, this /might/ be a Cygwin/rxvt bug. Unfortunately I can't
> >convince rxvt under Linux to use DejaVu Fonts ("can't load DejaVu Sans
> >Mono-17") - so I can't tell whether it's just a Cygwin/rxvt thingy).
> 
> How strange... I had no problems getting my copy of rxvt to accept
> 'DejaVu Sans Mono-17' [...]

I couldn't make my *Linux* (Gentoo) rxvt run DejaVu Sans Mono. The 
syntax to specify fonts under X is quite different (and also totally 
weird) compared to the Windows syntax.

>  ------- Comment #4 From Thorsten Kampe 2007-04-21 06:02:29 PST -------
> 
> >I wouldn't have a problem reporting the bug to the Cygwin rxvt
> >maintainer - but as rxvt is AFAIK not actively maintained
> 
> Charles Wilson, the current maintainer of the Cygwin rxvt, appears to
> be active on this list.

Cygwin rxvt is maintained while the "original" upstream package is not  
(as far as I know).

Thorsten


--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/