Kaixo!
On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 04:21:55PM +0000, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:
> There are three reasons why you may want to use a FS:
>
> (i) centralisation of font files (better done with NFS IMHO);
> (ii) cases where the X server doesn't have a filesystem handy (not
> an issue for a default RedHat install);
> (iii) workaround for the server hang during rasterisation of large fonts.
There are other reasons too:
(iv) easier to automatically manage (automatically editing the X11 config
file is bad and dangerous; the xfs config file is much simpler)
(v) (maybe obsolete now) if the server is not multithreaded, it was better
to use a font server, as rasterization of a large font didn't freeze
the whole X, but only the program requesting that font, until the
rasterization ends.
I think (v) is the reason why use of a font server was a good thing in the
past. Reason (iv) is why it is done by default in Mandrake Linux (so adding
and removing fonts, either trough pre/post install scripts of font rpm packages
or through a user interactive program to install/remove fonts, is much
easier and less risky than messing with the X11 config file; also it allows
to have a same font config for both real X11 server and Xnest, which don't
use the default XF86Config file it seems, but has a hardwired fontpath;
by changing i nthe sources that hardwired fontpath to use the fontserver then
Xnest has by default the same font config as the standard X server; and
that is very useful; otherwise you need to manually define the fontpath
each time Xnest is launched.
> What bothers me is that you should present your choice as being the
> standard way of doing things -- what it is not, being merely a quick
> workaround for a problem that your predecessors were not willing to
> fix. While this may be a suitable trade-off for RedHat, it should not
> be presented as anything more than a quick workaround.
I don't know for Red Hat; but at lest for Mandrake that is not the reason
(if the font server crashes then the X server ends crashing too, usually;
so it doesn't change the stability to use a font server or not); the reason
is that having font config inside X11 config is bad (that was ok at several
years ago, when there were few fonts used, and almost never changed; nowadays
people has lots of fonts available and want to install and use them).
Note that Xft has its own config handling of fonts; without messing with
XF86Config{,-4}, so use of Xft is ok without the need of an "Xft-server"
similar to a font server.
In other words, if there were a possibility to use an external config file
for font handling done by the X server (maybe a special fontpath
like "config:/etc/X11/somefile" ), then I would be happy to drop default use
of xfs and use that feature instead.
--
Ki ça vos våye bén,
Pablo Saratxaga
http://www.srtxg.easynet.be/ PGP Key available, key ID: 0x8F0E4975
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