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 _______________________________________________ Fonts mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/fonts