Re: true type fonts fixed...

[Bruce Sass]

Hi,

Thought you may be interested.
I managed to get all the installed tt fonts visible by manually
deleting font.* files, then:

# mkfontscale
# mkfontdir

in the appropriate dirs, followed by:

# fc-cache -fv

...now using XF86-4.3 with the freetype module (still sid, was 4.2.1
with v3.3.6 Xservers and xfstt|xfs-xtt font servers).

I have tt fonts either duplicated or linked in both
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts and /usr/share/fonts... fc-cache is only
generating fonts.cache-1 files under /usr/X11R6.

fontconfig is seeing multiple versions of some fonts; x3 in the case
of the larabie fonts, x2 was expected.  :-/  Guess I can now
reconfigure fontconfig to ignore /usr/share/fonts, eh.

I noticed that some of the fonts.dir files were 2-bytes long, which
is the result if there is no fonts.scale file when mkfontdir is run
in a dir with scaleable fonts.  Not sure if this is a result of my
fiddling or an installation doing stuff in the wrong order.


So, the problems for me appear to have been a result of mkfontscale
not being run, or not being run before mkfontdir, and /usr/share/fonts
being ignored (even though fc-cache appeared to be processing it)...
exacerbated by me not really knowing what was/should be going on.

I'm tempted to dpkg-reconfigure back to a v3.3.6 xserver, reinstall a
tt font server or two, and see if I can get all fonts working (now
that I have somewhat close to half a clue).


- Bruce

Re: true type fonts fixed...

[Bruce Sass]

On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Ross Boylan wrote:

> Unfortunately, I have no great wisdom, just some clarifications and
> speculations below.

ditto

<...>
 

> My characters don't appear as boxes; they are simply blank or, (I
> think) sometimes horizontal lines.  And they aren't all affected.  For
> example, in my current KDE2 environment I see what I'm typing emacs
> now; I see stuff in Mozilla; but I don't see the text of KDE help
> (though I see the table of contents).

Yikes!  If I was having that much trouble I think I'd --purge 
*everything* and start with a clean slate.

[Bruce said]
> > I have had "export QT_XFT=0" in .bashrc for awhile and have been
> > starting KDE from the commandline, so I shouldn't have to worry about
> > XftConfig making a contribution. (right?)
> What is QT_XFT supposed to do?  I've never heard of it.

Not sure anymore, actually forgot about it until you mentioned 
XftConfig.  iirc, it sounded like the thing to do when anti-aliasing 
first arrived and I heard the v3 xservers couldn't do it... it either 
fixed a Qt problem or prevented one (hell of a way to run a system, eh 
:-)


> > Remember I said I managed to get ttf via xfs-xtt... well, the
> > ttf-larabie pkgs got installed but the fonts didn't appear in KDE so I
> > went into the kcm font installer to see what would happen --- now I'm
> > back to no tt fonts (tried both administrator and user mode, *.afm
> > created in same dir as the *.ttf files this time).
> > 
> > So, Arial and the rest of the ms core fonts have disappeared from the
> > KDE font selectors and the only thing touched was the KDE font
> > installer (which shows the tt fonts as installed and enabled)...
> 
> Two more ideas about your problem:
> 
> Since it appears that KDE can only handle fonts in one directory
> hierarchy, perhaps the installation of fonts in new places (assuming
> larabie and mscore fonts are in different directories) confused it.

I don't think so.  The ms and Larabie fonts are in /usr/share/fonts
and the ms ones were served up by xfs-xtt, KDE's font installer showed
nothing (no fonts installed and therefore nothing selected).  It
wasn't until after copying the ms fonts into the X11R6 hierarchy (the
Larabie stuff was already symlinked in) and making KDE aware of the
fonts via the font installer that tt fonts disappeared again.

> Could anything be broken in the utility programs (e.g., ttmkfontdir,
> or something like that) that set up the index files?

Could be.  I did notice a message during X startup indicating a
problem with the Larabie fonts, X deleted them from the font path and
suggested running mkfontdir... which I did, which did seem to make X
happier, then I tried the KDE font installer (which had the effect of
making the ms fonts disappear)... I probably should have just
restarted xfs-xtt after doing mkfontdir (and perhaps ttmkfontdir if
xfs-xtt still didn't see them).

> > ...how do I disable KDE's font installer subsystem,
> > it appears to be broken.
> 
> Don't know.  And do you want to?  I though this was the only way that
> KDE became aware of fonts.

>From this perspective it looks like KDE can fall back to whatever the 
system provides, it only blows up after I run the KDE Font Installer.


- Bruce

Re: true type fonts fixed...

[Ross Boylan]

Unfortunately, I have no great wisdom, just some clarifications and
speculations below.
Ross

On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 05:57:46PM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
> Sorry 'bout the delay.
> 
> On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Ross Boylan wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 03:21:15PM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
> > > On Wed, 9 Jul 2003, Ross Boylan wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 01:41:26AM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
> > > > > scenario:
> > > > > sid, kde-3.1.2, xserver-svga (v3.3.6), X-4.2.1, xfstt
> > > > 
> > > > Huh?  Are you combining parts of X from 3.3 (xserver) and 4.2 (the
> > > > rest)?  I'd be surprised if that worked out.
> > > 
> > > Why is that?  Would you be surprised if a v3 remote X-terminal could 
> > > connect to machine with XFree-4?
> > 
> > Well, you're right that it should work, but whether it actually works
> > is a different matter.  It probably didn't get much testing.
> 
> Ya, too bad considering the number of unsupported in XF4 graphics 
> cards.
> 
> > It also might be particularly problematic in the case of fonts, since
> > as far as I can tell some of the font functionality is migrating to
> > the client (while perhaps also remaining on the server) with v 4.  I'm
> > not sure exactly what's where.  Further study in this area seems to
> > produce further confusion, at least sometimes!
> 
> Too many cooks; clients should use what fonts are available through
> the underlying operating system, not try to do it themselves (imo).

Fonts are tough, because there are so many, particularly in a
distributed environment like X.  If stuff is for the screen, you need
the screen fonts on the X server system.  If you're printing them, you
want the fonts on the printer--unless they are being rasterized
somewhere else (potentially a 3rd system), in which case you need the
fonts from there.  And then, if you're sending the document to someone
else, you need all the fonts for the target.

Maybe we should be surprised when it works!

For these reasons, I understand in professional typesetting you always
include your fonts with the document.

I have seen some discussion that client side (in the X sense)
knowledge of fonts is helpful because it lets the client have better
control over the layout.  I don't really understand this point; I
would have thought the X client could just ask the X server for info
on available fonts and find out all it needs.

> 
> > > > > - KDE knows about the fonts but they are not rendered
> > > > How do you know it knows?
> > > 
> > > ...on a per-user basis: fonts were copied into ~/.kde, had a green 
> > > checkmark, appeared in the font selector dialogs, but were always 
> > > rendered as helvetica
> > > 
> > > ...in admin mode: .afm's were created (iirc) under X11R6 when the 
> > > fonts were in /usr/share/fonts (no surprise, eh)... green blah blah 
> > > helvetica
> > 
> > Well, that's an interesting variation on my problem.  Mostly, I don't
> > see anything at all, whereas you get some default font (maybe my
> > default font is invisible?).
> 
> I've never had a system wide `all characters are boxes' problem; maybe
> with one or two non-KDE apps, quite awhile ago, and definately
> not related to the current font problems.

My characters don't appear as boxes; they are simply blank or, (I
think) sometimes horizontal lines.  And they aren't all affected.  For
example, in my current KDE2 environment I see what I'm typing emacs
now; I see stuff in Mozilla; but I don't see the text of KDE help
(though I see the table of contents).

> 
> > My symptoms:
> > 1) Some text doesn't appear at all in Konqueror, or only as lines.
> > For example, I only see the graphics on my KDE help pages (even in my
> > vanilla Debian KDE 2.2 installation).
> 
> never seen that
> 
> > 2) Some apps have drop down lists of styled texts.  Some of the
> > entries are blank.
> > 3) Some apps give you a font chooser which lets you pick style, size,
> > etc and shows a preview pane.  When I pick some fonts, the preview
> > pane is blank.
> 
> seen these with specialized symbol fonts, but chaulked it up to a lack 
> of anything to render (i.e., blanks at those `character codes')
> 
> > > > > Hmmm, could having ttf available through both fontconfig (via
> > > > > x-ttfcidfont-config) and xfs-ttf be a problem...
> > > 
> > > s/b xfs-xtt  :-/
> > > 
> > > > Well, I've been more thinking that not having fonts available through
> > > > fontconfig is the problem.  Someone recommended to me to make sure the
> > > > TT fonts were in fontconfig.
> > > 
> > > sounds reasonable
> > > except the v3 xservers don't know about fontconfig (???)
> > > 
> > > I think there are too many cooks ,
> > > and am not sure why KDE is doing low level mucking about with fonts
> > > (especially at the system level).
> > 
> > KDE apparently uses Qt to handle fonts.  I'm not sure if the stuff in
> > the control center is a straight interface to Qt or if KDE is adding
> > something extra on top.
> 
> I can understand Qt (needs to run under three diffe

Re: true type fonts fixed...

[Bruce Sass]

Sorry 'bout the delay.

On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Ross Boylan wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 03:21:15PM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
> > On Wed, 9 Jul 2003, Ross Boylan wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 01:41:26AM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
> > > > scenario:
> > > > sid, kde-3.1.2, xserver-svga (v3.3.6), X-4.2.1, xfstt
> > > 
> > > Huh?  Are you combining parts of X from 3.3 (xserver) and 4.2 (the
> > > rest)?  I'd be surprised if that worked out.
> > 
> > Why is that?  Would you be surprised if a v3 remote X-terminal could 
> > connect to machine with XFree-4?
> 
> Well, you're right that it should work, but whether it actually works
> is a different matter.  It probably didn't get much testing.

Ya, too bad considering the number of unsupported in XF4 graphics 
cards.

> It also might be particularly problematic in the case of fonts, since
> as far as I can tell some of the font functionality is migrating to
> the client (while perhaps also remaining on the server) with v 4.  I'm
> not sure exactly what's where.  Further study in this area seems to
> produce further confusion, at least sometimes!

Too many cooks; clients should use what fonts are available through
the underlying operating system, not try to do it themselves (imo).

> > > > - KDE knows about the fonts but they are not rendered
> > > How do you know it knows?
> > 
> > ...on a per-user basis: fonts were copied into ~/.kde, had a green 
> > checkmark, appeared in the font selector dialogs, but were always 
> > rendered as helvetica
> > 
> > ...in admin mode: .afm's were created (iirc) under X11R6 when the 
> > fonts were in /usr/share/fonts (no surprise, eh)... green blah blah 
> > helvetica
> 
> Well, that's an interesting variation on my problem.  Mostly, I don't
> see anything at all, whereas you get some default font (maybe my
> default font is invisible?).

I've never had a system wide `all characters are boxes' problem; maybe
with one or two non-KDE apps, quite awhile ago, and definately
not related to the current font problems.

> My symptoms:
> 1) Some text doesn't appear at all in Konqueror, or only as lines.
> For example, I only see the graphics on my KDE help pages (even in my
> vanilla Debian KDE 2.2 installation).

never seen that

> 2) Some apps have drop down lists of styled texts.  Some of the
> entries are blank.
> 3) Some apps give you a font chooser which lets you pick style, size,
> etc and shows a preview pane.  When I pick some fonts, the preview
> pane is blank.

seen these with specialized symbol fonts, but chaulked it up to a lack 
of anything to render (i.e., blanks at those `character codes')

> > > > Hmmm, could having ttf available through both fontconfig (via
> > > > x-ttfcidfont-config) and xfs-ttf be a problem...
> > 
> > s/b xfs-xtt  :-/
> > 
> > > Well, I've been more thinking that not having fonts available through
> > > fontconfig is the problem.  Someone recommended to me to make sure the
> > > TT fonts were in fontconfig.
> > 
> > sounds reasonable
> > except the v3 xservers don't know about fontconfig (???)
> > 
> > I think there are too many cooks ,
> > and am not sure why KDE is doing low level mucking about with fonts
> > (especially at the system level).
> 
> KDE apparently uses Qt to handle fonts.  I'm not sure if the stuff in
> the control center is a straight interface to Qt or if KDE is adding
> something extra on top.

I can understand Qt (needs to run under three different OSes) wanting 
to go low-level with font set up, but what is KDE's excuse.


> My understanding du jour of font configuration:
> - XftConfig is used by freetype v 1 and apps that depend on it.
> Probably none do.
> 
> - fonts.conf is used by fontconfig and freetype v2.  Most newer apps use
> this, including newer KDE.  Note that freetype v2 is in the
> libfreetype6 package on Debian.
> 
> - XF86Config-4 used by the X server itself.  But in v4 the server is
> schizophrenic, getting some stuff the traditional way and some via
> freetype v 2 (or maybe X and Freetype both use the same core
> library?).
> 
> - various spots for particular apps.
> 
> Maybe one of those spots is aliasing everything to Helvetica?

I have had "export QT_XFT=0" in .bashrc for awhile and have been
starting KDE from the commandline, so I shouldn't have to worry about
XftConfig making a contribution. (right?)

XF86Config-4 is not used by the v3 servers so I haven't touched it
(looks ok, afaict, has the /var/lib/defoma/x-ttf... lines and correct 
ttf server port reference in the Files section).

The only font infrastructure related pkgs I have sought out are ttf
servers, anything else has been pulled in via dependencies (e.g.,
fontconfig, freetype v2.1.4-4, x-ttcidfont-conf) and configured
however Debian defaults to doing it.


Remember I said I managed to get ttf via xfs-xtt... well, the
ttf-larabie pkgs got installed but the fonts didn't appear in KDE so I
went into the kcm font installer to see what would happen --- now I'm
back to no tt fonts (tried both a

Re: true type fonts fixed...

[Ross Boylan]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 03:21:15PM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Jul 2003, Ross Boylan wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 01:41:26AM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
> > > scenario:
> > > sid, kde-3.1.2, xserver-svga (v3.3.6), X-4.2.1, xfstt
> > 
> > Huh?  Are you combining parts of X from 3.3 (xserver) and 4.2 (the
> > rest)?  I'd be surprised if that worked out.
> 
> Why is that?  Would you be surprised if a v3 remote X-terminal could 
> connect to machine with XFree-4?

Well, you're right that it should work, but whether it actually works
is a different matter.  It probably didn't get much testing.

It also might be particularly problematic in the case of fonts, since
as far as I can tell some of the font functionality is migrating to
the client (while perhaps also remaining on the server) with v 4.  I'm
not sure exactly what's where.  Further study in this area seems to
produce further confusion, at least sometimes!

[snip]
> 
> > > - KDE knows about the fonts but they are not rendered
> > How do you know it knows?
> 
> ...on a per-user basis: fonts were copied into ~/.kde, had a green 
> checkmark, appeared in the font selector dialogs, but were always 
> rendered as helvetica
> 
> ...in admin mode: .afm's were created (iirc) under X11R6 when the 
> fonts were in /usr/share/fonts (no surprise, eh)... green blah blah 
> helvetica

Well, that's an interesting variation on my problem.  Mostly, I don't
see anything at all, whereas you get some default font (maybe my
default font is invisible?).

My symptoms:
1) Some text doesn't appear at all in Konqueror, or only as lines.
For example, I only see the graphics on my KDE help pages (even in my
vanilla Debian KDE 2.2 installation).
2) Some apps have drop down lists of styled texts.  Some of the
entries are blank.
3) Some apps give you a font chooser which lets you pick style, size,
etc and shows a preview pane.  When I pick some fonts, the preview
pane is blank.

> <...>
> > > Hmmm, could having ttf available through both fontconfig (via
> > > x-ttfcidfont-config) and xfs-ttf be a problem...
> 
> s/b xfs-xtt  :-/
> 
> > Well, I've been more thinking that not having fonts available through
> > fontconfig is the problem.  Someone recommended to me to make sure the
> > TT fonts were in fontconfig.
> 
> sounds reasonable
> except the v3 xservers don't know about fontconfig (???)
> 
> I think there are too many cooks ,
> and am not sure why KDE is doing low level mucking about with fonts
> (especially at the system level).

KDE apparently uses Qt to handle fonts.  I'm not sure if the stuff in
the control center is a straight interface to Qt or if KDE is adding
something extra on top.

My understanding du jour of font configuration:
- XftConfig is used by freetype v 1 and apps that depend on it.
Probably none do.

- fonts.conf is used by fontconfig and freetype v2.  Most newer apps use
this, including newer KDE.  Note that freetype v2 is in the
libfreetype6 package on Debian.

- XF86Config-4 used by the X server itself.  But in v4 the server is
schizophrenic, getting some stuff the traditional way and some via
freetype v 2 (or maybe X and Freetype both use the same core
library?).

- various spots for particular apps.

Maybe one of those spots is aliasing everything to Helvetica?

> - Bruce
> 
> 

Re: true type fonts fixed...

[Bruce Sass]

On Wed, 9 Jul 2003, Ross Boylan wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 01:41:26AM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
> > scenario:
> > sid, kde-3.1.2, xserver-svga (v3.3.6), X-4.2.1, xfstt
> 
> Huh?  Are you combining parts of X from 3.3 (xserver) and 4.2 (the
> rest)?  I'd be surprised if that worked out.

Why is that?  Would you be surprised if a v3 remote X-terminal could 
connect to machine with XFree-4?

> XFree86 v 4 does not require any font servers, and I think it works
> with a different set of font servers than 3.3.  It handles TT builtin
> (provided you load the right module, freetype, in XF86Config-4).  I
> think there's another module that also can handle TT).

that's how I understand it also (at least for local sessions)

> Finally, KDE 3.1.2 (and probably earlier, but maybe not 2) has a
> control panel option for registering fonts, including specifically one
> for Type1 and one for TrueType.  You need to go into administrative
> mode to make this effective for all users (there is a button on the
> panel to do so--you don't need to login as root).  This seems to
> require that both directories be under the main font directory, which
> may require a symlink, esp for TrueType.

didn't work either ways (usr|admin share/fonts|X11R6...fonts...

> > - KDE knows about the fonts but they are not rendered
> How do you know it knows?

...on a per-user basis: fonts were copied into ~/.kde, had a green 
checkmark, appeared in the font selector dialogs, but were always 
rendered as helvetica

...in admin mode: .afm's were created (iirc) under X11R6 when the 
fonts were in /usr/share/fonts (no surprise, eh)... green blah blah 
helvetica


<...>
> Depending on where you got your TrueType fonts, you may have a huge
> number of them.  You might want to pare down the list (the one in
> fonts.dir, fonts.scale, and related files) so it only has your
> favorites.  That might speed things up.

just the ms core tt fonts

<...>
> > Hmmm, could having ttf available through both fontconfig (via
> > x-ttfcidfont-config) and xfs-ttf be a problem...

s/b xfs-xtt  :-/

> Well, I've been more thinking that not having fonts available through
> fontconfig is the problem.  Someone recommended to me to make sure the
> TT fonts were in fontconfig.

sounds reasonable
except the v3 xservers don't know about fontconfig (???)

I think there are too many cooks ,
and am not sure why KDE is doing low level mucking about with fonts
(especially at the system level).


Oh well, it's probably moot for me now.  I saved a P133 wth a 1G drive
(installed stable) from the landfill recently, and just today fixed it
up with 96M and the 30G drive (unstable) with my $HOME, it has an S3
Trio64V+ which is supported in Xfree-4.3...


- Bruce

Re: true type fonts fixed...

[Ross Boylan]

On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 01:41:26AM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
> 
> ...sorta.
> 
> scenario:
> sid, kde-3.1.2, xserver-svga (v3.3.6), X-4.2.1, xfstt

Huh?  Are you combining parts of X from 3.3 (xserver) and 4.2 (the
rest)?  I'd be surprised if that worked out.

XFree86 v 4 does not require any font servers, and I think it works
with a different set of font servers than 3.3.  It handles TT builtin
(provided you load the right module, freetype, in XF86Config-4).  I
think there's another module that also can handle TT).

Finally, KDE 3.1.2 (and probably earlier, but maybe not 2) has a
control panel option for registering fonts, including specifically one
for Type1 and one for TrueType.  You need to go into administrative
mode to make this effective for all users (there is a button on the
panel to do so--you don't need to login as root).  This seems to
require that both directories be under the main font directory, which
may require a symlink, esp for TrueType.

> - KDE knows about the fonts but they are not rendered
How do you know it knows?

> - xfontsel works as expected
> 
> Purging all the font related stuff I could without --force-depends,
> then manually removing any cruft which had built up over the years
> (originally a Debian 2.0 system), got KDE to the point where it knew
> nothing about ttf.  Reinstalling and reconfiguring the font stuff
> brought it back to where it seemed to know about ttf, but still
> wouldn't render them.
> 
> scenario:
> same as above except with xfs-ttf
> - KDE renders ttf
> - xfontsel works but thinks the majority of the ttfs are in the
>   "monotype" family
> 
> The "sorta" refers to the fact that while KDE is now displaying ttf,
> if I try to select fonts for Konqueror the system slows down (I'm on a
> 66MHz box, when I say "slow" it is really s-s-s-l-l-l-o-o-o-w-w-w :-)
> or freezes (CTRL-ALT-ESC closes the font selector dialog, without the
> skull and bones cursor appearing) and an additional 50M of swap gets
> used (about half of the VM is released when the dialog closes).
> Repeated use of the kcm khtml font module pushes the swap usage up by
> about 30M per use.  Logging out of KDE recovers all the VM.
> 

Depending on where you got your TrueType fonts, you may have a huge
number of them.  You might want to pare down the list (the one in
fonts.dir, fonts.scale, and related files) so it only has your
favorites.  That might speed things up.

> 
> True type fonts work fine with other wm's (fluxbox, uwm, xfce) and
> apps no matter which ttf server is in use --- so it appears to be a
> KDE problem, or perhaps a system problem that just happens to hit KDE
> hard.
> 
> Hmmm, could having ttf available through both fontconfig (via
> x-ttfcidfont-config) and xfs-ttf be a problem...
> 

Well, I've been more thinking that not having fonts available through
fontconfig is the problem.  Someone recommended to me to make sure the
TT fonts were in fontconfig.

> HTH anyone else with font problems.
> 
> 
> - Bruce
> 
> 

true type fonts fixed...

[Bruce Sass]

...sorta.

scenario:
sid, kde-3.1.2, xserver-svga (v3.3.6), X-4.2.1, xfstt
- KDE knows about the fonts but they are not rendered
- xfontsel works as expected

Purging all the font related stuff I could without --force-depends,
then manually removing any cruft which had built up over the years
(originally a Debian 2.0 system), got KDE to the point where it knew
nothing about ttf.  Reinstalling and reconfiguring the font stuff
brought it back to where it seemed to know about ttf, but still
wouldn't render them.

scenario:
same as above except with xfs-ttf
- KDE renders ttf
- xfontsel works but thinks the majority of the ttfs are in the
  "monotype" family

The "sorta" refers to the fact that while KDE is now displaying ttf,
if I try to select fonts for Konqueror the system slows down (I'm on a
66MHz box, when I say "slow" it is really s-s-s-l-l-l-o-o-o-w-w-w :-)
or freezes (CTRL-ALT-ESC closes the font selector dialog, without the
skull and bones cursor appearing) and an additional 50M of swap gets
used (about half of the VM is released when the dialog closes).
Repeated use of the kcm khtml font module pushes the swap usage up by
about 30M per use.  Logging out of KDE recovers all the VM.


True type fonts work fine with other wm's (fluxbox, uwm, xfce) and
apps no matter which ttf server is in use --- so it appears to be a
KDE problem, or perhaps a system problem that just happens to hit KDE
hard.

Hmmm, could having ttf available through both fontconfig (via
x-ttfcidfont-config) and xfs-ttf be a problem...

HTH anyone else with font problems.


- Bruce