Font Server Q&As

xfs can serve fonts to remote sessions so the fonts need not reside on the remote machine. This is useful for x terminals and such. xfs can also serve font types not directly supported by X, eg TrueType.

John Thompson @attglobal.net

No, it's not necessary, but it's nice.

Actually, *not* using xfs has been argued to be usually slower, as the X server will pause to gather/render fonts when this could be done in the background with xfs. Also, redhat's xfs is secure, because it *only* listen's to localhost.

Rex

I've never used it, but I don't run redhat. What I'm wondering is if antialiasing requires that the font be rendered as an 8-bit per pixel bitmap, wouldn'd xfs be even more inefficient?

I'm wondering if I can turn off the feature that xfs recreate the font.dir (and other related files) every time when it boots.

Seems such a waste of time to me. :-) More over, it does more harm than good to me, because I have some 2-byte Chinese fonts that are not correctly recognized by mkttf.

I handcrafted the right font.dir and font.scale, but every time they are overwritten by xfs, making those Chinese fonts totally unavailable. I make the font.dir file read only to everyone, and make the directory read only. But xfs bypass all the restrictions and successfully overwrites my handcrafted read only file in a read only directory, claiming total success of the battle I'm fiddling on. :-)

It doesn't recreate it *every* time. It only regenerates it if there exist fonts in that directory that are newer than the fonts.dir file, at least that is the behavior on redhat linux.

Rex

— double entry

— single entry now

— can view Chinese chars normally

— Chinese rxvt menu, but no Chinese fonts in date or text.

So, I guess now it is the rxvt that prevents me from moving the Chinese fonts to xfs, because rxvt can't use fonts from xfs.

NO! I started X, but didn't restart xfs!

The fonts.dir DOES get overwritten!

No even Chinese rxvt menu any more. Change to X, and all are back.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&ic=1&th=bd066a055a12a61b,3&seekm=351BCDAE.1FB9B397%40visana.ch#p

A font server under Solaris is a special package called "SUNWxwfs". See if it is installed via "pkginfo -l SUNWxwfs". If it's not, install it from the Solaris-CD ("pkgadd -d . SUNWxwfs" somewhere in the /cdrom/…/s0).

Now you have to configure the font server, try manual pages to the font server first (man -s 1 fs).

Basically, only a couple of parameters have to be specified in the conf. file (the default config file being /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fontserver.cfg). The parameters include things such as port number of the font server (has also to be known to the clients) and the location of font directories to serve.

IMPORTANT:

Check what type of protocol (R5 or R6) ar required by your clients and install the proper version. You can, of course, install both version of font servers, but you have to run them on different TCP ports. Then, you can selectively configure clients (e.g. PC X-terminals) to use either X11R5 or X11R6 font server.

Start font server automatically by typing "fsadmin -e" (it will install start-up script to start the server after each reboot and start the server immediately). It exports your list of X fonts through a tcp port (7100 generally)

Check whether it is running by "fsinfo -s hostname:port".

Configure clients and see whether you can donwload fonts.

damir.delas @visana.ch

First, make sure the X font server is running on the font-server (fs) host. Usually, the fs (font server) is started with command like this.

Of course, the path and the port number may differ. Also, note that it may be "fs" on some systems, while "xfs" on others.

Second, check the font server (on fshost) info from local host like this.

If "fsinfo" above gave you a positive answer (i.e. font server running), you should check what xset suggested, that is,

Good luck.

The difference is which X server you are using. The X server provides the fonts to the clients. The message indicates that the cxterm asked the X server (running on a remove box) for the font 'hanzigb16st' and the X server politely indicated that it knows of no such font.

If the font directory is available to ALL of the X servers you need only add it to the font paths of the servers. You can use the xset command to do that. If the font path is the same on all boxes you should be able to add a call to xset to your x init script to do something like:

Chuck Dillon

/usr/openwin/server/etc/OWconfig

A font server might be your only choice in this case. You would need to run the font server on one of the boxes that has the fonts and use xset (man xset) to tell the xterminal about the font server.

Man xfs, look for xfs or 'font server' at docs.sun.com and/or look it up in the ORA books I mentioned. Its been a long time since I set one up, and I only did it once, so I can't give you any specifics.

Also use http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search as a resource for searching the usenet archives for answers before posting. You might find all you need there.

If you want specific help, after trying to work it out, I suggest you post to comp.windows.x and if you are using the CDE environment post to comp.unix.cde.

Chuck Dillon

Related URLs in google_group_search

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22font+server%22&num=50&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&rnum=14&ic=1&selm=86snjf9ljn.fsf%40itz.dsl.speakeasy.net

That's not really true. Even with only one machine there are benefits to using a fontserver.

Rasterizing a font (think about vector fonts, and/or large fonts like Japanese or Chinese) can be quite CPU intensive. If you use a fontserver the the OS will multi-task both the fontserver and the X server. The X server will keep responding to things like the mouse moving and client draw requests while the fontserver works in the background.

Also when you use a fontserver, the X server can multiplex chunks from the fontserver and requests from clients. If the server has to read a large font from the file system there could be a noticable delay while it reads the file, but if it's getting the glyphs in chunks from a fontserver it can do other things in between the chunks.

Together these two factors can give you a system that you may perceive to be more responsive than a similar system that's not using a fontserver.

Kaleb S. KEITHLEY

Not true. You can get font servers that support font types not supported by the X server, such as TrueType fonts, and can thus use those fonts in X. This is most certainly a benefit for people who have many such fonts!

brion vibber

On the other hand, when you use a font server, you end up with *two* copies of the bitmaps for the glyphs (one in the font server, one in the X server). This effect can be allieviated somewhat by turning on delayed glyph loading in the X server.

Another poster mentioned that a font server can serve fonts that the X server does not know how to handle. For this purpose, it might be better to add a new backend to `xc/lib/font' so that both the X server and the font server know how to use the new font format. (But then, I'm biased.)

I had just the opposite results. Setting up fonts in StarOffice is a nightmare.

I'm using Xfstt to display truetype fonts in X and I recompiled ghostscript to use them for printing. The Gallium font server made it simple to set up Applixware to use truetype fonts.

I might have taken the long way around here to get truetype fonts working in X, Applix, and ghostscript — but here goes.

First I want to point out where to find Xfstt : http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/fonts/

A good wed site with information on installing fonts in Applix: http://www.users.fast.net/~rodsmith/fonts.html

And another interesting site: http://www-sef.usc.edu/~vibber/linux/TrueType.html

The first thing I did was get hold of some truetype fonts. I just copied the fonts from my Win95 partition over to Linux and placed them in a directory I called: ttfonts /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ttfonts

There is also a list of web sites to download truetype fonts listed in the FAQ that comes with Xfstt.

cd over to /usr and create a link for Xfstt to find the fonts:

Xfstt looks for fonts in /usr/ttfonts but I like to keep my font directories grouped together under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/

Build and install Xfstt I untared Xfstt under /tmp but it doesn't matter where it's done. When you run "make install", one of the things it does is run

xfstt —sync generates two files in the truetype font directory: ttinfo.dir and ttname.dir I made a copy of ttname.dir and called it fonts.scale fonts.scale is one continous line of descriptions of all the fonts in the directory. I edit my new fonts.scale file placing each font discription on it's own line. The font discriptions need to be edited. As an example, change a description like :

to

Count the total number of font discriptions and enter that number on the first line of the file (by itself). You can make a copy of this file calling it fonts.dir or you can run the program mkfontdir.

Edit the file (if your using XFree86) called XF86Config in /etc/X11/ and change the line after fontpath to something like :

Before running startx start-up xfstt. I found that the fonts in Java's SwingSet example look the right size if I start xfstt as follows:

If you follow the instructions for installing fonts in Applix using Rod Smith's instructions at http://www.users.fast.net/~rodsmith/fonts.html under the heading "FontTastic Font Installation" all should go well. I believe this are the same instructions in Fontastic Help.

The easiest way to make these fonts available to ghostscript is to set the environment variable in .bashrc

Ghostscript will run faster if you edit it's Fontmap file but I haven't noticed any undesirable delays.

As a test, I used a font in Applix's editor that was only available as a truetype font and sent it out to the printer.

Brian Chamberlain @ibm.net

Ditto. Like you I've been trying out xfstt. Promising, but on my 133MHz Pentium with 64MB it "freezes" the entire machine for a few seconds every fifteen seconds or so. gfs doesn't do this, but (v1.3, at least) can only take one directory as its catalogue, and anyways seems to need a fonts.dir entry (which xfstt doesn't) for every font, which I have no idea how to generate for TrueType fonts as mkfontdir doesn't. I managed to add TrueType fonts to StarOffice after a lot of grief. I know ghostscript handles TrueType fonts but it needs to be recompiled, and I don't mind recompiling in general but it's a huge program and I like the convenience of having it already built in RPM too much.

It's really as simple as 1, 2, 3 ….

First:

In order to use a truetype font in Applix I first need to make it available to the X server. (Xfstt)

Second:

I need to install the font in Applix (FontTastic)

Third:

Ghostcript needs to have a font description in order to convert the font for printing. Type 1 and truetype fonts are described differently and ghostscript can be compiled to work with truetype descriptions.

The same goes for type 1 fonts. The fonts that come with XFree86 are not scalable. Sure, you can print a postscript document through ghostscript but It must look like crap when viewed in ghostview. How can you create a document in Applix using the fonts that ghostscript knows about if there not available to the X server? How can ghostscript convert a font for printing if it has no description of that font?

You didn't indicate what kind of X terminal you're using. But here are some hints:

If you have problems with 'xset fp+' and a known working fontserver, you may have an X server running on that X terminal that is too old. Fontserver capability wasn't added until 1992, if I remember correctly.

At the lilo prompt:

should you get in with a nice command line interface, and you can do what you want. Did you upgrade from something with a font server? You probably don't need it at all now.

There is an easy way to find about the "xfs" startup file:

(It is true that Xfree 86 4.0.1 comes with an integrated xfs, hence you may not require a separate xfs)

You don't need to run the X font server to display fonts in X. Since it is giving you problems now, the best thing to do is probably to stop using it and simply hard code the font paths into XF86Config.

You need to stop this service from initiating at boot time. If you are using RedHat or Mandrake, you can safely stop the service from the console by running ntsysv — just uncheck the box for "xfs" and reboot. If you are using some other SysV based distro, just delete the symlinks for xfs in /etc/rc.d/rc3.d and /etc/rc.d/rc5.d and reboot.

Of course, you will need to successfully boot up to login prompt and login as root to do this, and it sounds like you can't get that far. The thing to do is tell lilo that you want to boot into runlevel 1, like this:

(or)

Just type "linux 1" after the boot prompt, whatever that might say, and linux will boot into runlevel 1, at which point you can login as root and perform the actions outlined above. (Press <tab> at the lilo prompt to verify that "linux" is the actual name associated with the kernel image you want lilo to look for — it probably is, but in case this fails…).

After you have done this, you will need to edit XF86Config. It typically lives in /etc or /etc/X11. The lines you need to add will depend on your X installation. My 3.3.6 installation, compiled from source, works just fine with only these entries in the "Files" section:

The line you want to delete will likely look like this:

At any rate, the fonts live in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts, so check to see what you have. I find that using unscaled fonts improves readability, but use whatever you like best.

Todd