Closed Bug 27551 Opened 25 years ago Closed 23 years ago

improve scalable font handling on X

Categories

(Core :: Layout, defect, P3)

x86
Linux
defect

Tracking

()

RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 74889
Future

People

(Reporter: erik, Assigned: bstell)

Details

(Keywords: fonts, helpwanted)

The following font properties might tell us whether the user is using a good
scaler that gives beautiful results. In that case, we might want to scale,
rather than using a bitmap font that is too large or too small.

  FONT_TYPE and RASTERIZER_NAME
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Target Milestone: M15
From: Juliusz Chroboczek <jec@dcs.ed.ac.uk>
To: fonts@XFree86.Org

The TrueType renderer known as ``xfsft'' generates FONT_TYPE
(``TrueType'').  It currently does not generate ``RASTERIZER_NAME'',
but I can add this if you wish.  As far as I know, no other renderer
currently generates these properties.
From: Keith Packard <keithp@suse.com>
To: fonts@XFree86.Org

XListFontsWithInfo would nominally be cheaper than XLoadQueryFont except
that XListFontsWithInfo returns bounding box information for the glyphs
in the font.  The only way to generate that accurately from scalable
fonts is to rasterize the entire font and see where the pixels fall.

So, if you think you might want to use a particular font, you should
just open it and throw it away if you don't like the rasterizer it used.
(this bug broke out of bug 13072)
Summary: improve scalable font handling on X → improve scalable font handling on X {font}
Keywords: fonts
Summary: improve scalable font handling on X {font} → improve scalable font handling on X
Prioritizing my bugs. This one is now M19.
Target Milestone: M15 → M19
reassign this bug to bstell and mark it as M25. Add helpwanted keyword
Assignee: erik → bstell
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
Keywords: helpwanted
Target Milestone: M19 → M25
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Target Milestone: --- → Future
I found this bit:

http://www.xfree86.org/archives/fonts/2000-Feb/0012.shtml
>     There's a trick for this that works well with commonly available X 
>     servers, though it probably has no theoretical justification. 
>     Scaleable fonts returned by XListFonts (0 point and pixel size) that 
>     are just scaled bitmaps have non-0 X and Y resolution fields, while 
>     true scaleable fonts have 0 in those fields. 
> 
>     The GTK+ font selector uses this technique, and I haven't heard 
>     of any complaints about it failing there. 
> 
>     Regards, 
>                                             Owen 
http://www.XFree86.org/FAQ/#BitmapFontScaling
> Q.E1- How do I get the server to scale vector fonts, but not bitmap fonts?
> 
> In standard X11R6 (and later), in addition to the fonts in "scalable" formats
>  (i.e. Type1, Speedo), bitmap fonts are scaled. This can have the undesirable
> effect of scaling a bitmap font, even though a Type1 font is available (if 
> the bitmap font is listed first in the path). 
> 
> With the 3.2 and later releases of XFree86, you can add the text :unscaled to 
> the end of any directory in the font path to turn off scaling of the bitmap 
> fonts in that directory. This works in both the XF86Config file and the font 
> server's config file. 
fix for bug 74889 include test for bitmap scaled font

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 74889 ***
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 23 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
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