RedHat 7.2: unreadable fonts under netscape
 

I have installed RH 7.2 and I have a major trouble: Netscape does not display some of the fonts correctly, making them absolutely UNREADABLE. They look like they were "out of focus"! This strange behaviour occurs very often, but not always, and is completely unpredictable and very annoying. Just some of the fonts are concerned, not all of them.
I had the same problem once in the screensaver-unlock dialog window as well, so I suppose the problem is not application-related. (Mozilla, by the way, does not know this problem at all --- of course I could switch to this browser, but some pages are not displayed correctly --- that's not the point, I would like the problem to be fixed!) I guess there might be something wrong with the X fonts server, but I do not have any evidence of that.

Has anybody had the same problem or, even better, a solution to it?!? Please do not suggest to change distribution...

Thank you

Netscape has always had a problem with fonts under linux. If you do a search at google linux you should find a solution.

are u using KDE or Gnome?

as an alternative, KDE has an excellent integrated browser called Konquerer... the fonts there seem a lot better controlled than Netscape...

being a non-guru, this is all i can offer to help... :rolleyes:

good luck!

You might try installing truetype fonts. Take your favorite windows fonts and install xfstt a truetype font server. You can download it from this link:
http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/se...hp?query=xfstt
The RPM does not have any fonts so you will have to get them yourself. Once you install xfstt, it will create this directory, /usr/share/fonts/truetype. Put your fonts in there. I am not sure if you will have to reboot or just restart X. Upon reboot you will see the xfstt server starting. Of course you will be able to use the fonts for everything else including Netscape.

Good Luck!!

netscape 6.2 is a lot better, you might want to upgrade to it.

Yeah, uninstall 4.78 and install 6.2 from download.com

Hey, it fixed my font problems.

how do you uninstall something on linux?

for eg.
say i install using these commands:

./configure
make
make install

for some package or other.

now i want to remove it... what do i do? (given that some of the installed files may have been put someplace else...)

i tried pkgtool on slack... but it can't seem to do the job... the entry for the software isn't even there unless it was installed initially at the default install.

Well, the way i installed Netscape (a RPM package) was i went into the package manager from the RedHat cd, found the Nutscrape 4.78 and hit uninstall, this is assuming you are in KDE. Its alittle different in GNOME not sure how though.

If the package tool doesnt work, then try this command in the folder you have the installation files:

make clean

netscape 6 has a very easy installer and should fix all your font problems

To uninstall a package install from source, you need to do "make uninstall" in the source directory for that pakage

Thanks
 

Thanks to everybody for your answers!

I installed the same RH system on another PC and had no problem at all... Maybe it had something to do with the video driver!?! Does not matter, anyway! In the meantime I found out another browser that works much better: galeon!
I recommend it to all GNOME users. (I think that if you have KDE you need the GNOME libraries to bring it to work, I am not sure though...)

The browser engine is the same as Mozilla but galeon is faster and has a lot of features.
Just try it!

distribution:RH 7.2
 

ceski,
I seem to have the same font trouble that you described. It not only effects Netscape 4.78, it also effects several things in KDE including the the terminal window. I am running a video card based on the S3 64v+ chipset. Is this the chipset on your card? If it is then we found the problem. Gnome seems to be ok and Mozilla is ok. There is no mention of this problem at rh.com yet.

I also have the same problem as above using an s3 based card, mine is an S3 Virge MX in a Toshiba Sattelite 2520CDT.

Some fonts are almost unreadable in ALL of the browsers i have tried, Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera etc. Some pages come out okay, some dont. Eg the fonts on the front page of this website look pretty rough around the edges, but the ones in the forum look perfect.

I dont have antialiasing turned on as it slows my system down quite a bit.

The only clue i have is that some applications (usually the ones with font problems) report the following error when i start them:

Xlib: Extention RENDER missing on display 0:0

This is due to the fact that i am using xfree86 3.6 something, and the render extention isnt supported for my card until version 4.1.

Redhat has installed 3.6 and 4.1, but for some reason deafults to using 3.3.6, how do i switch servers to the 4.10 already installed? i think this may solve my problem, but maybe not yours, lol, sorry.

Jamie

RH 7.2 -Now works ok.
 

Thanks to everyone for your responses. I tried changing drivers for the video card and monitor, no help. Took your advice and tried removing Netscape 4.78 and everything works fine now. I liked 4.78 because it was fast and wasn't a ram hog, but I'll just have to get used to Mozilla. I tried Netscape 6.2 on my WinBloze computer and didn't like it much. Anyone having this font trouble, take out Netscape 4.78. It must have a compatibility problem with S3 vid cards.

tojo6940