A font hint for GTK+ 2.0 apps
 

I imagine that this applies to few LFS users, but I had been struggling with fonts in the Japanese version of Openoffice 1.1.2. Basically they looked like うんち。Some of you may know what I mean. Well, I found the simple solution. At least it works on my system, and I don't recall doing anything spectacular that is above and beyond what was written in LFS5. From the xfree86 website:

For applications based on GTK+ 2.0 (including GNOME 2 applications), the environment variable `GDK_USE_XFT' should be set to `1':

$ export GDK_USE_XFT=1

So what I did was make an alias in my .bashrc file...

alias soffice='GDK_USE_XFT=1 soffice'

and now my fonts look something like what I would expect them to. This is a total relief. I never use windows though it's on my box, and Ive been trying to write up my resume in Japanese. Now it is finally doable!

I rock.

...and so do you (as long as you have chosen LFS :p ).