Can someone help me installing true type fonts on my XFree86 system. I also want to know how to use true type fonts in Netscape or mozilla.

XPediTioN

Check out this thread. It had some instructions on TTF. I need to do this myself... GL

Have you tried using Dropline Gnome? It will help you sort out a LOT of the tweaking you have to do to get up to date. I haven't had to do a thing to get beautiful fonts in Gnome 2 in Mozilla and the majority of the GKT2 apps.

http://www.dropline.net/gnome

All I have is a plain Slackware 9 installation with EVERYTHING installed. Yeah I know thats not the way things are done professionally but I'm a n00b! I then have all the dropline packages installed from where I keep them on my archive in /home, and I then have a full Gnome2 Desktop with Xfree86 4.3, TrueType fonts, Evolution 1.4, GkrellM, Xine, Mozilla 1.4, AND Gnome Meeting, so I can use my cam with NetMeeting users (only so I can be smug of course!). It really is the easiest way to keep up to date as the Dropline boys are smokin' at the moment. There's an applet you can use to alert you of available updates, and there's never a month goes by without a few dozen updates arriving, including new apps.

One thing about Dropline Gnome and True Type fonts. When I have installed the most recent version of this on a couple of different computers, it has put True Type fonts in the wrong place apparently due to a mixup. It puts fonts in the /usr/share/fonts directory when it should put them in a subdirectory of this directory, and it puts fonts in a subdirectory of /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF named, again, TTF (making the directory /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/TTF) when it should put them right in the TTF directory. This is apparently a reversal of what they meant to do (since the opposite thing would make sense, except that the same fonts are duplicated in both places, and work perfectly). I have had to move the fonts in /usr/share/fonts into a subdirectory and/or move the other set of fonts up a directory in order for them to work correctly.

Really? Thats odd. /usr/share/fonts is simply a link to /usr/X11R6/lib/fonts/TTF, which is where Dropline Gnome installed my fonts. /usr/X11 is linked to /usr/X11R6 BTW so its the same with the other symlink. Have you heard of anyone else having trouble with the fonts in Dropline Gnome or am I just lucky? :-)

munkeh

On a default Slackware 9.0 build /usr/share/fonts is not a symlink. Perhaps Dropline made it into one, and that was what messed me up (although the fonts didn't seem to work to begin with). I thought I knew that it was a real directory, and didn't realize it had been changed to a symlink. I could have moved the fonts to a subdirectory, and then, found them in a subdirectory in the other place, not realizing that I had just done this because Dropline had made /usr/share/fonts into a symlink, then moved them out again. Perhaps there was another reason that the fonts started to work correctly. By the way, /usr/X11R6/lib/fonts is a symlink to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts (the directory I was talking about). I made no mention of /usr/X11.

I will have to look again at the second machine I put Dropline on (the first one was an experiment and was wiped). I don't use it on my home machine, so I can't check here. If /usr/share/fonts was changed to a symlink that could explain why this seemed so odd to me. It bugged me that it wiped out the fonts I had in /usr/share/fonts on the first install. It being changed to a symlink would explain why the old fonts were wiped out instead of just being added to, although it still wouldn't explain why they decided to do this, i.e. wipe out your /usr/share/fonts directory with no warning. This is an unnecessary step and if they were going to do it, it would make more sense to symlink a TTF subdirectory of /usr/share/fonts to the X Window TTF directory rather than the directory itself.

I guess I was lucky then!

It's ok, reclusivemonkey. That's the way most Intro to Linux HOWTOs/articles recommend newbies to install for the first time. Then once you're fairly comfortable, you can start doing some house cleaning.

I have confirmed that Dropline GNOME changes /usr/share/fonts into a symlink. It was not so much that you were lucky, reclusivemonkey. It was more that, since you were unfamiliar with the way this worked by default in Slack 9, you had no expectations about how it would work in Dropline. Therefore it couldn't work in an unexpected way. I really don't think this should be a symlink because it serves no purpose, and fontconfig is still checking both places even though doing so is pointless since they are really the same place. I deleted the symlink on the machine I am trying this out on at work, and replaced it with a real directory again, in which I only have fonts I have downloaded separately.

I have also noticed that the fontconfig that comes with Dropline doesn't seem to render fonts as well as the version that comes with Slackware to begin with. I suspect that different options were used somewhere. I seem to have much more of a problem with middle lines in letters being slightly off to the side (in the letters m, T, and I, for example, depending on what font I am using at the time).

Thanks for the info Rodrin :-) Now that you point it out, I can see the slight trouble with characters like 'm'. It almost looks like rn! However the look of my fonts definitely looks to be improved to me from my default Slack installation, but from what you are saying it seems more like the new fonts I've installed through Dropline are better than the default ones in Gnome, its just they still aren't quite rendered properly. I think I'll change the /usr/share/fonts back and see if I can install some fonts :-)

Cheers,

munkeh

You've got the idea. The fonts that come with Dropline are Microsoft's "Core Fonts for the Web" (mostly anyway). You can get these fonts in other ways. I am using these same fonts on Slackware at home, and I don't see this problem there with the letters I specified. This must either be because of the way fontconfig was configured for compilation or because of something about the way it is configured to run. I suspect the compilation configuration, but I am by no means certain of this. I may check to see if removing the fontconfig on my experimental Dropline install and reinstalling the original Slackware fontconfig improves the rendering in that machine. I am at home now, so it will have to wait until at least tomorrow (depending on how busy I am), if I decide to try it.

I found some Bitstream Vera Fonts on my Linux Format CD. I think these look pretty clear...

http://www.reclusivemonkey.fsnet.co....eenshot-10.jpg

i'm using those with dropline, too. they're really good looking fonts.

Strangely enough I prefer something a little funkier on my desktop...

http://www.reclusivemonkey.fsnet.co....eenshot-11.jpg

What kinf of fonts are those? I really like them . What's the difference between Dropline and normal Gnome?