OK,

I'm running LFS 4, Xfree86 4.20, KDE 3.1b2. I'm trying to compile everything I need for Gnome 2.1 (2.2 beta), but for weeks I had a horrible problem with Pango not compiling.

Everything I found on the web said that pango was getting confused by having both freetype 1 & 2 headers on the same machine. I tried to remove freetype 1 entirely and recompiling freetype2. That didn't work.

I was finally able to fix that by blowing out (totally deleting) my freetype (both versions), Xft and fontconfig. Then reinstalling each (without bothering with freetype 1).

Now, X complains about not being able to load the freetype module. I tried to compile freetype 1 again but that only installs the libs and headers, it doesn't fix the X module.

I'm bumbed that I may have to compile X again from source, but I'm worried that that may just cause all my pango problems to start up again.

Anyone who can help me with a way out of this mess pls reply.

TIA

Wackman

PS: Incidentally, blowing out all the freetype and Xft files helped me get pango compiled, but GTK keeps giving me the same error I had before, "Xft must be version 2 or newer" which it already is. It should be that since I deleted all my previous Xft files (including any that came with X), I should only have the 2.x version I compiled. Grrrrrrrrr.

I had the same problem. Solution: Forget XFree86 4.2.x and either wait for 4.3 or check out the latest CVS snapshot (4.2.99.3). Once you have that, make sure that only Freetype 2 (making sure it's no earlier that 2.0.1, the latest is 2.1.3 and works perfectly) is present. You'll have to make a symlink to ft2build.h (by default this is in /usr/local/include) in /usr/local/include/freetype2 for X to find it properly but other than that compile it as detailed in the LFS xfree86+freetype hint. Once thats done you'll have perfect Xft2 support. Theres one last thing you'll have to do though before Pango will compile properly and thats to add /usr/X11R6/lib/pkgconfig to PKG_CONFIG_PATH so that the pango configure script (along with other Xft2-dependent programs) will know you have Xft2 support installed.

edit: You can install FreeType 1.3.1 at this point but I'd advise keeping it off your system until you absolutely need it, it'll just keep getting in the way otherwise.

edit: and about the FreeType X module, did you remember to uncomment it in XF86Config?

I just wanted to follow up. BTW, right now, I don't have my own net connection. I get to use a relative's dial-up connection once or twice a week, hence my delay in responding.

I blew out my X Windows, Xft (1 & 2), Freetype and fontconfig. Then I recompiled and reinstalled XFree without Xft, recompiled and reinstalled Xft, then fontconfig and then Freetype. Everything seemed to get sorted out OK. Pango was able to compile cleanly.

GTK still complained about Xft not being =>2.0. The code that checked the Xft version was a pango header file. Since I knew for a fact that I indeed had a 2.x version of Xft, I just commented out the version check in the pango header file. Not the safest and smartest thing, but it was OK.

Now my problem is that half of my GTK programs are crashing on me looking for an xfce<something>.so library. I tried re-doing xfce to just take care of that but xfce doesn't seem to make any libs. Grrrrrr. I even tried to completely get rid of my GTK and Glib, and redo those from scratch, but that didn't help. Oh well, my LFS is working better than it was AND I was able to get Gnome 2.1 installed (I like KDE 3.1 better though, Metacity sucks ass).

Thanks for the help. I should be getting back on the net more permenant soon so you may be hearing more from me in the future.

Wackman

You were able to install fcpackage on XFree 4.2.x without breaking the anti-aliased fonts? How?

I'm not really sure how. I didn't anticipate a problem and didn't have one anyway. I just compiled it and installed it.

Now that you mention it, though, my fonts now do look kinda messed up in KDE (messed up as in faint and not quite right). I was planning on playing around with that when I get home.

Thats all I did too but everytime I installed fcpackage, AA'd fonts that worked perfectly beforehand didn't afterward. It may of had something to do with the fact I was using XFree86 4.2.1 (compiled from a patched 4.2.0 source tree since XFree don't supply complete source, only binaries, for minor releases) and not 4.2.0, but since 4.2.1 was only released to correct a very specific security vulnerability I can't really see that being the problem.

As for KDE, I'm led to believe thats normal as KDE doesn't yet support Xft properly, something I'm putting down to support in Qt 3.0.x for Xft being quite immature. Qt 3.1.x seems better in this regard so KDE 3.1 may support it but that remains to be seen. I discovered this while following up on a hunch that Qt may have been at fault since it was the Opera web browser was what was displaying the problem most prominently. I now know this to be false as even without Xft support specifically compiled into Qt 3.0.6 Opera displays AA fonts just as well in 4.2.99.3 as it did in 4.2.1 before fcpackage was installed.