XF86 Version 4 Font Problem --------------------------- The Situation... While using Linux SuSE 6.0 to 6.4 I have been using a 8x15 font to fit nicly on my work machine 'kobold' which has a 1600x1200 pixel display. I have been generating this font with... -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-0-75-75-c-80-iso8859-1 -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-0-75-75-c-80-iso8859-1 And this worked VERY well for the last 2 years. This font produces a 8x15 pixel font. One which is not available as a font alias (EG: like 6x13 and 6x13bold fonts) Post SuSE7.0 installation (where XFree86 v4 fonts installed) For some reason my default font... -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-0-75-75-c-80-iso8859-1 comes out smaller and bold than what was requested! xfd reports :- width 8, left 0 right 8 ascent 12, decent 4 (font 11,3) or in other words a 8x14 font but with bold bitmaps Switching to any other 'encoding' (2,7,8,15) fixes the resize problem. EG: xfd then reports a 8x15 was actually devivered as requested. However encoding 2 replaces the 'centered dot' and other characters I use in VIM to display file format (EG show tabs, etc), and the other replace the other meta charcaters with other graphics such as the greek alphabet in encoding 7. Encoding 8 also proved not to be a good choice, though initially it was OK. -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-0-75-75-c-80-iso8859-8 The font scaled properly, and had the symbols I needed. But the font source proved to lack a complementary bold version. EG: -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-0-75-75-c-80-iso8859-8 This font comes out as the correct size and looks good, but a suttle different in the size of the descents, caused xterms to leave the occasional junk on the bottom most row of characters, for example when a bold 'p' is erased. EG: xdf reports medium -> width 8; left 0, right 8; ascent 13, descent 3 (font 13, 2) bold -> width 8; left 0, right 8; ascent 12, descent 4 (font 12, 3) This is not a problem with encoding 7 where a bold version of the font the is scaled exists. EG: misc font files "8x13-ISO8859-7.pcf.gz" and "8x13B-ISO8859-7.pcf.gz". Summery of results of using different encodings... 15 Did not format rescale (middle colum doubled) 2 Missing the 'centered dot' and 'double >' symbols 8 Works perfectally, but no mathing bold font Bold works but has different ascent/descent ratios 7 Both normal and bold works, scales properly However other meta charcaters are 'greek' Encoding 7 is the best of the bad situation... -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-0-75-75-c-80-iso8859-7 -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-0-75-75-c-80-iso8859-7 Other font differences... The single quote character (') slanted version was replaced with a vertical unslanted quote (understandable), in almost ALL fonts. This was to be expected to happen at some point. The 4 of the horiziontal lines previously defined in all the 'semicondensed' fonts were replace with a dotted box character in the 'normal' fonts. Specific font information... Using trial and error (halfing font sets each time) I was able to discover the following... All the -misc-fixed-*-*-normal-* fonts are defined in the 'misc' font directory. This includes BOTH copies of the wanted font that appears in the output of the xlsfonts listing for the font. The original font request producing a stuby `bold' font was determined to be generated from the font file "6x10.pcf.gz". The effective doubling of all the rows and some columns is what produced the 'bold' effect. Generating a bold like font of size 8x14 and not 8x15 as requested. In contrast the '8' encoding, is generated from the "8x13-ISO8859-8.pcf.gz" font which fits with the displayed graphics. IE two pixel rows are duplicated. Unfortunatally as discovered no complementary bold font is available for this encoding. Situation under SuSE 6.4 XFree 3.3.6 First xlsfonts only lists a 3 fonts (instead of 6 in XF86 version 4) > xlsfonts -fn '-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-0-*-*-c-80-iso8859-*' -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-0-75-75-c-80-iso8859-1 -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-0-75-75-c-80-iso8859-15 -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-0-75-75-c-80-iso8859-8 Encoding 1 does turn out to be the requested font (8x15 medium) and trail and error determines it to be derived from the font file "8x13.pcf.gz" as suspected. Conclusion A number of changes were made in the fonts and especially in the font selection/conversion routines. This resulted in a greater range of fonts to select from but also results in a bad choice for 'derived' fonts. In particular a request for a 8x15 fixed font produces a terriable result. Also font 8x13 encoding 8 does NOT have a bold version. A 8x15 bitmap font would be a nice addition to the current font set. ASIDE: some more very small fonts on a par with 5x7 would also be good though such a small font probably requires manual creation. This font problem was returned to normal with SuSE 7.0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fedora 2 With a change in the font server the misc font is nolonger scalable and as such the 9x15 font did not scale to the 8x15 desired. The only options was to switch to the 9x15 "large" font, or use a horible looking 8x16 "schumacher-clean" font -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--16-160-75-75-c-80-iso646.1991-irv I ended up extracting a copy of the original two 8x15 fonts I like to use. The Pain! See "FontServers.hints" Generating a specific scaled font from a Font Server -------------------------------------------------------------------------------