System :: Extension Request: Install arbitrary Truetype font



^thehatsrule^, No. the fonts are unusable under all gtk1 applications.  Did you have freetype2 running under DSL (with gtk1)?  I see that the freetype libs are in DSL, and they should support ttf, but I can't for the life of me get it all to work.  It seems I need a font server like xfstt (though the older forum discussion about installing microsoft's core fonts seemed to imply that it was possible to get them working with only stock DSL and the XFree86 extension.  No gtk2 needed, no added font servers.)  

The problem is still when I add a directory to the fontpath (xset +fp /fontdir), it gives me an error (see below) if I have truetype files in the directory.  I have created what I think are the necessary control files (fonts.dir and fonts.scale) under ubuntu.  I can add other fonts to my fontpath by the same method, but truetype fonts elude me.  

xset: bad font path element (#55), possible causes are:
 Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions
 Directory is missing fonts.dir
 Incorrect font server address or syntax

I've checked: the permissions and ownership (same as other added font dirs on my system which do work); fonts.dir (tried 2 different versions created with different utilities on Ubuntu);

Perhaps it's better if I repost in Other Help Topics, changing from an 'extension request' to a more general request for help with ttf's, including what I now know.  That's likely to have broader appeal I would think.

Thanks for your help so far.  I'll try to get xsftt working and repost if I'm still having trouble.
I remember the ms fonts working, because I had to install them for some apps I was testing with wine to work properly - this was with the full xf86 extension.

Did you put the things in /fontdir then?

Haven't tried just using xfstt, and I don't know if I used any ttf fonts besides the ms ones.

Maybe the freetype2 in dsl does not have all the capabilities.  You could try updating it like I previously posted, and configure it how you'd like. But then, I was using xorg and I included all the default fonts (which is a lot) but I believe most of them were pcf, so what I'm talking about might not help you at all :P fyi, I installed fontconfig-2.2.3 and freetype-2.1.9 and had the FontPath set in xorg.conf (that would be XF86Config-4 in your case)
Well I got xfstt working fairly well, but there was still no gold for me becuse (though other apps generally recognized the ttf fonts) my self-compiled version of gvim wouldn't make use of them.  But success came a different way.  It turns out that the newer versions of the "-misc-fixed-" group of pcf X-fonts have the unicode subset I need (extended Greek).  Your first post said they might, but I didn't think so, since I had already tried them out without success.  But my earlier tests were misleading me because I wasn't trying the fonts out on apps that could have properly handled unicode/utf-8 anyway.  And why would a mini distro include the characters for displaying a dialect of Greek that even the Greeks don't use anymore!  I couldn't believe it would.  How nice (and humiliating) to find out the solution was so close at hand (all the bits I needed, except vim compiled with 'big' options) were already included in the damn small distro out of te box.  Thanks for the help

original here.