Howto: Truetype fonts on an HD install
Forum: X and Fluxbox
Topic: Howto: Truetype fonts on an HD install
started by: sjmelia
Posted by sjmelia on May 11 2004,22:01
EDIT: after a fresh install, i know this method does work - but sadly, causes frequent lock ups after you add the server to the fontpath with xset, usually when starting a new bash shell in a window. I think i'll give up!Hello, i've been investigating this for hours now but i've finally hit the jackpot. I'm not sure i'm qualified to give advice but here goes.
It's possible to compile the KDrive server with better font support and they're fairly self contained so I hoped somebody had a binary somewhere that I could pinch and run. No luck for a long time, until I stumbled across these < screenshots > with lovely looking anti-aliased fonts, on fluxbox no less!
Well, to cut a very long story short, the good news is that I found an < RPM > (sort of like debian packages in apt-get, but for Red Hat linux) that contains precompiled KDrive x servers with support for fonts. There's also a < page > that details how the author got it working on red hat. I've changed a lot in my DSL installation trying to get this to work, so i'm not sure if this is exactly right, but here's what I think made it work:
- Using apt-get to install "alien" (which unfortunately didn't seem to work properly, but did give me the tools for the next step)
- downloading the RPM to a temporary directory, and typing "rpm2cpio XFree86-TinyX-4.3.0-3RULErh9.i386.rpm | cpio -i" to extract the files
- copying the replacement (in my case Xvesa) to /usr/X11R6/bin
- using apt-get to install xfstt
- copying the truetype fonts from my windows install to the appropriate directory (xfstt tells you which I think)
- rebooting, opening a shell on the desktop, then typing "sudo xset +fp unix/:7101"
- voila! truetype fonts!!
If somebody could try to replicate this i'd be grateful since I tried so many things, something else could have played a part
The total size of the replacement Xvesa is ~900KB, not sure about xfstt.