Very Computer

Hi,

Can anyone recommend any decent font-packages for use with X11 (3.3.2)
and Communicator 4.07, please? Some of the web-pages I've been viewing
recently look like they were written on an old typewriter - definitely
NOT pretty! I have installed the RedHat package manager, so (hopefully)
I can consider .rpm packages too.

Cheers,
Chris.

[Posted and mailed]

Quote:> Hi,

> Can anyone recommend any decent font-packages for use with X11 (3.3.2)
> and Communicator 4.07, please? Some of the web-pages I've been viewing
> recently look like they were written on an old typewriter - definitely
> NOT pretty!

I'd recommend you get xfsft
(http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/jec/programs/xfsft/) and (dare I say it) the
TrueType fonts for the web that Microsoft has made available
(http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/default.htm).  The problem,
basically, is that most scaleable fonts, particularly when rendered by X,
look pretty bad at screen resolutions; and non-scaleable fonts look bad
when an application attempts to scale them.  The people Microsoft hired to
do the fonts on their web page, though, spent the time to properly hint
them for display at screen resolutions, so they look very good like that.
Personally, I use Verdana for web browsing.

Also, know that Netscape will attempt to honor font-change requests
embedded in web pages.  Thus, if a web page designer specifies Times,
Netscape will look for Times and use it if it's available.  This can be
very bad if you have a poor version of Times for display, or if the web
designer selected a font that you don't like or that displays poorly at
the specified size (not at all uncommon, sadly, since some web page
designers come from the paper publishing field and can't seem to
comprehend that not everybody will have the exact same fonts and screen
resolutions they've got).  Anyhow, you can tell Netscape to ignore such
font change requests, though this will sometimes cause web pages to
display strangely.  It's a no-win situation, unfortunately.  Complain to
the designers of such pages, and point them to
http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/ for some education.

--
Rod Smith

http://www.users.fast.net/~rodsmith
NOTE: Remove the digit and following word from my address to mail me

Thanks for all the replies (Wow, this is so much easier to read!). I
have installed the xfstt font server rather than the modified XFree one;
hopefully this will make X-system slightly easier to upgrade. One
further thing though: I am currently appending the new font-server to
the font-path by calling xset in the xinitrc script. Is there another
way to specify the Xserver's default font path? The xdm-config file
doesn't seem to have a DisplayManager*fontPath setting, although the
INSTALL script implies that something similar exists.

Cheers,
Chris.