Very Computer

Is there a way to 'export' F3 fonts using the font server? If I include
/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/F3 in my catelogue specification, the font
server crashes on start up. I want to use some of the F3 scalable fonts
on a Linux X server. I tried converting them, but I need some prety
large ones (Helvetica-35/45/55 resp.).

Any suggestions?

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> Is there a way to 'export' F3 fonts using the font server? If I include
> /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/F3 in my catelogue specification, the font
> server crashes on start up. I want to use some of the F3 scalable fonts
> on a Linux X server. I tried converting them, but I need some prety
> large ones (Helvetica-35/45/55 resp.).

> Any suggestions?

   X Font Server

     The Solaris X server can be a client of the X font server xfs. The X
     font server renders fonts for the X server. The Solaris X font server
     supports the same fonts as the standard X font server, plus TrueType
     fonts from Sun. It does not support Sun's proprietary F3 font format.
     Support for Type 1 fonts is provided via the Type 1 interpreter donated
     to the X Consortium.

     xfs can be started manually or automatically. For more information on
     this command, see the xfs(1) man page.

2.6 has Helvetica in Type 1 format, however according to the above, the
Type 1 rasterizer in Sun's font server is the same as in the vanilla X
distribution, and it has a rep for not producing high quality results.
It's presumably different from the PostScript rasterizer in Sun's
X server, which should be from Adobe since they have DPS extensions.

Sun's 2.6 font server can be trivially hit with a denial of service attack
with something like
   fslsfonts -server servername:7100 -ll
(or xlsfonts -ll if one has the font server on one's font path)

Perhaps if the font server had only a handful of fonts that it was
serving, that wouldn't be a problem, but otherwise, given that an
unresponsive font server can hang X client rather badly, I'd be a little
nervous about using it.

Some talk I've heard suggests that not all X font servers suffer equally
from this sort of thing.

--
ftp> get |fortune
377 I/O error: smart remark generator failed

Bogonics: the primary language inside the Beltway

Quote:> Is there a way to 'export' F3 fonts using the font server? If I include
> /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/F3 in my catelogue specification, the font
> server crashes on start up. I want to use some of the F3 scalable fonts
> on a Linux X server. I tried converting them, but I need some prety
> large ones (Helvetica-35/45/55 resp.).

You can only serve these fonts via "fs" if you convert them to another
format (Type1, bdf).

This very topic was the subject of a Sun support call I raised about
8 weeks ago.

$ ldd /usr/openwin/bin/xfs
        libfont.so.1 =>       /usr/openwin/server/lib/libfont.so.1
        libsocket.so.1 =>     /usr/lib/libsocket.so.1
        libnsl.so.1 =>        /usr/lib/libnsl.so.1
        libm.so.1 =>  /usr/lib/libm.so.1
        libc.so.1 =>  /usr/lib/libc.so.1
        libtypesclr.so.0 =>   /usr/openwin/server/lib/libtypesclr.so.0
        libdl.so.1 =>         /usr/lib/libdl.so.1
        libmp.so.2 =>         /usr/lib/libmp.so.2

(done on Solaris 2.6)

It looks (from doing strings commands on the various files in
/usr/openwin/server/lib) that the two such files above (libfont.so.1 and
libtypesclr.so.0) are exactly the ones that process most font types,
including F3 fonts.  So it probably wouldn't take much to take advantage
of that from a technical standpoint.

If they can't do that for whatever reason, it might be helpful if they
could somehow make xfs use a better PostScript rasterizer than the one
that they say (as I quoted in a prior post) it uses, i.e. the one donated
to the X Consortium (which has a reputation for less than stellar font
rendering quality, if memory serves).

In any event, xfs needs a lot more work on robustness and performance.

--
ftp> get |fortune
377 I/O error: smart remark generator failed

Bogonics: the primary language inside the Beltway

Quote:>Unfortunately, whilst the Solaris X Server can rasterise F3 fonts, the
>Solaris X Font Server cannot, and never will.
>You can only serve these fonts via "fs" if you convert them to another
>format (Type1, bdf).

--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------

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