Fonts

By peekj
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markwolfe Veteran

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It is very likely because you don't have the fonts that Windows incluldes on your Linux box.

For example, Windows includes things like "Arial" and "Comic Sans". Linux doesn't have these (at least by the same name).

Web pages specify fonts from most specific to more general alternatives. For example, on news.google.com, they specify:

font-family:arial,sans-serif

This indicates that the browser should first try to use font "Arial". Windows includes that, so that is what will be used on a Windows box. On a Linux box, it looks and likely sees you don't have it (unless you installed it yourself, for the most part). In that case, it looks at the next option, which is "sans-serif", so your Linux browser will use the generic Sans Serif font that it has.

That explains the difference.

It is possible to have Linux use your Windows fonts. If you dual-boot, I believe you can even have a symbolic link to your Windows folder with the fonts, and Linux (technically, X) will be able to include them as available fonts. (Y)

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khaos34

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Well, I would assume that Linux is substituting different fonts (if the coder has specified "Arial" for example).

If they generically specified "Sand-serif" then your default ss font may be different.

584968085[/snapback]

It's "sans" serif, not "sand :D Sans-serif, as in "without serif marks" - was probably a typo, since "d" is next to "s", but I though It'd say it in anyway since there some people out there who have no idea that sans-serif actaully means something :p

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markwolfe Veteran

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Do you guys know any howtos on getting windows fonts to work in linux? in particular with firefox.

584968336[/snapback]

I didn't read through it, but this link appears to have a lot of information on this.

http://linux.org.mt/article/ttfonts

In summary, you get your fonts where Linux can access them (either in one of your Linux directories, or link to them in your Windows/dual-boot partition), then make sure you have a pointer to that location for X to find them. Not overly complicated. However, for apps like GIMP to be able to use them you need to also specifically tell GIMP where to look (since it uses its own set of font locations, I think).

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markwolfe Veteran

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What went wrong?

It really is no more than copying in a directory containing your fonts, then editing /etc/X11/xfs/config to include that directory in your path.

What steps did you take (do you remember)?

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markwolfe Veteran

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It involved a couple of ttmkfdir and makefontdir and xset, also SuSEConfig.fonts commands....

I honestly am not sure. I'm in the process of removing xorg right now...

584971827[/snapback]

Hmmmm... I have Fedora, but I made a choice to not do the "automated" apps. All they really should be doing is adding the path into the file, anyhow.

You might be better off locating your X font system folder and editing the config file yourself. You will probably get a better sense of understanding, too, knowing exactly what you did to make the change, too. ;)

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peekj

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well i did do this all manually. but you need to create a fonts.dir file in the new folder so that X recognizes it as fonts. that's what those tools are for.

I've recreated Xorg and that's fine. I can xinit and get X running. It seems to be kde/gnome that have problems. My error is always /usr/X11R6/bin/kde segfaulting. I am not sure why kde is involved in the first place. GDM is the default and then Gnome...

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markwolfe Veteran

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well i did do this all manually. but you need to create a fonts.dir file in the new folder so that X recognizes it as fonts. that's what those tools are for.

Are you sure? I don't recall doing anything more than copying the directory off my USB stick and into my home directory. I just linked to them in that location (it isn't good form for me to have put them there, as I really should have put them where all users could link to them - but this is a one-user machine, so I get sloppy) :p

EDIT: I am not sure if you may have a bad font file in there that could cause a major problem with KDE...

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peekj

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So yeah, it was just a bad font that caused havoc. I'm back to where I started now. The fonts still look different from the ones in Windows. I am positive they are the same font type, but I think that my linux gui is giving it more anti-aliasing than windows, thus making them look smoother, and unfortunately a little less crisp...

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