One of the most obvious and painful imperfections of Linux systems is the X Window System’s cumbersome font-handling facilities. The chief reason that fonts cause so much difficulty — or at least inconvenience — is that there is no unified font manager in this environment. Instead, most applications have their own unique font-handling methods and each one must be configured individually.
One of the most obvious and painful imperfections of Linux systems is the X Window System’s cumbersome font-handling facilities. The chief reason that fonts cause so much difficulty — or at least inconvenience — is that there is no unified font manager in this environment. Instead, most applications have their own unique font-handling methods and each one must be configured individually.
This month, I’ll describe how X handles fonts and how to add Adobe Type 1 fonts to your system. Next month, I’ll explain how to install TrueType fonts and how office applications handle fonts. What’s the difference between Type 1 and TrueType fonts? Read on.
Font Basics
Font names such as Times and Helvetica actually refer to font families containing a number of different typefaces, such as regular Times, italic Times, bold Times, bold italic Times, and so on. There are two formats for font files: bitmap and outline. Bitmap fonts store the information about the characters in a font as bitmap images, while outline fonts define the characters in a font as a series of lines and curves, comprising in this way mathematical representations of the component characters.
From a practical point of view, the main difference between these two font types is scalability. Outline fonts can be scaled up or down any arbitrary amount and look equally good at all sizes. In contrast, bitmap fonts do not scale well, becoming extremely jagged and primitive as they get larger. These effects become…
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