Xfstt Frequently Asked Questions

	$Id: FAQ 132 2005-11-30 00:38:53Z guillem $

This document addresses common questions (and some not so common ones)
about xfstt, the X11 TrueType Font Server. You will want to read this file
to see if it answers your questions before you go asking the maintainer or
in any public forums of course.

This FAQ is current as of version 1.7 of xfstt.

1.0 What is xfstt?
1.1 How do I test it?
1.2 How do I use it?

2.0 It doesn't work! I get something like "fontpath not found"!
2.1 The X11 server doesn't start when xfstt isn't running!
2.2 Xfstt locks up my machine! It makes some applications unstable!
2.3 Why are no fonts included? Where do I get some?
2.4 How does one add fonts?
2.5 What are these weird fontnames displayed by xlsfonts when using xfstt?
2.6 Why shouldn't I serve fonts via TCP/IP to my friends overseas?
2.7 Why does program xxx look awful with most *.ttf fonts?
2.8 Big font sizes don't work, some glyphs look like garbage!
2.9 I cannot see all of my gazillion installed fonts!
2.10 Why can't I use all 16bit characters?
2.11 Rotated glyphs have wrong spacing!
2.12 The TrueType fonts are bigger/smaller than other fonts!
2.12.1 The TrueType fonts are too small!
2.12.2 The TrueType fonts are too big!
2.13 How does one request an encoding different from iso8859-1?
2.14 Why are multiple instances of xfstt running?
2.15 Help! I just upgraded and the new version doesn't work!
2.16 Xfstt is broken with Linux Kernel 2.4.0!
2.17 Xfstt wont compile on Solaris x86!

3.0 How do I put fonts in categories?
3.1 Use with Java (tm) 1.1 and up
3.2 Use with Netscape/Communicator (tm)
3.3 Use with StarOffice (tm)
3.4 How to use with Solaris?
3.5 How do I print documents which use *.ttf fonts?
3.6 Does xfstt have anti-aliasing/grayscaling technology?

4.0 I am having problems compiling xfstt!
4.1 I found a bug in xfstt! What do I do?
4.2 Will it be merged with the X server?
4.3 Why another free ttf font server?
4.4 How are embedded *ttf fonts used?
4.5 How can I help?
4.6 Why the LGPL license though xfstt is not a library?

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1.0 What is xfstt?

	Xfstt means "X11 Font Server for TrueType fonts".
	TrueType fonts are generally regarded to be the best scalable
	fonts for low resolution devices like displays.

	Examples where good scalable fonts improve the visual quality
	considerably are Netscape (tm), gimp and Java (tm).
	A fonts.properties file for use with java is provided.

	Xfstt is freely available under the LGPL. This basically means:
	Use it for free; if you fix bugs you have to contribute the
	fixes to the public.

1.1 How do I test it?

	mkdir /usr/share/fonts/truetype and put some *ttf fonts there, now
	run:

	make xfstt && make install
	xfstt --sync
	xfstt --daemon
	xset fp+ unix/:7101
	xlsfonts
	xcoral -fn "TTM20_Times New Roman"
	xfontsel -pattern "-*-*-*-*-*-tt-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
	xset -fp unix/:7101

	If your X server cannot handle the unix protocol replace the
	"unix/:7101" part by "inet/127.0.0.1:7101" (assuming the machine
	running xfstt has 127.0.0.1 as internet address).

1.2 How do I use it?

	Add "unix/:7101" to the fontpath in your X11 configuration file.
	Start xfstt a few seconds before starting X11.

	The font name for a 24 point Arial would be "TTM24_Arial" or
	"-ttf-arial-medium-r-normal-tt-18-240-75-75-p-123-iso8859-1",
	whichever of both naming conventions you find more convenient.

	Using xfstt's fontpath as the first fontpath is not a good idea:
	If the first truetype font would be a symbol/dingbat/wingdings
	font, the default font would be very hard to read (it sure looks
	interesting though :-).

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2.0 It doesn't work! I get something like "bad font path"!

	A font server needs a fair chance to offer font services to
	clients. If you start the font server and the X server at
	the same time there are chances the background app fs doesn't
	get a time slice before the X server looks at it's font paths.
	In some situations xfstt needs to rebuild it's font database
	which may take some extra seconds.

	If "xset fp+ unix/:7101" fails while running X it very often
	turned out xfstt wasn't started! Please check this with the
	"ps" command. If it hasn't started, start it now.

	If you are running the font server on a machine that has a
	different byte order than the client machine then it works as
	designed. Move the font server to a machine with the correct
	byte order.

2.1 The X11 server doesn't start when xfstt isn't running!

	This usually happens after you added "unix/:7101" to the X11
	server default fontpath. Most X11 servers are not prepared
	to handle the situation that a resource they are told to use
	isn't there. Either remove the default fontpath or make sure
	xfstt is started before the X11 server.

	Despite xfstt's marvelous capabilities it cannot do anything
	when it isn't running.

2.2 Xfstt locks up my machine! It makes some applications unstable!

	Sorry about that. Xfstt itself cannot lock up the machine.
	The X server that stops handling user requests is to blame.
	It is xfstt fault when a bad font crashes it and it is the
	the X servers fault when it stops handling user requests after
	a font server has died.
	If you are a developer please add this to your TODO list...

	Due to the sad history of X11 fonts many X11 applications are
	not properly tested for the huge number of fonts, proportional
	and scalable fonts and the big glyph sizes Xfstt can provide.
	If you have applications that suffer from buffer overruns please
	fix the application, reduce the number of installed fonts or use
	not too big font sizes.

2.3 Why are no fonts included? Where do I get some?

	Free fonts have the weirdest copyrights one can imagine. A typical
	restriction is "non-commercial use only". Including such fonts in
	the package would prevent xfstt from being put on CDROMs.

	*.ttf fonts are often included as bonus for printers, word
	processors, graphics applications, operating systems, ...

	There are a lot of cheap CDs with hundreds of *.ttf fonts.

	On the web there are many places where you can download fonts:

	<http://www.winsite.com/win3/fonts/truetype/index.html>
	<http://www.microsoft.com/truetype>
	<http://www.hooked.net/~flubble/typography.html>
	<http://home1.gte.net/tiaralyn/pctt.htm>
	<http://www.homunculus.com/access/CustomDirs/Fonts.html>
	<http://indigo.simplenet.com/fontz>
	<http://www.pagesz.net/~mhare/fonts/index.htm>
	<http://klink.net/~rcklueg/font1.html>
	<http://www.fonthead.com/main.html>
	<http://members.aol.com/ChiChiX/pages/fonts.html>
	<http://moon.yerphi.am/~hovik/Archive/Archive-PC/Fonts>
	<http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/7554/downloads/fonts>

	and many many other web sites.

2.4 How does one add fonts?

	Copy *.ttf fonts into the /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ directory or
	put some softlinks to font directories in there. A typical example
	is:

	ln -s /DOS/windows/fonts /usr/share/fonts/truetype/winfonts

	Now run "xfstt --sync" in order to have the new fonts recognized.
	Adding fonts while xfstt is running doesn't work yet.

2.5 What are these weird fontnames displayed by xlsfonts when using xfstt?

	xlsfonts results while running xfstt look like:

	TTUP020206030504050203040Times New Roman

	The reason is that the X11 Font Server protocol does not provide a
	way to query typographic information about fonts. So the only way
	to provide this information without changing this protocol is to
	"sideband" the typographic info into the fontname. The typographic
	info provided by xfstt is the panose information. For details of
	the panose specification have a look at:

	<http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Fonts/Panose/pan2.html>

2.6 Why shouldn't I serve fonts via TCP/IP to my friends overseas?

	Make sure you conform to the font license when serving to
	multiple clients. The clients must use the same byte order
	as the server. Currently the rasterization results are not
	shared between different xfstt processes, so resources
	needed are about proportional to the number of clients.

2.7 Why does program xxx look awful with most *.ttf fonts?

	Most *.ttf fonts are proportional (i.e. 'W' is wider than 'i').
	Due to the sad history of font support in X11 many X programs
	(e.g. xterm) still don't know how to handle proportional fonts.

	It may be possible to also serve monospaced versions of proportional
	fonts. This feature is not implemented yet. Since this will probably
	cause problems with ttf hinting, the monospaced version will most
	likely not match the quality of the original proportional font. Good
	ideas how to avoid this effect are welcome.

2.8 Big font sizes don't work, some glyphs look like garbage!

	Most X11 font server protocol prefer replies limited to 256kB.
	If a font is scaled with a big size the glyph bitmaps may not
	fit into 256kB. Bigger replies tend to cause the X11 server to
	return "BadAlloc Failures" for XOpenFont requests which confuses
	and kills many applications. One would have to split up the reply.
	Many popular X11 servers do not handle split up replies yet.

	Xfstt tries to serve as many glyphs as possible. If there is no
	room left in a limited reply it skips the remaining characters.
	Since the X server already made up his opinion how big these
	"phantom glyphs" are, it tries to display something: garbage.

	It is a good idea to have the X server be started with the options
	"-deferglyphs 8 -deferglyphs 16".
	Then the X server will load characters only in small groups, not
	all at once. The maximum size of the glyphs is still finite, but
	they will have some more room.

2.9 I cannot see all of the gazillion fonts I installed!

	The X11 font server protocol limits many replies to 256kB. If a
	font name list would exceed this limit one would have to split
	up the reply. Many popular X11 servers cannot handle split up
	replies yet.

2.10 Why can't I use all 16bit characters?

	Some popular X11 servers cannot handle split up replies yet,
	but they request data for all characters they are told about.
	A reply of 24bytes * 64k chars exceeds their reply size limit
	by far and this causes trouble.

	Serving unicodes < 256 is default; if you are ready to take
	the risk of 16bit chars use the --unstrap option for xfstt
	and the "-deferglyphs 16" option for the X11 server.

2.11 Rotated glyphs have wrong spacing!

	The X11 font server protocol only supports x advance widths,
	not y advance widths. Xfstt takes the XCharStruct.attributes
	field to pass y advance widths. No current X server uses
	this information to display rotated strings.

2.12 The TrueType fonts are bigger/smaller than other fonts!

	Most operating systems handling ttf fonts assume default
	resolutions of 96dpi, 120dpi or higher. Most X servers
	tell Xfstt to assume a default resolution of 72 dpi.
	A 12pt font at 96dpi looks the same as a 16pt font at
	72dpi and vice-versa.

2.12.1 The TrueType fonts are too small!

	The solution is to tell the X server that the default
	resolution is different from the default 72 dpi. To
	do this start the X server with the -dpi option.
	Alternatively xfstt provides the --res option. Example:

	xfstt --res 96

2.12.2 The TrueType fonts are too big!!

	As stated above, some X servers can't communicate
	correctly with Xfstt, and Xfstt may sometimes pick 96dpi
	as it's default, when it should be 72dpi or 75dpi. This
	means that 12pt Arial looks the same as 16pt Helvetica.
	To fix this, run Xfstt as:

	xfstt --res 72

2.13 How does one request an encoding different from iso8859-1?

	By default xfstt uses the unicode encoding which accidentally
	matches the iso8859-1 encoding for the first 256 characters.
	Starting in version 0.9.8 the unicode can be remapped to other
	encodings with the --encoding option. Example:

	xfstt --encoding iso8859-2,koi8-r,windows-1251

2.14 Why are multiple instances of xfstt running?

	Currently xfstt implements multiple connections by cloning itself
	for every new connection. The number of xfstt instances equals
	the number of connections plus one. The last instance waits for
	new font clients. It is planned to change this behavior by using
	a more efficient shared memory method.

2.15 Help! I just upgraded and the new version doesn't work!

	If you are upgrading from a version older than 0.9.8 or so
	then chances are you are caught in the middle of some changes
	that went on.

	There are a few possibilities.

	1) xfstt runs but the X Server acts like it isn't there

	This is most probably due to the change from xfstt using a default
	port of 7100 to a new default of 7101. This is to facilitate the use
	of xfstt "side by side" with xfs (the original X Font Server).  since
	it traditionally uses 7100.

	2) xfstt wont run

	This could be either because 7101 is already used (see Solaris above)
	or because of the other big change, the font locations moved.

	The main problem is that /usr/ttfonts was fine but encouraged the
	clutter of /usr. To avoid this bad habit (not to mention that under
	Linux it breaks the FHS - the filesystem standard) it was moved to
	"/usr/share/fonts/truetype".

	Just move all of your fonts there and it should work.

2.16 Xfstt is broken with Linux Kernel 2.4.0!

	This was a known bug for a while. Actually, its fixed as of
	xfstt 1.2 Whats funny is, I see no reason why it shouldn't have
	been broken under the older kernels. It was some bad code that
	I added to fix someone elses problem.

	Oops. Should work now. If you are stuck with an old version of Xfstt
	(can't imagine why that might be) just switch to inet instead of
	unix domain sockets.

2.17 Xfstt wont compile on Solaris x86!

	Thats right, at least as far as I have heard. All of the Solaris x86
	users that I have talked to have reported cryptic error messages that
	I wasn't able to help them much with. If anyone gets it working, or
	has a Solaris x86 system that I can have an account on to try and
	get xfstt compiled... please let me know!

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3.0 How do I put fonts in categories?

	Create some subdirectories in /usr/share/fonts/truetype, e.g.
	modern, script, brush, old, symbol, ...
	and put the appropriate fonts in there. The corresponding font
	names will be -modern-*, -script-*, -brush-* and so on.

3.1 Use with Java (tm) 1.1 and up

	Overwrite the fonts.properties file in $(JAVA_HOME)/lib/ with
	the provided one in the examples/ dir.

3.2 Use with Netscape/Communicator (tm)

	Since X11 Netscape 3 doesn't use scrollable listboxes for font
	selection having more than a dozen *ttf fonts makes selecting
	fonts difficult. Netscape 4 needs a while to sort the fonts if
	several hundreds are installed. Netscape has the bad habit of
	not closing fonts when they are no longer used. As the number
	of open fonts is finite after some font changes requests for
	opening more fonts are rejected.

	Also the listbox for fontsizes only shows the size 0; enable
	scaling and type in the requested size in the box next to it.

3.3 Use with StarOffice (tm)

	Starting in version 0.9.8 xfstt recognizes the not well formed
	staroffice request for fonts with "-*" names. When using an older
	xfstt version you can't access its fonts in staroffice.

	Starwrite will only display fonts it can also print. Tell StarOffice
	about the printable fonts in xp3/fontmetrics/afm/, xp3/psstd.fonts,
	and the appropriate printer capability file in xp3/ppds/, also tell
	ghostscript about the fonts in the fontmap file.
	(Many more details of these problems are in the IX 1998/05 magazine
	or in Brion Vibber's Truetype HOWTO).

3.4 How to use with Solaris?

	There is a report that port 7101 on Solaris is already
	occupied. Use another port, e.g. "xfstt --port 6666".

3.5 How do I print documents which use *.ttf fonts?

	Unfortunately the X Consortium decided in its early days that the
	display and printer are completely unrelated devices. There was no
	common architecture for graphics devices. The recent approach to
	close this gaping architectural hole is to use a X Print Server.

	A solution is to use ghostscript's ability to render ttf fonts.
	In order to help ghostscript figure out which fonts are available
	the --gslist option was added to xfstt. Usage example:

	xfstt --gslist > fontmap

3.6 Does xfstt have anti-aliasing/grayscaling technology?

	The font engine in xfstt does grayscaling. Unfortunately neither
	the X11 font server protocol nor most X11 servers know how to handle
	grayscaled fonts.

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4.0 I have problems compiling xfstt!

	Xfstt is supposed to compile right out of the box. If the
	error message says something about missing include files
	make sure that you have a package xdevel or similar installed.
	Also for some not understood reasons on FreeBSD you have to use
	gmake instead of standard make.

	If this doesn't help get a binary release (e.g. from the
	Debian distribution <http://www.debian.org/>).

4.1 I found a bug in xfstt! What do I do?

	Ok, for starters calm down. Start out by seeing if you can make it
	happen again. Reproducibility is a good thing. Read the documentation
	and see if this is a known issue or even a "feature" (obviously
	crashing and running off at 100% CPU usage is not a feature).

	If it is not a feature (or you believe you have a good reason that
	no one else has thought of that it is a wrong feature) and is a bug
	then check to see if you have the current version. Currently the
	maintainer is also the Debian maintainer, so if you can't find it
	anywhere else, check the Debian FTP site for it.

	Now if you have the most current version and the bug is still there,
	then by all means report it. Just send me an email (try to put
	xfstt in the subject so it gets higher priority).

	Also... the same goes for any fixes you want to make. If you fix
	a bug... by all means send along the code. Same goes for new
	features.

4.2 Will it be merged with the X server?

	Merging it with the X server creates some opportunities. It makes
	advanced features like grayscaling, kerning, glyph substitution,
	ligatures, unlimited glyph sizes and vertical advance widths for
	rotated text possible.

	It would also allow that only those glyphs that are actually
	needed have to be rendered. Currently all glyphs in a font
	have to be hinted in order to get almost useless font summary
	properties. Fonts with lots of glyphs take considerably longer
	than they should take because of this.

	Unfortunately this requires a major rewrite of the X11 font
	subsystem. Currently there are no plans to do this. Feel free
	to work on this yourself and send in any patches.

4.3 Why another free ttf font server?

	Xfstt was actually the first free TrueType font server.
	It was written from scratch, the useful freetype library
	not being ready in early 1997.

4.4 How are embedded *ttf fonts used?

	Xfstt doesn't fully support dynamic adding/removing fonts yet.
	This is a prerequisite for handling embedded fonts.

	The intermediate solution is to send a FS_SetCatalogues request
	to xfstt which makes it rebuild its font database.

4.5 How can I help?

	Xfstt is reported to work on i386/m68k/sparc/alpha/mips/ppc on
	linux/freebsd/aix/irix/sco/osf/solaris platforms.
	Porting it to a different platform may require small modifications
	in the architecture dependent header file "arch.h".

	Item 4.2 of this FAQ dreams up the great benefits that could be
	achieved by deeply embedding scalable font technology into a carefully
	revised X11 font subsystem. Read and understand the limitations of the
	current X11 font subsystem and try to do something about it.

4.6 Why the LGPL licence though xfstt is not a library?

	The library code has been split in an independent directory, it's
	still provided as a static library because API compatibility is not
	guaranteed, take a look at the README under libfstt.

	The LGPL licence has considerable benefits for developers using
	libraries.