Re: [RP] Font selection at compile-time

[Gergely Nagy]

> > > I disagree: It should check and issue a warning if the font doesn't
> > > exist so you can ignore the warning if you intend to run RP on a
> > > different machine but otherwise you would know sth is wrong.
> > 
> > And how would you check? The fonts may not be installed locally, so
> > you can't check the filesystem (you'd need to parse some configfiles
> > on unknown locations anyway), and if no X is running, I doubt you can
> > reliably query if a font is available to the system or not.
> 
> > If there isn't a reliable check, and it is not really crucial, I'd
> > just skip it. Why? Because if you use the default font, RP behaviour
> > will not change, if you pass --with-font, I'd expect you already know
> > what you are doing.
> 
> I usually know what I *intend* to do. But I find I can almost always
> mistype almost anything. As for checking, there are a few default
> places where you can check (such as /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/*) so the
> configure script could issue a warning like "Warning: cannot find font
> xxx in path blah blah". You can also check the XConfig file(s).

Yeah. That could work.. but if you just use a remote font server, it
issues a confusing warning (like on 90% of the boxes I happened to
deal with).

> Furthermore, (if running under X) the output of xlsfonts could be grepped. 
> Again, a simple warning could be issued if the font is not found or if
> xlsfonts can't be run because there's no X.

Yup. But you can't guarantee that it'll run under X. If you're
building a binary package (say, a deb or an rpm), it's very likely it
won't run under X.

> Finally, you could have a configure option --with-X11-fontpath,
> --with-xfs or something. So it can definitely be done. 

That sounds like an ugly kludge to me. Sure, it's doable, it can be
worked around if you want to support that warning, but it is not nice.

> But perhaps the best solution is having the font as a runtime
> option with a fallback to fixed if the font can't be found.

That's how it is today: compiled in is 9x15bold (or something), but
you can changed that with deffont (from my ~/.ratpoisonrc):

deffont -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso10646-1

Anyway. I'm not saying it is not doable with only a few mishits - it
is - the thing is that implementing lots of stuff for a warning is
bloat and unnecessary workaround.

In my opinion, the original patch is correct: it does what it was
intended to do, and no more. The configure check shouldn't
second-guess the user, methinks.

pgpClWrPSYU2w.pgp
Description: PGP signature