Re: Fonts for xvile in linux - where to find some nice ones?

[Brendan O'Dea]

There is quite a bit of difference in how traditional X11 bitmap fonts
and freetype fonts are selected and rendered
(https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/XFontTypes gives a
reasonable summation) but the main thing is that from the API level
they are not interchangeable.  XTerm has specific code to handle
rendering of fonts selected via -fn (server bitmap) vs -fa (client
rendered scalable).  I don't believe that xvile has handling for the
latter, so is limited to traditional server provided bitmap fonts.

On Thu, 7 May 2020 at 00:48, Chris Green <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> On Wed, May 06, 2020 at 07:32:21AM -0400, Paul Fox wrote:
> > chris wrote:
> >  > On Tue, May 05, 2020 at 06:54:48PM -0400, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> >  > > On Tue, May 05, 2020 at 10:43:47PM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
> >  > > > I am always hitting this issue, the current fonts available by 
> > default
> >  > > > in standard Linux repositories for xvile are generally horrible.  
> > Does
> >  > > > anyone here have any nice ones, or can anyone point me at some nice
> >  > > > ones.
> >  > >
> >  > > There's two sets of fonts in the default menu for xvile.
> >  > > The first looks like the bitmap fonts used for xterm,
> >  > > while the other is b&h lucidatypewriter --
> >  > >
> >  > > you might find this as
> >  > >  bitmap-lucida-typewriter-fonts
> >  > > or
> >  > >  xfonts-100dpi
> >  > >  xfonts-75dpi
> >  > >
> >  > Yes, I have all of those, I was just hoping/wondering if anyone has
> >  > created different/better bitmap fonts.  They're OK[ish] on my desktop
> >  > machine but I can't find anything that is really comfortable to use on
> >  > my laptop.
> >
> > I haven't thought about fonts in a long time.  Is it the case that
> > xvile can't use the same fonts that xterm uses?  I don't use xvile,
> > but I'm pretty happy with my fixed xterm fonts.
> >
> xvile is stuck with the old and rarely renewed/maintained fixed bitmap
> fonts in /etc/X11/fonts whereas vile can use all of the standard
> terminal fonts to be found in /usr/share/fonts.  I'm not sure if xterm
> can use the 'ordinary' system fonts in the same way that other
> terminal emulators can, I use the default xfce4-terminal that comes
> with the xubuntu distribution that I use and that shows me dozens (if
> not hundreds) of different fonts to choose from.
>
> --
> Chris Green
>