If you're like me, over the years you download and install a few fonts, then a few more, then it gets to be a big mess. It was all more or less okay until I installed Firefox 3. Then when I tried to get cjk to show up, all heck broke loose. Everything I did would send Firefox into a different visual universe. Time to clean up the mess.
Corrections to this are welcome, I just had to figure it out as I went along and probably am wrong in plenty of areas ...
Turns out, Irix is a little complicated. Not that the individual parts are complicated but it's been added to and added to and added to over the years, so it doesn't work quite like you expect.
Irix is traditional, so it uses the X Font Server. No problem, all the normal xfs commands like < xset fp > and < xset q > work fine. For instance :
Okay, cool, there's the font path ! And you look there and there's the fonts ! /usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/ Easy-peasy, right ?
No.
Irix used Display Post Script, so the real scalable vector fonts (Adobe Type1) live in /usr/lib/DPS/outline/base The fonts in the fontpath are all symbolic links. So if you really want to clean up the mess, you have to work with the base fonts in the /usr/lib/DPS tree.
Directions are here :
http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi ... /ch03.html
This is all great but of course nothing in life is supposed to be that easy. If you are running 6.5.22+ then SGI did one more thing to screw you up : the fonts in /usr/lib/DPS/outline/base are not the real fonts now either . Or to be more accurate, some of them are, others are imposters. When they went to 6.5.22 SGI went el-cheapo on what they supplied while remaining the high-priced spread on what they charged. Any clues here about how to go out of business ?
There are now a bunch of phony fonts in /DPS/outline/base that they downloaded off the Internet. Everything with an SH in the name is a freeby download. There is also a file called < fonts.alias.artifex > Artifex is the company behind ghostscript. That alias file redirects all the requests for Adobe fonts to free reproductions of the Adobe fonts.
Here is the political part - I can understand why they did things this way. They don't have to pay Adobe the ridiculous license fees for something that is not even interllectual property. (Type 1 fonts are nothing but data files, why does Truetype even exist ?) Users aren't inconvenienced by having entire systems changed. All they did was substitute free fonts for the Adobe fonts and redirect the server. Cool, bro.
But, in my case, I have a PostScript printer with Adobe fonts installed and I'd like to have what I see onscreen be exactly what gets printed. I have wondered for a long time why it wasn't. Helvetica is Helvetica, right ? unless it's not ... So if you like you can do this : ditch the freeby fonts and the fonts.alias.artifex file. Go through the techpubs process linked above. Restart. Should work. (I actually moved everything to a different directory and saved it just in case.)
It should also be possible to make a political statement by ditching the overpriced Adobe fonts and renaming the free SH fonts to the Adobe names .. hmm
You may have a problem now. If you have customized your desktop, the settings from Heavenetica may not match the settings for HelveticaReal. You'll get a bunch of bitmap fonts and error messages. All I had to do to fix that was run back through the Toolchest -> Desktop -> Customize sequence to reset everything.
Fonts are definitely a pita to organize and utilize, but at least if you know where they really are and what's really happening, it should be easier to deal with them however you like. This doesn't cover the ghostscript / gtk2 / fontconfig stuff but at least it describes the basic root fonts in Irix. And I'm starting to like the idea of a remote x font server more and more ...
Corrections welcomed, I'd like to understand this mess better myself ...
Corrections to this are welcome, I just had to figure it out as I went along and probably am wrong in plenty of areas ...
Turns out, Irix is a little complicated. Not that the individual parts are complicated but it's been added to and added to and added to over the years, so it doesn't work quite like you expect.
Irix is traditional, so it uses the X Font Server. No problem, all the normal xfs commands like < xset fp > and < xset q > work fine. For instance :
Code:
urchin 1% xset q
Keyboard Control:
auto repeat: on key click percent: 0 LED mask: 00000000
auto repeating keys: 0080ffe9fdffffff
fdffffff7cffffbf
ffff3f0000000000
0000000000000000
bell percent: 50 bell pitch: 1810 bell duration: 200
Pointer Control:
acceleration: 6/1 threshold: 9
Screen Saver:
prefer blanking: yes allow exposures: yes
timeout: 600 cycle: 1200
Colors:
default colormap: 0x45 BlackPixel: 0 WhitePixel: 16777215
Font Path:
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/CID/
Bug Mode: compatibility mode is disabled
Auto Repeat Rate: timeout = 66, interval = 4
DPMS (Energy Star):
Display is not capable of DPMS
Keyboard Control:
auto repeat: on key click percent: 0 LED mask: 00000000
auto repeating keys: 0080ffe9fdffffff
fdffffff7cffffbf
ffff3f0000000000
0000000000000000
bell percent: 50 bell pitch: 1810 bell duration: 200
Pointer Control:
acceleration: 6/1 threshold: 9
Screen Saver:
prefer blanking: yes allow exposures: yes
timeout: 600 cycle: 1200
Colors:
default colormap: 0x45 BlackPixel: 0 WhitePixel: 16777215
Font Path:
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/CID/
Bug Mode: compatibility mode is disabled
Auto Repeat Rate: timeout = 66, interval = 4
DPMS (Energy Star):
Display is not capable of DPMS
Okay, cool, there's the font path ! And you look there and there's the fonts ! /usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/ Easy-peasy, right ?
No.
Irix used Display Post Script, so the real scalable vector fonts (Adobe Type1) live in /usr/lib/DPS/outline/base The fonts in the fontpath are all symbolic links. So if you really want to clean up the mess, you have to work with the base fonts in the /usr/lib/DPS tree.
Directions are here :
http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi ... /ch03.html
This is all great but of course nothing in life is supposed to be that easy. If you are running 6.5.22+ then SGI did one more thing to screw you up : the fonts in /usr/lib/DPS/outline/base are not the real fonts now either . Or to be more accurate, some of them are, others are imposters. When they went to 6.5.22 SGI went el-cheapo on what they supplied while remaining the high-priced spread on what they charged. Any clues here about how to go out of business ?
There are now a bunch of phony fonts in /DPS/outline/base that they downloaded off the Internet. Everything with an SH in the name is a freeby download. There is also a file called < fonts.alias.artifex > Artifex is the company behind ghostscript. That alias file redirects all the requests for Adobe fonts to free reproductions of the Adobe fonts.
Here is the political part - I can understand why they did things this way. They don't have to pay Adobe the ridiculous license fees for something that is not even interllectual property. (Type 1 fonts are nothing but data files, why does Truetype even exist ?) Users aren't inconvenienced by having entire systems changed. All they did was substitute free fonts for the Adobe fonts and redirect the server. Cool, bro.
But, in my case, I have a PostScript printer with Adobe fonts installed and I'd like to have what I see onscreen be exactly what gets printed. I have wondered for a long time why it wasn't. Helvetica is Helvetica, right ? unless it's not ... So if you like you can do this : ditch the freeby fonts and the fonts.alias.artifex file. Go through the techpubs process linked above. Restart. Should work. (I actually moved everything to a different directory and saved it just in case.)
It should also be possible to make a political statement by ditching the overpriced Adobe fonts and renaming the free SH fonts to the Adobe names .. hmm
You may have a problem now. If you have customized your desktop, the settings from Heavenetica may not match the settings for HelveticaReal. You'll get a bunch of bitmap fonts and error messages. All I had to do to fix that was run back through the Toolchest -> Desktop -> Customize sequence to reset everything.
Fonts are definitely a pita to organize and utilize, but at least if you know where they really are and what's really happening, it should be easier to deal with them however you like. This doesn't cover the ghostscript / gtk2 / fontconfig stuff but at least it describes the basic root fonts in Irix. And I'm starting to like the idea of a remote x font server more and more ...
Corrections welcomed, I'd like to understand this mess better myself ...
