Unfortunately there is no unified font handling system for Linux. You will have
to configure each individual program so you can use TrueType, Type 1 or fonts
that pique your fancy. And each program may well have its own way of doing
this so you will have to RTFM. Desktop Environments like GNOME and KDE may
provide much of this functionality however for apps that are under their
control.
Most GUI apps should be able to use TrueType, and Type 1 fonts too.
Wordperfect for Linux, however, cannot use TrueType. (See the
links section below for more on Wordperfect.) Text editors, terminal programs
and the like need fixed width fonts, and do not play well with TrueType or
other proportional fonts.
Though not discussed here, Type 1 fonts provide many of the same benefits
as TrueType and are historically better supported in the Unix world,
especially for printing. XFree86 still seems to render TrueType somewhat
better than Type 1. You likely have many of these installed already.
Unfortunately however, Type 1 are not a web standard like TrueType. But
they are suitable for many other purposes. They are where it's at for
printing. See ghostscript
for more on this.
While it is possible to specify a default point size for the xfs font
server, very few applications will actually use this value.
Abiword comes with a suite of fonts, called 'Abisuite'. Apparently,
some of these fonts have the same names as some of the well known MS
TrueType fonts: Arial, etc. And apparently, these are not as good
quality. And because of the way X searches for fonts, it may find these
first and use these, even if the 'real' ones are installed and may be the
preferred choice. The solution is to either make sure your preferred fonts
come first in the FontPath or maybe to uninstall 'Abisuite' if it's not
needed.
The new Xft rendering extensions of XFree86 4.x will mostly supplant
similar features as provided by xfs, and older XFree86 extensions. For
instance, font aliasing should be done in XftConfig
if the new extensions are being used. This would only be true where
the application is built against a toolkit (like QT or GTK) that supports
the new extensions. This is still not universally supported.
XFree86 Project, the guys and gals
who do an incredible amount of work to give us a killer GUI environment. An
overview of XFree86 fonts:
XFree86 4.x.
And an explanation of Xft:
http://www.keithp.com/~keithp/render/Xft.tutorial.
The Fontconfig home page is http://fontconfig.org, for all the
latest news on Xft and fontconfig (the future of X font handling).
The
Video
Timings HOWTO, the ins and outs of getting the most from your monitor.
(Applicable only to XFree86 v.3.x for the most part.)
Font HOWTO
Many good tips for installing fonts and for applications such as StarOffice,
Applixware, Wordperfect, Ghostscript, TeX/LaTeX.
A TrueType HOWTO, good tips for printing, and a few application specific tips.
xfsft Homepage,
TrueType font support for X. This is the origin of the "freetype" font module
for XFree86 4.x, and Red Hat's xfs. Good site, and good links to other
information related to fonts and TrueType.
Some Linux for Beginners. Great font site, and other Linux topics. Covers many of the topics
discussed here in more detail. Some font and other tips for
Mozilla: http://home.c2i.net/dark/My_Mozilla_FAQ.html.
Two guides specifically for Debian from Paul D. Smith:
http://www.paulandlesley.org/linux/xfree4_tt.html and for 3.3.x:
http://www.paulandlesley.org/linux/debian_tt.html.
X-TrueType Homepage, and yet
another TrueType Font server, especially good for Japanese, Chinese and Korean
character sets. [Note: link is bad 08/18/02.]
Tips on font size problems from
Netscape.
Wordperfect for Linux -- Fonts
and Printers by Rod Smith, the author of
Using Corel Wordperfect 8 for Linux
from Que. Excellent information on Wordperfect and where TrueType fits in.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/font-tool/,
contains the core MS TrueTyep fonts suitable for web browsing.
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/msttcorefonts.html is a similar package for Debian.
Sebastiano Vigna's http://gongolo.usr.dsi.unimi.it/~vigna/webFonts4Linux/ automates the downloading,
extracting and installation of the Microsoft fonts all in one neat
package.
Freeware Connection
-- Free Fonts Sites lots of links to lots of sites.
Bitstream's
Geometric Slabserif TrueType Font.
Two converters for converting a Mac Font "suitcase" to a *nix
compatible font: http://www.macinsearch.com/infomac2/font/util/tt-converter-15.html
and
http://www.netmagic.net/~evan/shareware/#TTFontConvert
The Unicode HOWTO: http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Unicode-HOWTO.html
Two sources of 'free' TrueType fonts with large Unicode support are
Bitstream Cyberbit, which covers Roman, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic,
combining diacritical marks, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and more, and is
available from ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/communicator/extras/fonts/windows/Cyberbit.ZIP.
And Lucida Sans Unicode, which is included in IBM's JDK 1.3.0beta for
Linux, and covers Roman, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, combining diacritical
marks. This can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.maths.tcd.ie/Linux/opt/IBMJava2-13/jre/lib/fonts/
as LucidaSansRegular.ttf and LucidaSansOblique.ttf. Thanks to Tzafrir Cohen
for these references. He also has a nice page on Hebrew fonts and related
topics at http://www.iglu.org.il/faq/?file=133.
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