DonationCoder.com Software > Jibz's Tools

Dina programming font for X11 use

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bpcw001:
Hi Jibz,

thanks for your input and the link to the files.
The .BDF files are exactly the ones you get when taking apart the Windows Dina.FON file with fnt2bdf.

Both .BDF and the bdftopcf-converted .pcf and .pcf.gz files will work in X itself. That's the good news.

Bad news is that fontconfig (which is responsible for serving fonts to Desktop Environments like Gnome or KDE)

- picks up the .BDF file and hence Dina displays as choosable font in KDE/Gnome font selection dialogs, but upon choosing
  Dina, a different substitute font is actually used instead

- does not pick up the .pcf or .pcf.gz file at all

Those fontconfig issues are quite known amongst those still willing to use bitmapped fonts in Linux.
The creators of fontconfig apparently decided to no longer give bitmap fonts an appropriate treatment in their software.
They seem to think that nobody uses them any more and everyone wants a blurred, antialiased TrueType desktop (ugh!)

Maybe I can figure out an appropriate configuration of fontconfig, but I'm slowly giving up on this one.

Thanks for your help anyway

bpcw001

f0dder:
Perhaps google and some manual font strings could help, I found some reference to VIM font config (perhaps googling linux+vim+dina might help?). But I've never really messed with that myself, it seems too messy and I don't use GUI linux anyway.

I've never really understood the whole cleartype/antialiased fonts thing, it looks smudgy and annoying. Even when done "right". And this applies to both CRT and TFT monitors... strains my eyes rather than relieve them.

bpcw001:
Hi f0dder,

thanks for your input.

However, the remaining problems are of different nature. So let me reiterate:

Dina can be made to work in X. Hence any application that uses X's font system or an own font customization mechanism can be configured to use Dina.
This is the case with VIM, EMACS and the genuine XTerm.

Unfortunately, not everything running in X uses X's own font system. There is an application called "fontconfig", which sits on top of X and has its own mechanism to
serve fonts to applications which don't use raw X or their own font customization mechanism, but rely on GTK or QT, such as the popular desktop environments
GNOME and KDE and all applications based on their libraries.

The problem is with the "fontconfig" application which does not pick up Dina properly or even doesn't pick Dina up at all.
Thus, if fontconfig does not "see" Dina, GNOME and KDE applications will not be able to use Dina.

Hence, all this boils down to finding a proper configuration for the application "fontconfig" and/or finding out how a bitmapped font must be
crafted in order to be accepted by fontconfig.

Thanks for your attention.

bpcw001

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