Linux FAQ's & Manuals


truetype and opentype fonts

truetype and opentype fonts can be used with the x11 core font system and with xft/fontconfig.9

the x11 core font system in xfree86 > = 4.x directly supports truetype fonts via the ``freetype'' module or the ``xtt'' module. both modules work well with asian fonts. you can check which module you are using by looking at the ``module'' section in your /etc/x11/xf86config file:

     section "module"       load      "type1"       load      "speedo"       load      "extmod"       load      "freetype"     endsection 

on suse linux, the default is ``freetype''. if you want to use ``xtt'' instead, just replace ``freetype'' by ``xtt'' and restart x11.

for xfree86 > = 4.3.0 (distributed with suse linux > = 8.2) you can even load both the ``freetype'' and the ``xtt'' module at the same time. in that case, ``xtt'' will be used to handle truetype fonts and ``freetype'' to handle opentype fonts.

xfree86 3.x does not have built-in support for truetype fonts. nevertheless, truetype fonts can easily be used with xfree86 3.x as well with the help of a font server (see section 5.1.3).

even when using xfree86 > = 4.x, some people prefer to use a font server, as it prevents the ``freezing'' of the x-server while loading huge asian fonts.



footnotes

... xft/fontconfig.9
they are also useful for some other applications for example for cjk-latex, mgp, ...


subsections
2005-03-09