[oi-dev] Emacs has a bad font

[Alan Coopersmith]

Yes, the "bad" one is not antialiased, possibly a bitmap font,
while the "good" one is definitely antialiased, possibly TrueType or OpenType.

	-alan-

On 11/21/23 07:25, Gordon Ross wrote:
> Thanks.  I've confirmed that emacs is using the system font in both builds.
> Here are two screen shots (bad, good) that one can zoom in.
> The bad one has visible stair step diagonals etc. so I guess
> the good one has "anti-aliasing" and the bad does not?
> Does that clue help in tracking this down?
> 
> On Mon, Nov 20, 2023 at 2:20 PM Alan Coopersmith
> <alan.coopersmith at oracle.com> wrote:
>>
>> GTK & Pango use fonts from fontconfig, not from X11, so it's not expected
>> to match xfontsel (which uses X11 fonts).  Among other things, Pango 1.44
>> dropped support for Type 1 & bitmap fonts, which X11/xfontsel still support,
>> leaving TrueType & OpenType font support.  One easy to spot difference,
>> fontconfig uses more natural names, like "DejaVu Sans Mono", while X11 uses
>> the older naming format with the 14 dashes separating fields.  Visually,
>> if the font is anti-aliased or LCD optimized, it must be fontconfig, as
>> the X11 font system doesn't support either technology.
>>
>> https://www.x.org/releases/current/doc/xorg-docs/fonts/fonts.html
>> describes the difference (using "Xft" for the fontconfig system),
>> but it's about a decade behind the latest changes now.
>>
>>          -alan-
>>
>> On 11/20/23 11:10, Gordon Ross wrote:
>>> As far as I can tell, the "system" font for mate terminal and such is:
>>> "DejaVu Sans Mono", or
>>> -misc-dejavu sans mono-medium-o-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-ascii-0
>>>
>>> Based on what I see with xfontsel, it looks like emacs may be using:
>>> -misc-dejavu sans light-extralight-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-ascii-0
>>>
>>> I tried playing with the options/Set Default Font in emacs.
>>> I'm not sure why, but emacs shows a lot less than xlsfonts does.
>>>
>>> Here's what I have (from "save options") in both builds.
>>> (custom-set-faces
>>>    ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
>>>    ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
>>>    ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
>>>    ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
>>>    '(default ((t (:family "DejaVu Sans Mono" :foundry "PfEd" :slant
>>> normal :weight normal :width normal :height 113)))))
>>>
>>> There seems to be a change in either the fonts or the rendering, from
>>> the older OI build to recent ones.
>>> The examples shown by "xfontsel" look too light in some cases too.
>>> I'd appreciate tips on how to track down this problem.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 8, 2023 at 4:27 PM Gary Mills <gary_mills at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Nov 08, 2023 at 05:44:42PM +0100, Andreas Wacknitz wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> If you are using the gtk variant of emacs
>>>>
>>>> That's the one I'm using.
>>>>
>>>>> then it relies on pango for
>>>>> font rendering and layout which in case has dropped support for older
>>>>> font types a couple of months ago.
>>>>> So your problem might be that you are trying to use an unsupported (by
>>>>> pango) font type and thus rendering results look ugly.
>>>>> You might solve this be choosing a font of a supported font type, eg. a
>>>>> truetype font.
>>>>
>>>> There's no indication of truetype in the list of fonts that emacs
>>>> displays.  In fact, emacs will often tell me that a font does not
>>>> exist when I select that font from its list.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> -Gary Mills-            -refurb-                -Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada-
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> oi-dev mailing list
>>>> oi-dev at openindiana.org
>>>> https://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/oi-dev
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> oi-dev mailing list
>>> oi-dev at openindiana.org
>>> https://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/oi-dev
>>
>>

-- 
         -Alan Coopersmith-                 alan.coopersmith at oracle.com
          Oracle Solaris Engineering - https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris