Anti aliased fonts in FBSD

Bernard El-Hagin bernard.el-hagin at lido-tech.net
Wed Dec 3 23:00:50 PST 2003


owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org wrote:

>On Thu, 2003-12-04 at 01:41, Bernard El-Hagin wrote:
>> owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org wrote:
>> 
>> >On Thu, 2003-12-04 at 01:17, Bernard El-Hagin wrote:
>> >> owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org wrote:
>> >> 
>> >> >On Thu, 2003-12-04 at 00:46, Bernard El-Hagin wrote:
>> >> >> Hello,
>> >> >> 
>> >> >>   When I install some appliactions from ports they have nice
>> >> >> anti-aliased fonts by default (gaim, for example). Unfortunately others
>> >> >> do not (most notably gVim and also LinCVS, both of which are capable of
>> >> >> using them). Where exactly is this governed? How do I tell applications
>> >> >> to always use anti-aliased fonts? I am running CURRENT.
>> >> >
>> >> >There's a section on this in the FreeBSD handbook:
>> >> >
>> >> >http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x-fonts.html
>> >> 
>> >> 
>> >> Thanks to that section of the handbook I have enabled anti-aliased fonts
>> >> in X, but it doesn't explain why some applications use those fonts by
>> >> default and others don't. That's my real problem.
>> >
>> >Yes it does.  The last paragraph states:
>> >
>> >"Anti-aliasing should be enabled the next time the X server is started.
>> >However, programs must know how to take advantage of it. At present, the
>> >Qt toolkit does, so the entire KDE environment can use anti-aliased
>> >fonts (see Section 5.7.3.2 on KDE for details). Gtk+ and GNOME can also
>> >be made to use anti-aliasing via the ``Font'' capplet (see Section
>> >5.7.1.3 for details). By default, Mozilla 1.2 and greater will
>> >automatically use anti-aliasing. To disable this, rebuild Mozilla with
>> >the -DWITHOUT_XFT flag."
>> >
>> >So, do you have gVim built with gtk+-2 support, and have you done what
>> >section 5.7.3.2 tells you for KDE/Qt apps (i.e. set QT_XFT to true)?
>> 
>> 
>> I don't use KDE nor Gnome, but as I understand it any application which
>> is built with either Qt or Gtk+-2 support should be capable of using
>> anti-aliased fonts. What I'm asking is how do I:
>
>Yes, per the cross-referenced sections in the above paragraph, you may
>have to do some additional setting of variables if you do not use the
>respective desktops.
>
>> 
>> 
>> 1. find out before building an application whether it will be built with
>> support for either of those,
>
>As things are right now, looking at the ports' Makefiles is your best
>bet.


OK, that's what I was looking for. Thanks.


>> 2. make sure that such support is added if it's not there by default
>> (which I should be able to establish in step 1).
>
>Once you figure out the variable to set, you can add it to make.conf or
>pkgtools.conf (or both).


Does this mean that the name of the variable governing the AA fonts will
be the same for any application which can use them? That's cool.


Thanks for your help.


Cheers,
Bernard


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