trying to get fonts working in X11

[Jan Beich]

Brett Wiggins <s3682305 at student.rmit.edu.au> writes:

> Is the ownership of the directories or files a problem? I changed all of
> the directories to 777 but that doesn't seem to do anything. I have run
> xset on every directory, but in my dekstop applications such as firefox,
> the text is still hard to read. Below is info regarding my system. Any help
> would be appreciated.

Firefox via Pango uses fontconfig. While "xset fp" or FontPath in
xorg.conf are still supported they rarely look good. Check fc-list or
fc-match instead. For one, to replace default sans-serif font try

$ mkdir -p ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/
$ cat <<EOF >~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/50-local.conf
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "../fonts.dtd">

<fontconfig>
  <alias>
    <family>sans-serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Roboto</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
</fontconfig>
EOF

$ fc-match sans
Roboto-Regular.ttf: "Roboto" "Regular"

$ firefox https://en.wikipedia.org

Read fonts-conf(5) manpage for more details.

If a web page still uses a different font open "Inspect Element", check
what CSS rule requested and adjust fontconfig. For one, you can configure
for Arial to be displayed as Roboto. ;)

Removing unused fonts is another option.