6. Odds and Ends

Unfortunately there is no unified font handling system for Linux. You will have to configure each individual program so you can use TrueType, Type 1 or fonts that pique your fancy. And each program may well have its own way of doing this so you will have to RTFM.

Most GUI apps should be able to use TrueType, and Type 1 fonts too. Wordperfect for Linux, however, cannot use TrueType. (See the links section below for more on Wordperfect.) Text editors, terminal programs and the like need fixed width fonts, and do not play well with TrueType or other scalable fonts.

Though not discussed here, Type 1 fonts provide many of the same benefits as TrueType. You likely have many of these installed already. Unfortunately however, Type 1 are not a web standard like TrueType. But they are suitable for many other purposes. They are where it's at for printing. See ghostscriptfor more on this.

Anti-aliasing is only supported by XFree86 4.02. This is something hot out of the oven. See http://www.xfree86.org/~keithp/render for details. This is a very recent development, and great news!

While it is possible to specify a default point size for the xfs font server, very few applications will actually use this value.

The Video Timings HOWTO, the ins and outs of getting the most from your monitor.

Font HOWTO Many good tips for installing fonts and for applications such as StarOffice, Applixware, Wordperfect, Ghostscript, TeX/LaTeX.

xfsft Homepage, TrueType font support for X. This is the origin of the "freetype" font module for XFree86 4.x, and Redhat's xfs. Good site, and good links to other information related to fonts and TrueType.

Some Linux for Beginners. Great font site, and other Linux topics. Covers many of the topics discussed here in more detail.

X-TrueType Homepage, and yet another TrueType Font server, especially good for Japanese, Chinese and Korean character sets.

Tips on font size problems from Netscape.

Wordperfect for Linux -- Fonts and Printers by Rod Smith, the author of Using Corel Wordperfect 8 for Linux from Que. Excellent information on Wordperfect and where TrueType fits in.

XFree86 Project, the guys and gals who do an incredible amount of work to give us a killer GUI environment. Some info on fonts in XFree86 4.x.

Microsoft Web Fonts direct from the Lion's den -- and they are free! If you don't have access to a win32 system to unpack these, then get the ones labeled for Win3.1. These can be unpacked in Linux (see above).

Web Fonts RPM package, contains a few of the MS web browser fonts.

HP FontSmart TrueType Fontsfrom Hewlett Packard -- Garamond, Bodoni, Dark Courier, Euro Sign and Ozzie Black. Can be unzipped in Linux with the unzip utility.

Freeware Connection -- Free Fonts Sites lots of links to lots of sites.

Bitstream's Geometric Slabserif TrueType Font.

I also maintain a help and troubleshooting page on Redhat's xfs. There is also an RPM there with the MS TrueType fonts, and working fonts.scale and fonts.dir in the package.