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[gentoo-user] Font recommendations for netbook?

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Walter Dnes

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Nov 10, 2009, 7:20:01 PM11/10/09
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Fluxbox is blowing up on my new machine because it can't find any
fixed fonts. I just realized that merely building xorg-server doesn't
download any fonts. Looking at /usr/portage/media-fonts I see a whole
bunch of options. Any experiences good/bad with any of them? Remember
that this will be on an 11.6" netbook, currently running 1024x768, and
hopefully 1366x768 one of these days. And the less processor power it
requires to render, the better.

--
Walter Dnes <walt...@waltdnes.org>

Frank Steinmetzger

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Nov 10, 2009, 8:30:02 PM11/10/09
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Am Mittwoch, 11. November 2009 schrieb Walter Dnes:
> Fluxbox is blowing up on my new machine because it can't find any
> fixed fonts. I just realized that merely building xorg-server doesn't
> download any fonts. Looking at /usr/portage/media-fonts I see a whole
> bunch of options. Any experiences good/bad with any of them?

if you want a bitmap font, try terminus-font. If not, have a look at dejavu.
--
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Philip Webb

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Nov 11, 2009, 5:10:01 AM11/11/09
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091110 Walter Dnes wrote:
> Fluxbox is blowing up on my new machine
> because it can't find any fixed fonts.
> merely building xorg-server doesn't download any fonts.
> Looking at /usr/portage/media-fonts I see a whole bunch of options.
> Any experiences good/bad with any of them?
> this wb on an 11.6" netbook, currently running 1024x768

> and hopefully 1366x768 one of these days.
> the less processor power it requires to render, the better.

I've successfully installed Gentoo on my 10" netbook.
I simply did 'emerge xorg-x11', which had 91 dependencies,
which included lots of fonts. Fluxbox is working well.
I prefer Luxi Mono for even-spaced font; size 8 seems best for a netbook.
No problems with CPU power (ASUS 1005HA) or memory use.

--
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SUPPORT ___________//___, Philip Webb
ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto
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Maxim Wexler

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Nov 11, 2009, 2:20:01 PM11/11/09
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I found this site helpful to set up spionic.ttf. And I have only
xorg-server and only the default window mgr that comes with X.

http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3644

Maybe it'll suit your case.

mw

Joshua Murphy

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Nov 11, 2009, 2:30:02 PM11/11/09
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Font rendering, typically, takes so little processing it'll be the
least of your worries if you find something being sluggish. I have
dell mini 9 here with flux running beautifully on all 1024x600 I have
to play with, and am using whatever gtk picked up as "Sans" in 8pt for
all my gtk apps, .fluxbox/overlay set to override all fonts with
sans-8, and just glancing at my installed fonts, I believe that's
mapping to dejavu's sans serif font. All my installed fonts, at the
moment, I have:

media-fonts/corefonts
media-fonts/dejavu
media-fonts/font-cursor-misc
media-fonts/font-misc-misc
media-fonts/gnu-gs-fonts-std

And those could be slimmed down a bit, really. I've run 6pt, here and
there, but decided it best not to ruin my eyesight by staring at a
glossy screen and deciphering that small of text (was still quite
crisp, I'm still impressed by this display).

--
Poison [BLX]
Joshua M. Murphy

Walter Dnes

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Nov 11, 2009, 9:30:01 PM11/11/09
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On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 02:25:40PM -0500, Joshua Murphy wrote

> I have dell mini 9 here with flux running beautifully on all 1024x600

Speaking of Fluxbox, I have it installed. I've experimented with some
fonts. I find that regardless of the fonts I install, xterm runs a
tiny, almost unreadable font. And what's worse, I *CANNOT* resize the
font. xterm totally ignores anything I set by hitting
{CTRL}{RIGHT-CLICK} inside an xterm. Any ideas?

--
Walter Dnes <walt...@waltdnes.org>

Joshua Murphy

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Nov 11, 2009, 10:40:01 PM11/11/09
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setting the font and size in ~/.Xresources should do the trick.

Quite a few good pointers here (one of the early hits on google when I
realized I set everything *except* font for aterm on my netbook here):

http://fixunix.com/debian/132898-xterm-font-size.html

obviously, if it's ignoring your selections on the menu, the bits on
that thread about setting available font options on the menu aren't
much help, but much of the rest should help.

Philip Webb

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Nov 12, 2009, 6:20:02 AM11/12/09
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091111 Walter Dnes wrote:
> I have Fluxbox installed. I've experimented with some fonts.
> regardless of fonts installed, Xterm runs a tiny almost unreadable font.
> I *CANNOT* resize the font. Xterm totally ignores anything I set

> by hitting {CTRL}{RIGHT-CLICK} inside an xterm. Any ideas?

In my Fluxbox menu in my desktop machine, I have

...
[submenu] (Terminals)
...
[exec] (Xterm) {xterm -geometry 79x65+0+0 -fn 9x15}
...

Walter Dnes

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Nov 13, 2009, 10:20:03 AM11/13/09
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On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 09:27:47PM -0500, Walter Dnes wrote

> Speaking of Fluxbox, I have it installed. I've experimented with some
> fonts. I find that regardless of the fonts I install, xterm runs a
> tiny, almost unreadable font. And what's worse, I *CANNOT* resize the
> font. xterm totally ignores anything I set by hitting
> {CTRL}{RIGHT-CLICK} inside an xterm. Any ideas?

It was a case of "picky, picky, picky". My desktop machine has a
gazillion fonts installed. Not so the netbook. When I try to set the
the xterm font, "cannot load font" error messages show up in the text
console from which it was launched. Here are the fonts that it tries to
load, and the corresponding menu item...

nil2 - Unreadable
5x7 - Tiny
6x10 - Small
7x13 - Medium
9x15 - Large
10x20 - Huge

I don't happen to have those *EXACT* sizes installed on the netbook,
hence the error messages. I find that if I launch xterm with the
command "xterm -fn -monotype" it comes up at a nice readable size. With
the help of xfontsel, I can find what font families and sizes I do have
and launch xterm with those fonts. A bit of RTFM turned up some info
about how to control the expected font for each of the menu entries via
resource files...

Default (fontdefault) - *VT100.font resource.
Unreadable (font1) - *VT100.font1 resource.
Tiny (font2) - *VT100.font2 resource.
Small (font3) - *VT100.font3 resource.
Medium (font4) - *VT100.font4 resource.
Large (font5) - *VT100.font5 resource.
Huge (font6) - *VT100.font6 resource.

So it should be a one-time job to enter the proper values in a
resource file and xterm will be happy.

--
Walter Dnes <walt...@waltdnes.org>

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