Fonts Re: [Techtalk] Micro$$$oft license fees...

[Judith Elaine Bush]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2002 at 04:09:27PM -0500, Walt wrote:
> 
> Btw, while I'm thinking fonts... What tools/
> utilities are there to manage fonts on linux?
> On windows and Mac you can have only a
> limited number (c. 400) accessible at any
> given time. Does that restriction apply to
> linux as well? Can I use my mac or pc fonts
> on Linux?
> 
> Thanks,
> Walt


I'm rusty, but yes, you can use pc fonts on linux.

I'm not sure about the mac fonts. 

My vague memories are that there are different font servers, and that
you can have more than one running, and that the order the font
servers are specified in your X set-up files is the order in which the
servers are queried.

I'm listing some hopefully-relevant debian packages. If you use
something other than debian, the package descriptions should help you
narrow the search for what you need.

Depending upon how dependent you are on Adobe applications, you may
find that linux supports replacements for what you need. I remember
that an early issue of Linux Magazine (http://www.linux-mag.com/)
described how they published their magazine with linux tools. I've
just skimmed through the archives and haven't put my finger on it (but
the flashbacks from looking at 1999 stories are really weird so I'm
stopping).

Don't know the answer to max number of fonts, but this might help:
http://www.xfree86.org/4.0.3/fonts.html

Cheers,
judith




stable  type1inst 0.6-1   (23.9k)  
   Install Adobe Type 1 fonts into X11 and Ghostscript 

type1inst is a small perl script which generates the "fonts.scale" file required by an X11 server to use any Type 1 PostScript fonts which exist in a particular directory. It gathers this informatiom from the font files themselves, a task which previously was done by hand. The script is also capable of generating the similar "Fontmap" file used by ghostscript. It can also generate sample sheets for the fonts. 

stable  gfontview 0.3.2-2   (64.9k)  
   A font viewer for Type 1 and TrueType fonts 
stable  xfs 3.3.6-11potato32   (199.2k)  
   X font server 
stable  xfs-xtt 1:1.3.0.1-12   (98.3k)  
   X-TrueType font server 

xfs is a daemon that listens on a network port and serves X fonts to X servers (and thus to X clients). All X servers have the ability to serve locally installed fonts for themselves, but xfs makes it possible to offload that job from the X server, and/or have a central repository of fonts on a networked machine running xfs so that all the machines running X servers on a network do not require their own set of fonts. xfs may also be invoked by users to, for instance, make available X fonts in user accounts that are not available to the X server or to an already running system xfs. 


stable  xfstt 1.1   (64.4k)  
   TrueType Font Server for X11 
stable  xmbdfed 4.3-3   (167.9k)  
   X11 font editor