Rotating X Fonts?

Juliusz Chroboczek Juliusz.Chroboczek at pps.jussieu.fr
Thu Oct 30 13:54:59 PDT 2008


> 1. Is there a way to know at run-time whether or not an X-server will  
> actually be able to honor the rotated font request?

Not officially.

However, you may have a look at the font property ``RASTERIZER_NAME''.  If
it says ``FreeType'', ``X Consortium Type 1 Rasterizer'' or ``X Consortium
Speedo Rasterizer'', it will probably work.  If it's something else, all
bets are off.

> 2. Is there any documentation/standard for the use of rotated fonts,  
> e.g., the name of the rotated font above is mostly a mystery between  
> the []?

The XLFD spec, version 1.5, Section 4.

    http://www.x.org/docs/XLFD/xlfd.pdf

> 3. I suspect the issue might be a discrepancy between the installed  
> fonts on the two X servers.

No, it's more probably a discrepancy between the font backends being used.
I suspect that Hummingbird uses a rasteriser called the ``X Consortium Bit
Scaler'', which has been disabled in X.Org.

Core X11 fonts are deprecated in X.Org.  I strongly recommend that you
switch to Xft, which doesn't have any of these issues.

                                        Juliusz



More information about the xorg mailing list