Problems with pure X11 program's Fonts

[Harald Braumann]

On Thu, Mar 04, 2010 at 10:11:04PM +0800, Aaron Lewis wrote:
> >harry
> I did like this :
>    open xfontsel , and choose a good font , then use "select" to
> copy , use xrdb to reload configuration.
> 
> Still got an ugly fonts .. This time , i tried with putty , i
> checked and thought it's pure X11 program. (checked the library it
> linked)

Probably the font doesn't get anti-aliased. While some prefer the
`crisp' look of this, others find it ugly.

Did the setting change anything at all? Try with a font that looks
very different, so you see if the setting has any effect. Maybe that
programme doesn't use xresources for configuration.

> My Gtk (2.0+) Program has a good UI , everything fine .
> If it's problem with gtk1's rc file , i would make mistakes.

GTK2 uses a completely different system (fontconfig + freetype). 
GTK1 still uses core fonts, if I'm not mistaken (haven't got it around
anymore). And AFAIK it also doesn't do anti-aliasing. I think that
this might be your main problem.

I, too, spent a lot of time trying to get nice fonts in the old
system. But this is a Don Quichottesque task. Unlike Don Quichotte,
however, I gave up at some point and just accepted my defeat.
Nowadays everything supports nice fonts, including xterm and TK, 
and I don't have any gtk1 apps. So for me the problem disappeared.

harry