XFree86 Render

Daniel Pittman | 29 Mar 2002 23:50

Re: Fwd: Re: Re: XFt on Solaris

On Fri, 29 Mar 2002, marty scholes wrote:
> Thought I'd post this for the next poor sap that goes thru X font
> hell.
> 
> It turns out that X font handling has changed some in the 8 years
> since I last fiddled with it. The handling of fonts at the X server
> level always felt kinda hokey, and now it seems the fonts can be dealt
> with by a central server, creatively called an X font server. This is
> "a good thing." This way fonts can be managed centrally and yield
> consistent results across all X servers.

Well, access to them can be, anyway. ;)

> <WHINE> We went thru some head trauma to ensure that there were zero
> static IP addresses known to the individual Mandrake boxes (X
> terminals). 

That'll teach you to target an end of dubious merit. ;)

> We used DHCP for the boxes themselves and XDMCP broadcasts to let the
> X servers discover an XDM server. Sadly, with xfs, those days seem
> gone. Now on the command line I have to tell the X server where to
> find the font server. If I ever need to move xfs, I will have to go
> around the company and reconfig everyone's X terminal. Bummer. 
> </WHINE>

You should be able to use a hostname to specify the font server. At
least, every X server I ever met could. So, on that basis, using DHCP
and either dynamic DNS updates or some local version of the same should
resolve that problem.

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marty scholes | 29 Mar 2002 15:56

Fwd: Re: Re: XFt on Solaris

Thought I'd post this for the next poor sap that goes thru X font hell.

It turns out that X font handling has changed some in the 8 years since I last fiddled with it.  The handling of
fonts at the X server level always felt kinda hokey, and now it seems the fonts can be dealt with by a central
server, creatively called an X font server.  This is "a good thing."  This way fonts can be managed centrally
and yield consistent results across all X servers.

<WHINE>
We went thru some head trauma to ensure that there were zero static IP addresses known to the individual
Mandrake boxes (X terminals).  We used DHCP for the boxes themselves and XDMCP broadcasts to let the X
servers discover an XDM server.  Sadly, with xfs, those days seem gone.  Now on the command line I have to tell
the X server where to find the font server.  If I ever need to move xfs, I will have to go around the company and
reconfig everyone's X terminal.  Bummer.
</WHINE>

Other than that, I solved this beast.  I received some very helpful and needed advice from several people on
the openoffice problems I had and I truly appreciate it.

To recap, if openoffice is running on a machine and displaying on another machine, then libXrender.so.1
needs to be on the client machine, the machine where openoffice is running.

Fonts also need to be installed, but not, as was suggested to me, where openoffice is running.  The fonts
either need to be in the font path on the machine where X is running or the fonts need to be accessible by the
font server that X is using.  On Mandrake 8.0 (and probably other distros) the default behavior is for the X
server to latch on to a font server running locally.  To keep font management central, tell the X server to
use a different font server and make the fonts available to that server.

I now have openoffice running correctly!

Thanks again for all of the help!

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