hello

i finally figured out what's going on. the problem is that the mozilla
and firefox that come with slackware refuse to render non-latin fonts.
if you go to a website like http://anekdot.ru/ all you'll see is squares
with 4 digits in them

the same happens with the gtk2 binary packages from mozilla.org

but gtk1 mozilla/seamonkey packages from mozilla.org work much better.
going to http://wikipedia.org/ only 3 languages refuse to render (as
opposed to 15 with gtk2)

i'm using slackware 10.2, haven't tried slackware current

is there something i could do to fix this problem? and if the solution
is not very straight-forward, what's the best way to ask patrick (or
someone else) to fix it in the distro?

thanks

hi,

The link above works just fine. It shows some Russian text in cirylica.
Firefox used to show me those boxes with four digits, untill I
installed some unicode fonts. That was fonts from windows (like Arial,
Times New Roman...). Actually the main idea was to view pages in
Japanese. Now booth firefox and thunderbird automatically uses those
fonts which has required characters.

On Thu, 18 May 2006 00:48:33 -0400, Mig21 wrote:

> i finally figured out what's going on. the problem is that the mozilla and
> firefox that come with slackware refuse to render non-latin fonts. if you
> go to a website like http://anekdot.ru/ all you'll see is squares with 4
> digits in them

Renders perfectly here but see more at bottom...

> the same happens with the gtk2 binary packages from mozilla.org

> but gtk1 mozilla/seamonkey packages from mozilla.org work much better.
> going to http://wikipedia.org/ only 3 languages refuse to render (as
> opposed to 15 with gtk2)

I don;t think your version of Gimp Tool Kit will make any difference.

> is there something i could do to fix this problem? and if the solution is
> not very straight-forward, what's the best way to ask patrick (or someone
> else) to fix it in the distro?

Well you'll need to enable font support and resources first.

If you have the support and KDE is set up to handle the fonts check for
their availability by opening a konsole - issue...

xlsfonts |most

That will show you all of the fonts available to X. If that's too much
info narrow the output down like so...

xlsfonts |grep -i <font in question> |most

Now if that comes up empty refer to...

/usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs/Font-HOWTO

Do all you can there. If that still leaves you lacking recompile
libfreetype and enable the taboo hinting feature. Consider using xfstt as
a font server. Use TT fonts and dump some Russian ones in the directory
that xfstt serves.

If you do all of this ANY font will look darn near perfect.

PS: You got Unicode enabled? You should.

> i finally figured out what's going on. the problem is that the mozilla
> and firefox that come with slackware refuse to render non-latin fonts.
> if you go to a website like http://anekdot.ru/ all you'll see is squares
> with 4 digits in them
>
> the same happens with the gtk2 binary packages from mozilla.org
>
> but gtk1 mozilla/seamonkey packages from mozilla.org work much better.
> going to http://wikipedia.org/ only 3 languages refuse to render (as
> opposed to 15 with gtk2)
>
> i'm using slackware 10.2, haven't tried slackware current
>
> is there something i could do to fix this problem? and if the solution
> is not very straight-forward, what's the best way to ask patrick (or
> someone else) to fix it in the distro?

You should install fonts that contain the necesseary characters. I'd suggest
http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download

Its probably easiest to use the KDE font installer


--
damjan

Mig21 wrote:
> hello
>
> i finally figured out what's going on. the problem is that the mozilla
> and firefox that come with slackware refuse to render non-latin fonts.
> if you go to a website like http://anekdot.ru/ all you'll see is squares
> with 4 digits in them
>
> the same happens with the gtk2 binary packages from mozilla.org
>
> but gtk1 mozilla/seamonkey packages from mozilla.org work much better.
> going to http://wikipedia.org/ only 3 languages refuse to render (as
> opposed to 15 with gtk2)
>
> i'm using slackware 10.2, haven't tried slackware current
>
> is there something i could do to fix this problem? and if the solution
> is not very straight-forward, what's the best way to ask patrick (or
> someone else) to fix it in the distro?
>
> thanks

My wife reads in Ukrainian and Russian using Firefox installed in Slackware
current. This really has nothing to do with the toolkit.

Mig21 wrote:
>
> i finally figured out what's going on. the problem is that the mozilla
> and firefox that come with slackware refuse to render non-latin fonts.
> if you go to a website like http://anekdot.ru/ all you'll see is squares
> with 4 digits in them
>
> the same happens with the gtk2 binary packages from mozilla.org
>
> but gtk1 mozilla/seamonkey packages from mozilla.org work much better.
> going to http://wikipedia.org/ only 3 languages refuse to render (as
> opposed to 15 with gtk2)
>

Try to add:

<dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi</dir>
<dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/</dir> #if those installed

in your "/etc/fonts/fonts.conf" that way the free type library will
take all the fonts into account (even the non antialiased ones).
Then restart X

You can also put:

export GDK_USE_XFT=0

in your "~/.profile" to get a font rendering more inline with
those precompiled ones from mozilla.org, if you like that.

Ron Gibson a écrit :
> On Thu, 18 May 2006 00:48:33 -0400, Mig21 wrote:
>
>> i finally figured out what's going on. the problem is that the mozilla and
>> firefox that come with slackware refuse to render non-latin fonts. if you
>> go to a website like http://anekdot.ru/ all you'll see is squares with 4
>> digits in them
>
> Renders perfectly here but see more at bottom...
>
>> the same happens with the gtk2 binary packages from mozilla.org
>
>> but gtk1 mozilla/seamonkey packages from mozilla.org work much better.
>> going to http://wikipedia.org/ only 3 languages refuse to render (as
>> opposed to 15 with gtk2)
>
> I don;t think your version of Gimp Tool Kit will make any difference.
>
>> is there something i could do to fix this problem? and if the solution is
>> not very straight-forward, what's the best way to ask patrick (or someone
>> else) to fix it in the distro?
>
> Well you'll need to enable font support and resources first.
>
> If you have the support and KDE is set up to handle the fonts check for
> their availability by opening a konsole - issue...
>
> xlsfonts |most
>
> That will show you all of the fonts available to X. If that's too much
> info narrow the output down like so...
>
> xlsfonts |grep -i <font in question> |most
>
> Now if that comes up empty refer to...
>
> /usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs/Font-HOWTO
>
> Do all you can there. If that still leaves you lacking recompile
> libfreetype and enable the taboo hinting feature. Consider using xfstt as
> a font server. Use TT fonts and dump some Russian ones in the directory
> that xfstt serves.
>
> If you do all of this ANY font will look darn near perfect.
>
> PS: You got Unicode enabled? You should.

it's not clear what the gtk version has to do with it but it's a fact
that mozilla compiled with gtk1 _works_. which tells me i have the right
fonts installed.

thanks for the tips but i don't feel like recompiling freetype or going
to hunt for fonts on the net. i think this should work out of the box or
at least be easy to fix.

cheers

On Fri, 19 May 2006 04:07:49 -0400
Mig21 <no@whe.re> wrote:

> Ron Gibson a écrit :
> > On Thu, 18 May 2006 00:48:33 -0400, Mig21 wrote:
> >
> >> i finally figured out what's going on. the problem is that the
> >> mozilla and firefox that come with slackware refuse to render
> >> non-latin fonts. if you go to a website like http://anekdot.ru/
> >> all you'll see is squares with 4 digits in them
> >
> > Renders perfectly here but see more at bottom...
> >
> >> the same happens with the gtk2 binary packages from mozilla.org
> >
> >> but gtk1 mozilla/seamonkey packages from mozilla.org work much
> >> better. going to http://wikipedia.org/ only 3 languages refuse to
> >> render (as opposed to 15 with gtk2)
> >
> > I don;t think your version of Gimp Tool Kit will make any
> > difference.
> >> is there something i could do to fix this problem? and if the
> >> solution is not very straight-forward, what's the best way to ask
> >> patrick (or someone else) to fix it in the distro?
> >
> > Well you'll need to enable font support and resources first.
> >
> > If you have the support and KDE is set up to handle the fonts check
> > for their availability by opening a konsole - issue...
> >
> > xlsfonts |most
> >
> > That will show you all of the fonts available to X. If that's too
> > much info narrow the output down like so...
> >
> > xlsfonts |grep -i <font in question> |most
> >
> > Now if that comes up empty refer to...
> >
> > /usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs/Font-HOWTO
> >
> > Do all you can there. If that still leaves you lacking recompile
> > libfreetype and enable the taboo hinting feature. Consider using
> > xfstt as a font server. Use TT fonts and dump some Russian ones in
> > the directory that xfstt serves.
> >
> > If you do all of this ANY font will look darn near perfect.
> >
> > PS: You got Unicode enabled? You should.
>
> it's not clear what the gtk version has to do with it but it's a fact
> that mozilla compiled with gtk1 _works_. which tells me i have the
> right fonts installed.

Between GTK1 and GTK2 there was a major overhaul in the way that fonts
are configured and rendered. That's why the solution proposed by
steelneck is required. (Although I would put the new lines
in /etc/fonts/local.conf. Also, there is no need to restart X.)

>
> thanks for the tips but i don't feel like recompiling freetype or
> going to hunt for fonts on the net. i think this should work out of
> the box or at least be easy to fix.

There's no need to recompile anything. Slackware already supplies a
number of fonts. See here:

http://slackware.it/en/pb/search.php?v=10.2&t=1&q=fonts

Do you really expect Slackware to provide every conceivable font, even
if licensing permitted it?

>
> cheers


--

Liam