On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, Torsten Mueller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>Are you using the same fonts in both cases?
>I type in the same string in options->screen_fonts->roman: -*-times
This will give you the first font with a XLFD that matches this
pattern, as always. You need to find out what kind of fonts are
actually installed on your system.
>>What kind of fonts are you using (Bitmap, Type1, TrueType)?
>how can I figure this out?
>I must admit, that my knowledge about fonts is low. Until now I have simply
>chosen them in applications.
Tracking down which fonts are used can be tricky. I'm assuming
you're running some kind of Linux with XFree86 3.x on your
notebook. The following is based on a Debian install, but it
shouldn't be radically different with other distributions. So,
this is how you would go about that:
First run
xlsfonts | grep "\-.*-times-"
...this will spit out a list of XLFDs (X logical font
identifiers, these are the strings used by applications to
request fonts from the X server). Then find the file XF86Config
and look at the font paths parsed by the server. They are in a
section called "Files" and are preceded by "FontPath"; like this:
Section "Files"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/local/share/fonts/bitmap"
EndSection
Now browse the "fonts.dir" files in each of those directories and
look for the pattern you found out with xlsfonts. On my system,
I'd find a Times font in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/fonts.dir:
timI12.pcf.gz -adobe-times-medium-i-normal--12-120-75-75-p-63-iso8859-1
*.pcf is a bitmap font, *.pfa and *.pfb are Type1, *.ttf is
TrueType. You can also tell that it's a bitmap font by the fact
that there is one font file for any size, because bitmap fonts
are not scalable. If you have a standard setup of X 3.x, this
will almost always be the case for "-*-times-*".
>>Is the problem LyX specific?
>the fonts of the system tools look not bad, also with Staroffice it looks
>good (however not perfect), but in LyX it is really hard to read.
Sounds like it's a real mess in LyX. SO comes with it's own set
of fonts. These are Type1 fonts and they look rather poor on
screen (they're superior in printed output, however). Expect
more ;)
This is what I'd do: First off, adjust the dpi setting of X to
match your laptop display and then start X like "startx -dpi
<resolution>" (will help all X apps) or put the line "\screen_dpi
<resolution>" in your lyxrc. The procedure is described in the
LyX docs, see: Help, Customization, Section 3.7.1: "DPI setting".
Then, tell your X server to never scale bitmap fonts. This
happens in XF86Config by appending ":unscaled" to the font paths
(do that for bitmap fonts only!), like that:
Section "Files"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/local/share/fonts/bitmap:unscaled"
EndSection
If the name of the directory has something like "Xdpi" or "misc"
in its name, it's for bitmap fonts, otherwise you have to take a
look into the directory to find out. All of this is generally a
good thing(tm), you might want to do that regardless of the fonts
you use with LyX.
Then, decide wether you want to use bitmap or TrueType fonts in
LyX, these are the only formats that look good on screen (or can
be tweaked to do so). If you decide to use bitmap fonts, put that
in your lyxrc:
\screen_font_scalable false
\screen_font_sizes 5.0 7.0 8.0 9.0 10.0 12.0 14.0 17.0 20.0 25.0
Make sure the font sizes given in the second line match the sizes
actually available on your system for you prefered display font
(consult the fonts.dir file).
If you want to use TrueType fonts, you need to run a font server
that supports TT fonts (xfsft or xfstt, I've heard that the xfs
which ships with RedHat is patched to support them as well) and
get some well hinted TT fonts.
TT fonts are a bit of a hassle to install at first, but in the
long run they are more convenient to work with since they scale
seamlessly at almost any size (unless you want really tiny sizes,
in this case a good bitmap font might even look better, provided
you have matching sizes and supress scaling).
If you prefer to do that, let me know. I could try to walk you
through the xfsft setup, it's not that hard after all.
--
Philipp Lehman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
