source: x/installing/tuning-fontconfig.xml@ 88146cd4

12.0 12.1 ken/TL2024 ken/tuningfonts lazarus plabs/newcss python3.11 rahul/power-profiles-daemon renodr/vulkan-addition trunk xry111/llvm18
Last change on this file since 88146cd4 was 8251b48, checked in by Douglas R. Reno <renodr@…>, 9 months ago

Tuning Fontconfig: Minor text tweaks

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1<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
2<!DOCTYPE sect1 PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
3 "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd" [
4 <!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../../general.ent">
5 %general-entities;
6]>
7
8<sect1 id="tuning-fontconfig">
9 <?dbhtml filename="tuning-fontconfig.html"?>
10
11
12 <title>Tuning Fontconfig</title>
13
14 <indexterm zone="tuning-fontconfig">
15 <primary sortas="g-tuning-fontconfig">Tuning Fontconfig</primary>
16 </indexterm>
17
18 <sect2 id='fontconfig-overview' xreflabel="Overview of Fontconfig">
19 <title>Overview of Fontconfig</title>
20
21<!-- do not add individual indexterm entries for items within this page, they
22 all belong in section G (others) and not only do they add noise in longindex,
23 the links all point to the top of the page. -->
24
25 <para>
26 If you only read text in English, and are happy with the common libre
27 fonts listed on the next page, you may never need to worry about the
28 details of how <application>fontconfig</application> works. But there are
29 many things which can be altered if they do not suit your needs.
30 </para>
31
32 <para>
33 Although this page is long, it barely scratches the surface and you will
34 be able to find many alternative views on the web (but please remember
35 that some things have changed over the years, for example the autohinter
36 is no longer the default). The aim here is to give you enough information
37 to understand the changes you are making.
38 </para>
39
40 </sect2>
41
42 <sect2 role="configuration" id="xft-font-protocol" xreflabel="The Xft Font Protocol">
43 <title>The Xft Font Protocol</title>
44
45 <para>
46 The Xft font protocol provides antialiased font rendering through
47 <application>freetype</application>, and fonts are controlled from the
48 client side using <application>fontconfig</application> (except for
49 <xref linkend="rxvt-unicode"/> which can use fonts listed in
50 <filename>~/.Xresources</filename>, and <xref linkend="abiword"/> which
51 only uses the specified font). The default search path is <filename
52 class="directory">/usr/share/fonts</filename> and <filename
53 class="directory">~/.local/share/fonts</filename>, although for the moment
54 the old and deprecated location <filename
55 class="directory">~/.fonts</filename> still works.
56 <application>Fontconfig</application> searches directories in its path
57 recursively and maintains a cache of the font characteristics in each
58 directory. If the cache appears to be out of date, it is ignored, and
59 information is fetched from the fonts themselves (that can take a few
60 seconds if you have a lot of fonts installed).
61 </para>
62
63 <para>
64 If you've installed <application>Xorg</application> in any prefix
65 other than <filename class="directory">/usr</filename>, any
66 <application>X</application> fonts were not installed in a
67 location known to <application>Fontconfig</application>. Symlinks were
68 <!-- fonts-misc-ethiopic installs an OTF directory ! -->
69 created from the <filename class="directory">OTF</filename> and <filename
70 class="directory">TTF</filename> <application>X</application> font
71 directories to <filename
72 class="directory">/usr/share/fonts/X11-{OTF,TTF}</filename>. This allows
73 <application>Fontconfig</application> to use the OpenType and TrueType
74 fonts provided by <application>X</application>, although many people will
75 prefer to use more modern fonts.
76 </para>
77
78 <para>
79 <application>Fontconfig</application> uses names to define fonts.
80 Applications generally use generic font names such as "Monospace", "Sans"
81 and "Serif". <application>Fontconfig</application> resolves these names
82 to a font that has all characters that cover the orthography of the
83 language indicated by the locale settings.
84 </para>
85
86 </sect2>
87
88 <sect2 role="configuration" id="useful-commands" xreflabel="Useful Commands">
89 <title>Useful Commands</title>
90
91 <para>
92 The following commands may be helpful when working with fontconfig:
93 </para>
94
95 <para>
96 <command>fc-list | less</command> : shows a list of all available fonts
97 (/path/to/filename: Font Name:style). If you installed a font more than
98 30 seconds ago but it does not show, then it or one of its directories is
99 not readable by your user.
100 </para>
101
102 <para>
103 <command>fc-match 'Font Name'</command> : tells you which font will
104 be used if the named font is requested. Typically you would use this to
105 see what happens if a font you have not installed is requested, but you
106 can also use it if the system is giving you a different font from
107 what you expected (perhaps because <application>fontconfig</application>
108 does not think that the font supports your language).
109 </para>
110
111 <para>
112 <command>fc-match -a 'Type' | less</command> : provides a list of all
113 fonts which can be used for that type (Monospace, Sans, Serif). Note that
114 in-extremis <application>fontconfig</application> will take a glyph from
115 any available font, even if it is not of the specified type, and unless it
116 knows about the font's type it will assume it is Sans.
117 </para>
118
119 <para>
120 If you wish to know which font will be used for a string of text
121 (i.e. one or more glyphs, preceded by a space), paste the following
122 command and replace the <literal>xyz</literal> by the text you care
123 about:
124 </para>
125
126 <para>
127 <command>FC_DEBUG=4 pango-view --font=monospace -t xyz | grep
128 family</command> : this requires <xref linkend="pango"/> and <xref
129 linkend="imagemagick"/> - it will invoke <xref linkend="display"/>
130 to show the text in a tiny window, and after closing that the last
131 line of the output will show which font was chosen. This is
132 particularly useful for CJK languages, and you can also pass a
133 language, e.g. PANGO_LANGUAGE=en;ja (English, then assume Japanese)
134 or just zh-cn (or other variants - 'zh' on its own is not valid).
135 </para>
136
137 </sect2>
138
139 <sect2 role="configuration" id="the-various-files" xreflabel="The various files">
140 <title>The various files</title>
141
142 <para>
143 The main files are in <filename class="directory">/etc/fonts/conf.d/</filename>,
144 which was intended to be a directory populated by symlinks to some of the files
145 in <filename class="directory">/usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/</filename>.
146 But many people, and some packages, create the files directly. Each file name
147 must be in the form of two digits, a dash, somename.conf and they are read in
148 sequence.
149 </para>
150
151 <para>
152 By convention, the numbers are assigned as follows:
153 </para>
154
155 <itemizedlist>
156 <listitem>
157 <para>
158 00-09 extra font directories
159 </para>
160 </listitem>
161 <listitem>
162 <para>
163 10-19 system rendering defaults (such as antialiasing)
164 </para>
165 </listitem>
166 <listitem>
167 <para>
168 20-29 font rendering options
169 </para>
170 </listitem>
171 <listitem>
172 <para>
173 30-39 family substitution
174 </para>
175 </listitem>
176 <listitem>
177 <para>
178 40-49 map family to generic type
179 </para>
180 </listitem>
181 <listitem>
182 <para>
183 50-59 load alternate config files
184 </para>
185 </listitem>
186 <listitem>
187 <para>
188 60-69 generic aliases, map generic to family
189 </para>
190 </listitem>
191 <listitem>
192 <para>
193 70-79 adjust which fonts are available
194 </para>
195 </listitem>
196 <listitem>
197 <para>
198 80-89 match target scan (modify scanned patterns)
199 </para>
200 </listitem>
201 <listitem>
202 <para>
203 90-99 font synthesis
204 </para>
205 </listitem>
206 </itemizedlist>
207
208 <para>
209 You can also have a personal <filename>fonts.conf</filename> in
210 $XDG_CONFIG_HOME (which is <filename
211 class="directory">~/.config/fontconfig/</filename>).
212 </para>
213
214 </sect2>
215
216 <sect2 role="configuration" id="rules-to-choose-a-font" xreflabel="The rules to choose a font">
217 <title>The rules to choose a font</title>
218
219 <para>
220 If the requested font is installed, and provided it contains the
221 codepoints <emphasis>required</emphasis> for the current language (in the
222 source, see the .orth files in the <filename
223 class="directory">fc-lang/</filename> directory), it will be used.
224 </para>
225
226 <para>
227 However, if the document or page requested a font which is not installed
228 (or, occasionally, does not contain all the required codepoints) the
229 following rules come into play: First,
230 <filename>30-metric-aliases.conf</filename> is used to map aliases for
231 some fonts with the same metrics (same size, etc). After that, an
232 unknown font will be searched for in <filename>45-latin.conf</filename> -
233 if it is found it will be mapped as Serif or Monospace or Sans, otherwise
234 it will be assumed to be Sans. Then <filename>50-latin.conf</filename>
235 provides ordered lists of the fallbacks - <xref linkend="dejavu-fonts"/>
236 will be used if you installed them. Cyrillic and Greek appear to be
237 treated in the same way. There are similar files with a 65- prefix for
238 Persian and other non-latin writing systems. All of these files prefer
239 commercial fonts if they are present, although modern libre fonts are
240 often at least equal.
241 </para>
242
243 <para>
244 Since fontconfig-2.12.5, there is also generic family matching for some
245 emoji and math fonts, please see {45,60}-generic.conf.
246 </para>
247
248 <para>
249 In the rare cases where a font does not contain all the expected
250 codepoints, see 'Trial the First:' at <xref
251 linkend="I-stared-into-the-fontconfig"/> for the long details.
252 </para>
253
254 </sect2>
255
256 <sect2 role="configuration" id="hinting-and-antialiasing" xreflabel="Hinting and Anti-aliasing">
257 <title>Hinting and Anti-aliasing</title>
258
259 <para>
260 It is possible to change how, or if, fonts are hinted. The following
261 example file contains the default settings, but with comments. The
262 settings are very much down to the user's preferences and to the choice
263 of fonts, so a change which improves some pages may worsen others. The
264 preferred location for this file is:
265 <filename>~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf</filename>
266 </para>
267
268 <para>
269 To try out different settings, you may need to exit from Xorg and then
270 run <command>startx</command> again so that all applications use the new
271 settings. If you use GNOME, KDE, or LXQt, their desktops can override
272 these changes. To explore the possibilities, create a file for your user:
273 </para>
274
275<screen><userinput>mkdir -pv ~/.config/fontconfig &amp;&amp;
276cat > ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf &lt;&lt; "EOF"
277<literal>&lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
278&lt;!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'&gt;
279&lt;fontconfig&gt;
280
281 &lt;match target="font" &gt;
282 &lt;!-- autohint was the old automatic hinter when hinting was patent
283 protected, so turn it off to ensure any hinting information in the font
284 itself is used, this is the default --&gt;
285 &lt;edit mode="assign" name="autohint"&gt; &lt;bool&gt;false&lt;/bool&gt;&lt;/edit&gt;
286
287 &lt;!-- hinting is enabled by default --&gt;
288 &lt;edit mode="assign" name="hinting"&gt; &lt;bool&gt;true&lt;/bool&gt;&lt;/edit&gt;
289
290 &lt;!-- for the lcdfilter see https://www.spasche.net/files/lcdfiltering/ --&gt;
291 &lt;edit mode="assign" name="lcdfilter"&gt; &lt;const&gt;lcddefault&lt;/const&gt;&lt;/edit&gt;
292
293 &lt;!-- options for hintstyle:
294 hintfull: is supposed to give a crisp font that aligns well to the
295 character-cell grid but at the cost of its proper shape.
296
297 hintmedium: poorly documented, maybe a synonym for hintfull.
298 hintslight is the default: - supposed to be more fuzzy but retains shape.
299
300 hintnone: seems to turn hinting off.
301 The variations are marginal and results vary with different fonts --&gt;
302 &lt;edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle"&gt; &lt;const&gt;hintslight&lt;/const&gt;&lt;/edit&gt;
303
304 &lt;!-- antialiasing is on by default and really helps for faint characters
305 and also for 'xft:' fonts used in rxvt-unicode --&gt;
306 &lt;edit mode="assign" name="antialias"&gt; &lt;bool&gt;true&lt;/bool&gt;&lt;/edit&gt;
307
308 &lt;!-- subpixels are usually rgb, see
309 http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/subpixel.php --&gt;
310 &lt;edit mode="assign" name="rgba"&gt; &lt;const&gt;rgb&lt;/const&gt;&lt;/edit&gt;
311
312 &lt;!-- thanks to the Arch wiki for the lcd and subpixel links --&gt;
313 &lt;/match&gt;
314
315&lt;/fontconfig&gt;</literal>
316EOF</userinput></screen>
317
318 <para>
319 You will now need to edit the file in your preferred editor.
320 </para>
321
322 <para>
323 For more examples see the blfs-support thread which started at <ulink
324 url="https://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/sympa/arc/blfs-support/2016-09/msg00128.html">2016-09/00128</ulink>,
325 particularly <ulink
326 url="https://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/sympa/arc/blfs-support/2016-09/msg00137.html">2016-09/00137</ulink>,
327 and the original poster's preferred solution at <ulink
328 url="https://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/sympa/arc/blfs-support/2016-09/msg00147.html">2016-09/00147</ulink>.
329 There are other examples in <xref linkend="arch-fontconfig"/> and <xref
330 linkend="gentoo-fontconfig"/>.
331 </para>
332
333 </sect2>
334
335 <sect2 role="configuration" id="disabling-bitmap-fonts" xreflabel="Disabling Bitmap fonts">
336 <title>Disabling Bitmap Fonts</title>
337
338 <para>
339 In previous versions of BLFS, the ugly old Xorg bitmap fonts were
340 installed. Now, many people will not need to install any of them. But if
341 for some reason you have installed one or more bitmap fonts, you can
342 prevent them from being used by <application>fontconfig</application> by
343 creating the following file as the &root; user :
344 </para>
345
346<screen role="root"><userinput>cat > /etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf &lt;&lt; "EOF"
347<literal>&lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
348&lt;!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'&gt;
349&lt;fontconfig&gt;
350&lt;!-- Reject bitmap fonts --&gt;
351 &lt;selectfont&gt;
352 &lt;rejectfont&gt;
353 &lt;pattern&gt;
354 &lt;patelt name="scalable"&gt;&lt;bool&gt;false&lt;/bool&gt;&lt;/patelt&gt;
355 &lt;/pattern&gt;
356 &lt;/rejectfont&gt;
357 &lt;/selectfont&gt;
358&lt;/fontconfig&gt;</literal>
359EOF</userinput></screen>
360
361 </sect2>
362
363 <sect2 role="configuration" id="adding-extra-directories" xreflabel="Adding extra font directories">
364 <title>Adding extra font directories</title>
365
366 <para>
367 Normally, system fonts and user fonts are installed in directories beneath
368 the locations specified in <xref linkend="xft-font-protocol"/> and there
369 is no obvious reason to put them elsewhere. However, a full BLFS install
370 of <xref linkend="texlive"/> puts many fonts in <filename
371 class="directory">/opt/texlive/&texlive-year;/texmf-dist/fonts/</filename>
372 in the <filename class="directory">opentype/</filename> and <filename
373 class="directory">truetype/</filename> subdirectories. Although pulling in
374 all of these files may appear useful (it allows you to use them in non
375 <application>TeX</application> programs), there are several problems with
376 such an approach:
377 </para>
378
379 <orderedlist>
380 <listitem>
381 <para>
382 There are hundreds of files, which makes selecting fonts difficult.
383 </para>
384 </listitem>
385 <listitem>
386 <para>
387 Some of the files do odd things, such as displaying semaphore flags
388 instead of ASCII letters, or mapping cyrillic codepoints to character
389 forms appropriate to Old Church Slavonic instead of the expected
390 current shapes: fine if that is what you need, but painful for normal
391 use.
392 </para>
393 </listitem>
394 <listitem>
395 <para>
396 Several fonts have multiple sizes and impenetrable short names, which
397 both make selecting the correct font even more difficult.
398 </para>
399 </listitem>
400 <listitem>
401 <para>
402 When a font is added to CTAN, it is accompanied by TeX packages to use
403 it in the old engines (<application>xelatex</application> does not
404 normally need this), and then the version is often frozen whilst the
405 font is separately maintained. Some of these fonts such as <xref
406 linkend="dejavu-fonts"/> are probably already installed on your BLFS
407 system in a newer version, and if you have multiple versions of a font
408 it is unclear which one will be used by
409 <application>fontconfig</application>.
410 </para>
411 </listitem>
412 </orderedlist>
413
414 <para>
415 However, it is sometimes useful to look at these fonts in non-TeX
416 applications, if only to see whether you wish to install a current
417 version. If you have installed all of <application>texlive</application>,
418 the following example will make one of the Arkandis Open Type fonts
419 available to other applications, and all three of the ParaType TrueType
420 fonts. Adjust or repeat the lines as desired, to either make all the
421 <filename class="directory">opentype/</filename> or <filename
422 class="directory">truetype</filename>fonts available, or to select
423 different font directories. As the <systemitem
424 class="username">root</systemitem> user:
425 </para>
426
427<screen role="root"><userinput>cat > /etc/fonts/conf.d/09-texlive.conf &lt;&lt; "EOF"
428<literal>&lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
429&lt;!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'&gt;
430&lt;fontconfig&gt;
431 &lt;dir&gt;/opt/texlive/&texlive-year;/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype/arkandis/berenisadf&lt;/dir&gt;
432 &lt;dir&gt;/opt/texlive/&texlive-year;/texmf-dist/fonts/truetype/paratype&lt;/dir&gt;
433&lt;/fontconfig&gt;</literal>
434EOF</userinput></screen>
435
436 <para>
437 If you do this, remember to change all instances of the year in that file
438 when you upgrade <application>texlive</application> to a later release.
439 </para>
440
441 </sect2>
442
443 <sect2 role="configuration" id="preferring-certain-fonts" xreflabel="Preferring certain fonts">
444 <title>Preferring certain fonts</title>
445
446 <para>
447 There are many reasons why people may wish to have pages which specify a
448 particular font use a different font, or prefer specific fonts in
449 Monospace or Sans or Serif. As you will expect, there a number of
450 different ways of achieving this.
451 </para>
452
453 <bridgehead renderas="sect3" id="fontconfig-user-docs"
454 xreflabel="fontconfig-user-docs">Fontconfig user docs</bridgehead>
455
456 <para>
457 <application>Fontconfig</application> installs user documentation that
458 includes an example 'User configuration file' which among other things
459 prefers <xref linkend="wenquanyi-zenhei"/> (a Sans font) if a
460 <emphasis>Serif</emphasis> font is requested for Chinese (this part
461 might be anachronistic unless you have non-free Chinese fonts, because
462 in <filename>65-nonlatin.conf</filename> this font is already among the
463 preferred fonts when Serif is specified for Chinese) and to prefer the
464 modern <xref linkend="VLGothic"/> font if a Sans font is specified on a
465 Japanese page (otherwise a couple of other fonts would be preferred if
466 they have been installed).
467 </para>
468
469 <para>
470 If you have installed the current version, the user documentation is
471 available in HTML, PDF, and text versions at <filename
472 class="directory">/usr/share/doc/fontconfig-&fontconfig-version;/</filename>
473 : change the version if you installed a different one.
474 </para>
475
476 <bridgehead renderas="sect3" id="prefer-a-specific-font"
477 xreflabel="fontconfig-prefer-specific-font">Prefer a specific font</bridgehead>
478
479 <para>
480 As an example, if for some reason you wished to use the <ulink
481 url="https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/nimbus-roman-no9-l">Nimbus Roman
482 No9 L</ulink> font wherever Times New Roman is referenced (it is
483 metrically similar, and preferred for Times Roman, but the Serif font
484 from <xref linkend="liberation-fonts"/> will be preferred for the Times
485 <emphasis>New</emphasis> Roman font if installed), as an individual user
486 you could install the font and then create the following file:
487 </para>
488
489<screen><userinput>mkdir -pv ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d &amp;&amp;
490cat > ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/35-prefer-nimbus-for-timesnew.conf &lt;&lt; "EOF"
491<literal>&lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
492&lt;!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'&gt;
493&lt;fontconfig&gt;
494&lt;!-- prefer Nimbus Roman No9 L for Times New Roman as well as for Times,
495 without this Tinos and Liberation Serif take precedence for Times New Roman
496 before fontconfig falls back to whatever matches Times --&gt;
497 &lt;alias binding="same"&gt;
498 &lt;family&gt;Times New Roman&lt;/family&gt;
499 &lt;accept&gt;
500 &lt;family&gt;Nimbus Roman No9 L&lt;/family&gt;
501 &lt;/accept&gt;
502 &lt;/alias&gt;
503&lt;/fontconfig&gt;</literal>
504EOF</userinput></screen>
505
506 <para>
507 This is something you would normally do in an individual user's
508 settings, but the file in this case has been prefixed '35-' so that it
509 could, if desired, be used system-wide in <filename
510 class="directory">/etc/fonts/conf.d/</filename>.
511 </para>
512
513 <bridgehead renderas="sect3" id="prefer-chosen-CJK-fonts"
514 xreflabel="Prefer chosen CJK fonts">Prefer chosen CJK fonts</bridgehead>
515
516 <para>
517 The following example of a local configuration (i.e. one that applies
518 for all users of the machine) does several things:
519 </para>
520
521 <orderedlist>
522 <listitem>
523 <para>
524 If a Serif font is specified, it will prefer the <xref
525 linkend="UMing"/> variants, so that in the zh-cn, zh-hk and zh-tw
526 languages things should look good (also zh-sg which actually uses
527 the same settings as zh-cn) <emphasis>without</emphasis> affecting
528 Japanese.
529 </para>
530 </listitem>
531 <listitem>
532 <para>
533 It prefers the Japanese <xref linkend="IPAex"/> if they have been
534 installed (although <xref linkend="VLGothic"/> will take precedence
535 for (Japanese) Sans if it has also been installed.
536 </para>
537 </listitem>
538 <listitem>
539 <para>
540 Because <xref linkend="wenquanyi-zenhei"/> covers Korean Hangul
541 glyphs and is also preferred for Serif in
542 <filename>65-nonlatin.conf</filename>, if installed it will be used
543 by default for Korean Serif. To get a proper Serif font, the
544 UnBatang font is specified here - change that line if you installed
545 a different Serif font from the choice of <xref
546 linkend="Korean-fonts"/>.
547 </para>
548 </listitem>
549 <listitem>
550 <para>
551 The Monospace fonts are forced to the preferred Sans fonts. If the
552 text is in Korean then <xref linkend="wenquanyi-zenhei"/> will be
553 used.
554 </para>
555 </listitem>
556 </orderedlist>
557
558 <para>
559 In a non-CJK locale, the result is that suitable fonts will be used for
560 all variants of Chinese, Japanese and Hangul Korean. All other languages
561 should already work if a font is present. As the <systemitem
562 class="username">root</systemitem> user:
563 </para>
564
565<screen role="root"><userinput>cat > /etc/fonts/local.conf &lt;&lt; "EOF"
566<literal>&lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
567&lt;!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'&gt;
568&lt;fontconfig&gt;
569 &lt;alias&gt;
570 &lt;family&gt;serif&lt;/family&gt;
571 &lt;prefer&gt;
572 &lt;family&gt;AR PL UMing&lt;/family&gt;
573 &lt;family&gt;IPAexMincho&lt;/family&gt;
574 &lt;!-- WenQuanYi is preferred as Serif in 65-nonlatin.conf,
575 override that so a real Korean font can be used for Serif --&gt;
576 &lt;family&gt;UnBatang&lt;/family&gt;
577 &lt;/prefer&gt;
578 &lt;/alias&gt;
579 &lt;alias&gt;
580 &lt;family&gt;sans-serif&lt;/family&gt;
581 &lt;prefer&gt;
582 &lt;family&gt;WenQuanYi Zen Hei&lt;/family&gt;
583 &lt;family&gt;VL Gothic&lt;/family&gt;
584 &lt;family&gt;IPAexGothic&lt;/family&gt;
585 &lt;/prefer&gt;
586 &lt;/alias&gt;
587 &lt;alias&gt;
588 &lt;family&gt;monospace&lt;/family&gt;
589 &lt;prefer&gt;
590 &lt;family&gt;VL Gothic&lt;/family&gt;
591 &lt;family&gt;IPAexGothic&lt;/family&gt;
592 &lt;family&gt;WenQuanYi Zen Hei&lt;/family&gt;
593 &lt;/prefer&gt;
594 &lt;/alias&gt;
595&lt;/fontconfig&gt;</literal>
596EOF</userinput></screen>
597
598 </sect2>
599
600
601 <sect2 role="configuration" id="editing-old-style-conf-files"
602 xreflabel="Editing Old-Style conf files">
603 <title>Editing Old-Style conf files</title>
604
605 <para>
606 Some fonts, particularly Chinese fonts, ship with conf files which can be
607 installed in <filename class="directory">/etc/fonts/conf.d</filename>.
608 However, if you do that and then use a terminal to run any command which
609 uses <application>fontconfig</application> you may see error messages such
610 as :
611 </para>
612
613 <para>
614 <literal>Fontconfig warning: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/69-odofonts.conf", line
615 14: Having multiple &lt;family&gt; in &lt;alias&gt; isn't supported and
616 may not work as expected</literal>.
617 </para>
618
619 <para>
620 In practice, these old rules do not work. For non-CJK users,
621 <application>fontconfig</application> will usually do a good job
622 <emphasis>without</emphasis> these rules. Their origin dates back to when
623 CJK users needed handcrafted bitmaps to be legible at small sizes, and
624 those looked ugly next to antialiased Latin glyphs - they preferred to
625 use the same CJK font for the Latin glyphs. There is a side-effect of
626 doing this : the (Serif) font is often also used for Sans, and in such a
627 situation the (English) text in <application>Gtk</application> menus will
628 use this font - compared to system fonts, as well as being serif it is
629 both faint and rather small. That can make it uncomfortable to read.
630 </para>
631
632 <para>
633 Nevertheless, these old conf files can be fixed if you wish to use them.
634 The following example is the first part of
635 <filename>64-arphic-uming.conf</filename> from <xref linkend="UMing"/> -
636 there are many more similar items which also need changing :
637 </para>
638
639 <para>
640 <literallayout>
641 &lt;match target="pattern"&gt;
642 &lt;test qual="any" name="lang" compare="contains"&gt;
643 &lt;string&gt;zh-cn&lt;/string&gt;
644 &lt;string&gt;zh-sg&lt;/string&gt;
645 &lt;/test&gt;
646 &lt;test qual="any" name="family"&gt;
647 &lt;string&gt;serif&lt;/string&gt;
648 &lt;/test&gt;
649 &lt;edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="strong"&gt;
650 &lt;string&gt;AR PL UMing CN&lt;/string&gt;
651 &lt;/edit&gt;
652 &lt;/match&gt;</literallayout>
653 </para>
654
655 <para>
656 The process to correct this is straightforward but tedious - for every
657 item which produces an error message, using your editor (as the &root;
658 user), edit the installed
659 file to repeat the whole block as many times as there are multiple
660 variables, then reduce each example to have only one of them. You may
661 wish to work on one error at a time, save the file after each fix, and
662 from a separate term run a command such as <command>fc-list 2>&amp;1 |
663 less</command> to see that the fix worked. For the block above, the fixed
664 version will be :
665 </para>
666
667 <para>
668 <literallayout>
669 &lt;match target="pattern"&gt;
670 &lt;test qual="any" name="lang" compare="contains"&gt;
671 &lt;string&gt;zh-cn&lt;/string&gt;
672 &lt;/test&gt;
673 &lt;test qual="any" name="family"&gt;
674 &lt;string&gt;serif&lt;/string&gt;
675 &lt;/test&gt;
676 &lt;edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="strong"&gt;
677 &lt;string&gt;AR PL UMing CN&lt;/string&gt;
678 &lt;/edit&gt;
679 &lt;/match&gt;
680 &lt;match target="pattern"&gt;
681 &lt;test qual="any" name="lang" compare="contains"&gt;
682 &lt;string&gt;zh-sg&lt;/string&gt;
683 &lt;/test&gt;
684 &lt;test qual="any" name="family"&gt;
685 &lt;string&gt;serif&lt;/string&gt;
686 &lt;/test&gt;
687 &lt;edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="strong"&gt;
688 &lt;string&gt;AR PL UMing CN&lt;/string&gt;
689 &lt;/edit&gt;
690 &lt;/match&gt;</literallayout>
691 </para>
692
693 </sect2>
694
695
696 <sect2 role="configuration" id="see-also" xreflabel="See Also">
697 <title>See Also</title>
698
699 <bridgehead renderas="sect3" id="I-stared-into-the-fontconfig"
700 xreflabel="I stared into the fontconfig">I stared into the fontconfig ...</bridgehead>
701
702 <para>
703 The blog entries by <ulink
704 url="https://eev.ee/blog/2015/05/20/i-stared-into-the-fontconfig-and-the-fontconfig-stared-back-at-me/">Eevee</ulink>
705 are particularly useful if <application>fontconfig</application> does not
706 think your chosen font supports your language, and for preferring some
707 non-MS Japanese fonts when an ugly MS font is already installed.
708 </para>
709
710 <bridgehead renderas="sect3" id="arch-fontconfig"
711 xreflabel="Fontconfig in the Arch wiki">Fontconfig in the Arch wiki</bridgehead>
712
713 <para>
714 Arch has a lot of information in its wiki at <ulink
715 url="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/font_configuration">font_configuration</ulink>.
716 </para>
717
718 <bridgehead renderas="sect3" id="gentoo-fontconfig"
719 xreflabel="Fontconfig in the Gentoo wiki">Fontconfig in the Gentoo wiki</bridgehead>
720
721 <para>
722 Gentoo has some information in its wiki at <ulink
723 url="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Fontconfig">Fontconfig</ulink> although
724 a lot of the details (what to enable, and Infinality) are specific to
725 Gentoo.
726 </para>
727
728 </sect2>
729
730</sect1>
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