Re: 23.0.60; Heavy display problems with new font backend

[Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>]

Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org> writes:

Hi Jason,

> There is a new font backend for the "old" X fonts, so you should be
> able to just keep using the old bitmapped fonts without having to
> resort to --disable-font-backend.

If I select an X bitmap font using

  Emacs.Font: -misc-fixed-medium-r-*-*-15-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1

in my .Xdefaults, I have some font size problems.  For example in gnus
summary buffers, text in gnus-summary-normal-unread face is normal, but
text in gnus-summary-low-read appears smaller and garbles my tabular
layout.  describe-face shows that its Font parameter is nil, Slant is
italic and Foreground is DarkGreen, the rest is unspecefied.

misc-fixed doesn't provide italic chars (according to xfontsel), so I
guess that's the cause of Font being nil.

But emacs with

  Emacs.FontBackend: x
  Emacs.Font: -misc-fixed-medium-r-*-*-15-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1

handles that situation much better.  The output of describe-face is the
same (e.g. Font is nil), but instead of using some smaller characters it
simply applies only the applicable parameters to the default face,
i.e. it's DarkGreen but not italic.

Bye,
Tassilo