Re: Continuing Font Problems: Some XFT fonts not using XFT engine?

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Taylor Venable <taylor@metasyntax.net> writes:
> I can set XFT fonts like "DejaVu Sans Mono" for the 'default' face and
> it looks great.  However, when I set 'variable-pitch' to use "DejaVu
> Sans" or "DejaVu Serif" the XFT engine is not used.  To summarise:
>
>     (set-face-attribute 'variable-pitch nil :font "DejaVu Sans")
>        >> hover over something to get a tooltip, see that it's all
>           blocky and not anti-aliased

You're using openbsd, but on debian there's annoying package (which I
think gets installed by default) that makes all truetype fonts also
available as (usually pretty ugly ugly) X bitmap fonts, using the _same
font name_.  I think the debian package is called "xfstt".

This isn't such a problem for most apps, which only understand one of
the two types of fonts, but it may terribly confuse Emacs, which can
handle both simultaneously.

The easiest way to avoid the problem is to (1) un-install that package
[on debian, ... dunno on openbsd], or (2) tell emacs to only use either
"xft" or "x" fonts, and not both (the default is to support both).

You can do the latter by doing putting something like:

   Emacs.FontBackend: xft

in your .Xdefaults file, or by doing
(set-frame-parameter nil 'font-backend '(xft))
[this only affects the current frame though.]

> My Emacs version is: GNU Emacs 23.0.92.1 (i386-unknown-openbsd4.5,
> GTK+ Version 2.14.7) of 2009-04-13 on lionel.metasyntax.net

-Miles

-- 
"... The revolution will be no re-run brothers; The revolution will be live."