problems with efont

problems with efont

[Peter Münster]

Hello,

I'm looking for a nice font for emacs. I like
-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1
but the biggest size available on my system is
-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-*-*-*-*-*-100-iso10646-1
and I would like it bigger.

The "efont" looks similar and the right size is available. But there are
problems, when used with recent emacs versions. I've also tried the latest
from http://bzr.notengoamigos.org/emacs/trunk/

Here the description of the problems
(screenshots are at http://pmrb.free.fr/tmp/emacs/ ):

1.) emacs -fn -efont-biwidth-medium-r-normal--24-*-*-*-*-120-iso10646-1
- borders are extremely large (see screenshot 1)
- to get 80 columns, I must use "emacs -g 8x40" (division by 10)
- when moving up and down, the point jumps back to a column that is
  a multiple of 10
- when ispell is showing suggestions, it does not use the available width
  but more height (see screenshot 1)

2.) emacs -fn -efont-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-*-*-*-*-120-iso10646-1
- some letters look strange and take more width than the others, for
  example ü and é (see screenshot 2)

3.) emacs -fn -efont-*-medium-r-normal--24-*-*-*-*-120-iso10646-1
- the tabulation character displays twice as large as normal (see
  screenshot 3)

There are no such problems with emacs-22.X.

Can others reproduces these problems?
Is this a bug of emacs or the efont-package?
What solution do you suggest, is there perhaps another font, that looks
similar but without such problems?

For now, I use "adobe-courier-bold-r" but I don't like it so much... :(

Cheers and happy new year, Peter

-- 
Contact information: http://pmrb.free.fr/contact/

Re: problems with efont

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 01.01.2010 um 19:33 schrieb Peter Münster:

> I'm looking for a nice font for emacs.

See whether you can like Lucida Sans Typewriter from Java! (I love it.)

--
Mit friedvollen Grüßen

   Pete

Alle reden vom Wetter - die Bahn fährt nicht.

Re: problems with efont

[Peter Münster]

On Fri, Jan 01 2010, Peter Dyballa wrote:
>
> Am 01.01.2010 um 19:33 schrieb Peter Münster:
>
>> I'm looking for a nice font for emacs.
>
> See whether you can like Lucida Sans Typewriter from Java! (I love it.)

Hello Peter,

I tried
-b&h-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-normal-sans-20-140-100-100-m-120-iso10646-1

The result is here: http://pmrb.free.fr/tmp/emacs/screenshot-4.jpg
It seems pale and pixelized. Is this normal? What do you think?
I don't know, if this font comes from Java. I get the fontnames from
"xlsfonts".

Can you reproduce the problems with efont?

Cheers, Peter

-- 
Contact information: http://pmrb.free.fr/contact/

Re: problems with efont

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 02.01.2010 um 18:22 schrieb Peter Münster:

> I tried
> -b&h-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-normal-sans-20-140-100-100-m-120- 
> iso10646-1

Sorry for my late reply, I had some other things to do – and  
particularly to remember my experience with efont! From this XLFD name  
I cannot tell anything. You could! For example by removing elements of  
the X server's font path (and rehashing the remainder) and see when  
this font vanishes from the list. But this can be faulty: GNU Emacs  
might use fontconfig (the user supplied side, which is able to provide  
the font's file name!). In the end the font can be part of the Lucida  
bitmap fonts in X11. Its size indicator points into this direction.  
Usually scalable or vector fonts can be deduced from their pixel and  
point size of 0 points.

>
> The result is here: http://pmrb.free.fr/tmp/emacs/screenshot-4.jpg
> It seems pale and pixelized. Is this normal? What do you think?

To me only "(" and ")" look pixelised. This can be due to poor  
performance of the rendering engine in your X server.

> I don't know, if this font comes from Java. I get the fontnames from
> "xlsfonts".

Check which shared libraries your version of GNU Emacs uses! If  
libfontconfig is among them then it will use fontconfig and you have  
its utilities fc-list or fc-match. Some possible commands (in case  
you're new to this):

	fc-list :lang=el,ar,he | sort
	fc-list : file family lang
	fc-list : file lang spacing | grep spac | egrep 'lang=.*th'

>
> Can you reproduce the problems with efont?


I remember that I tried efont and had the same problem: the width of  
LCR (Latin, Cyrillic, Greek) glyphs was much too wide, maybe adapted  
to that of complex CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) glyphs. It might be  
OK for CJK use...


In my Mac OS X system the Lucida TrueType fonts are in /System/Library/ 
Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/<version>/Home/lib/fonts. File  
names: LucidaTypewriter*.ttf.


--
Mit friedvollen Grüßen

   Pete

Wasting time is an important part of living.

Re: problems with efont

[Peter Münster]

On Sun, Jan 03 2010, Peter Dyballa wrote:
>
>> The result is here: http://pmrb.free.fr/tmp/emacs/screenshot-4.jpg
>> It seems pale and pixelized. Is this normal? What do you think?
>
> To me only "(" and ")" look pixelised. This can be due to poor performance 
> of the rendering engine in your X server.

Hello Peter,

Indeed, only the "(" and ")" look pixelised, but do you see also the thin
lines of the "m" compared to the other letters?


>> I don't know, if this font comes from Java. I get the fontnames from
>> "xlsfonts".
>
> Check which shared libraries your version of GNU Emacs uses! If 
> libfontconfig is among them then it will use fontconfig and you have its 
> utilities fc-list or fc-match. Some possible commands (in case you're new 
> to this):
>
> 	fc-list :lang=el,ar,he | sort
> 	fc-list : file family lang
> 	fc-list : file lang spacing | grep spac | egrep 'lang=.*th'

Thank you for this hint!  Now I've spent some more time on my font problem
with the following results:

- There weren't any Lucida fonts in my java installation, because my java
  package came from OpenJDK. After installing the java package from Sun, I
  found the LucidaTypewriter*.ttf files and fc-list shows them.

- Emacs is linked to fontconfig.

- With "emacs -fn 'Lucida Sans Typewriter'" I get a nice font, but too
  small.

- I've discovered Menu-bar -> Options -> Set Default Font ...
  (why only now and not earlier...???), where I could set the right
  size (18) and save it to .gnu-emacs-custom
  Do you know, how to set the size with command-line option or X-resources?

- For now, I'm quite satisfied with Lucida, but when I have some more time,
  I'll look for a font with another height/width ratio (less height) to
  get more lines on my screen... (with efont I got 5 more lines)

Thanks again for your answers!
Cheers, Peter

-- 
Contact information: http://pmrb.free.fr/contact/

Re: problems with efont (solved)

[Peter Münster]

On Mon, Jan 04 2010, Peter Münster wrote:

> - I've discovered Menu-bar -> Options -> Set Default Font ...
>   (why only now and not earlier...???), where I could set the right
>   size (18) and save it to .gnu-emacs-custom
>   Do you know, how to set the size with command-line option or X-resources?

Hello,

I've found it: "Lucida Sans Typewriter-18"


> - For now, I'm quite satisfied with Lucida, but when I have some more time,
>   I'll look for a font with another height/width ratio (less height) to
>   get more lines on my screen... (with efont I got 5 more lines)

I was wrong: I got 5 more lines with Efont, because the width of the font
was also smaller.

But I've discovered another problem with Lucida: "0" and "O" are not
distinguishable.

Now I've played again with Efont, but this time with the
fontconfig-notation. The pleasant result: *it works*!
That means: no more problems with "Efont Fixed-18".

Cheers, Peter

-- 
Contact information: http://pmrb.free.fr/contact/

Re: problems with efont (solved)

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 05.01.2010 um 15:39 schrieb Peter Münster:

> But I've discovered another problem with Lucida: "0" and "O" are not
> distinguishable.

Well, to me it does not happen so often that I have words with 0, or  
figures with O. And then my brain is usually clever enough to read the  
wrong character as the proper one.

>
> Now I've played again with Efont, but this time with the
> fontconfig-notation. The pleasant result: *it works*!
> That means: no more problems with "Efont Fixed-18".


Ah, I see! I used it when GNU Emacs was not able to work with  
libfontconfig. I think I'll try it again soon...


(BTW, I missed your previous reply somehow)

--
Greetings

   Pete

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a night, but set a man on  
fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

Re: problems with efont (solved)

[Peter Münster]

On Tue, Jan 05 2010, Peter Dyballa wrote:
>
> Am 05.01.2010 um 15:39 schrieb Peter Münster:
>
>> But I've discovered another problem with Lucida: "0" and "O" are not
>> distinguishable.
>
> Well, to me it does not happen so often that I have words with 0, or 
> figures with O. And then my brain is usually clever enough to read the 
> wrong character as the proper one.

Hello Peter,

You are right: *usually*!  And in the seldom cases, where characters and
digits are mixed (serial numbers, codes, passwords and so on), it can be
quite annoying.
But I agree, it shouldn't be that much a problem, if one is vigilant.
And I agree too, that Lucida is beautiful.


> (BTW, I missed your previous reply somehow)

It's in the mailing list archive now.

Cheers, Peter

-- 
Contact information: http://pmrb.free.fr/contact/