Re: [vile] vile-9.8h

[Thomas Dickey]

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 10:06:30AM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 01:38:46PM +1000, Brendan O'Dea wrote:
> > On 8 August 2012 20:52, Thomas Dickey <address@hidden> wrote:
> > >> Is any progress likely on getting 'nice' fonts for xvile (in Linux)?
> > >> It's the one thing that I'd really like, the fonts I get in terminal
> > >> windows (using vile) in xvile as well.
> > >
> > > I keep dithering between doing this first in xterm versus vile :-(
> > > It's a long story...
> > 
> > What is meant by 'nice' here?  Doesn't xterm support Xft already
> > through -fa/faceName?

yes - but:

The calling interfaces for the two (XLFD aka bitmap fonts and TrueType
"Xft") are very different (mostly due to not-invented-here syndrome,
because it would have been just as simple to provide truetype fonts via
the XLFD interface as the existing arrangement where bitmap fonts can be
provided via fontconfig).

So xterm does this by doing most bookkeeping in sizes matching the
bitmap fonts, and then special-casing the calls to Xft.

That's not the whole story:  handling large fonts is expensive
(time/memory).  Rather than provide full-coverage for TrueType fonts
(which have larger footprints than bitmap fonts), they're rarely
distributed as anything except boutique-versions.  In turn that leads to
requiring fontsets for TrueType fonts (by the way, handling fontsets is
expensive time/memory also, but conveniently enough, people doing
comparisons shy away from quoting those figures).

xterm doesn't yet do fontsets.  UTF-8 vile with TrueType fonts would
have the same issue.  That's what I've been dithering about.

> In my terminal (not xterm) windows I get to use fonts like "DejaVu Sans
> Mono" which are much, much easier on the eye than the Lucida Sans and
> such available in xvile.  Basically I think my terminal allows me to use
> truetype fonts whereas xvile doesn't.  I think xterm has the same
> limitations as xvile.

sure - neither does fontsets (splicing together fonts at runtime).

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <address@hidden>
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

signature.asc
Description: Digital signature