Re: [SLUG] fontconfig q

[Jeff Waugh <jdub@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<quote who="Christopher Vance">

> On 8/21/06, Jeff Waugh <jdub@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I mentioned GTK+ in my explanation, but all modern toolkits do it the
> > same way. None of this is GNOME specific, it's all infrastructure. Not
> > sure why you need to avoid it though, it's perfect for the thin client /
> > application server use case.
> 
> I had assumed the G in GTK+ meant GNOME, but accept the correction.

The G in GTK+ stands for GIMP. The infrastructure underneath it is not GTK+
or GNOME specific.

> May I should have said "diskless", rather than "thin". Most aplications
> run on the diskless thing -- there is no application server.

Right, that's entirely different then. You just need to make sure that the
fontconfig configuration is appropriate across the shared and non-shared
filesystems (ie. /etc/fontconfig is correct as per /usr/share/fonts, etc).

> Most of the OS is a readonly squashfs, and most nfs access is also
> readonly. The main app is a biggish thing in Tcl/Tk, which is happy using
> the fonts off xfs.  Firefox gets used comparatively little.  Only four pcf
> font files out of /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc are local. These don't yet
> appear in fc-list, so I have work to do.

Given that it's diskless, and you're running everything on the machines
themselves, there's no point using xfs at all. Just do it local - it'll be
faster to boot (and there are whole swathes of legacy X fonts that most
distribution fontconfig configurations do not support, so you needn't worry
about bitmap fonts for instance).

> > System font directories that fontconfig knows about will need generated
> > cache files (your distribution should do this for you, but if not, look
> > into fc-cache). Local font directories will recache themselves when
> > required.
> 
> Unfortunately, I am the distribution, as there is no fontconfig shipped
> with thinstation so far.  :-(

Nice if you can dodge that bullet.

> I'll check fc-cache, and try to decide whether directories need to be
> copied into a writable memory fs, or whether they can be preconfigured on
> the readonly nfs, served off OpenBSD.

If you have fontconfig cache files on the read only nfs share of /usr/share,
you're done.

- Jeff

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