Help understanding font use under x server

archuser_9999 · 2022-02-19 21:54:44

Hi all,

After too many years of just leaping in and re-reading later, I thought I might try a change and find out all I need to know first!

Now that I run a fairly minimal session e.g. boot via .xinitrc into a fairly "bare bones" window manager (whereupon I take care of ensuring that things are loaded only as needed/required). Therefore I'm not under the "helpful" hand of a session/login manager.

All is going great until I stumble into the realisation that most of the (not that many) fonts already installed - which I did by means of official packages and nothing at all manual - are "not available to the x server" if that's the correct explanation. What I mean is that apart from a couple of leftover utilities like Mousepad which will list them, the WM itself has no idea of these fonts. This means that setting titlebar fonts etc. is all just fallback settings.

Naturally I set about reading the wiki. I was soon led into the chmod page because apparently I need at least 444 and 555. It's not clear if that refers to manual installs (of which there aren't any) and these days I'm very reluctant to start messing about with file perms unless absolutely necessary. Obviously the wiki suggests it, but I'm still unclear on whether that applies here.

All my fonts are here:

/usr/share/fonts $ ls -l
total 244
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 102400 Feb  7 10:02 100dpi
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 102400 Feb  7 10:02 75dpi
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   4096 Feb  7 10:06 adobe-source-code-pro
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   4096 Feb  9 19:37 adobe-source-sans
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   4096 Feb  9 19:37 adobe-source-serif
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   4096 Feb 16 15:05 awesome-terminal-fonts
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   4096 Feb  7 10:06 cantarell
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root   4096 Feb  7 10:02 encodings
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   4096 Feb  7 10:06 gnu-free
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   4096 Feb  7 10:06 gsfonts
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   4096 Feb  7 10:06 noto
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   4096 Feb  9 19:37 noto-cjk
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   4096 Feb  7 10:02 util

Do I have to alter all of these permissions? Since they're all in /usr/share there's nothing at all in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d and I'm very happy to leave it that way if I can - the less I interfere with Xorg the better (I generally find).

What do I need to do next in order to have these very fonts "visible" in X and therefore available to my window manager, but which is the least interference and is likely to keep the font list updated as it (might) grow?

Slithery · 2022-02-19 22:02:38

You shouldn't have to do anything at all, the fonts you've installed from the repos should automatically be available to all of your applications.

What leads you to believe that they aren't installed properly? What exactly do you mean buy 'the WM itself has no idea of these fonts'?

Trilby · 2022-02-19 22:06:31

First, set aside almost everything you are asking - you're barking up all the wrong trees. Do not change any permissions.

It's not really a meaningful question to ask how to make fonts "visible to the X server" (arguably this made a little more sense when XLFDs were the main way fonts were used, but even then it was debatable). Apparently you are having some problem with your window manager not being able to use some fonts. This has nothing to do with the x server. But if you want help configuring fonts for your wm, you'll need to tell us which wm it is and which fonts you are trying (and failing) to use.

paulkerry · 2022-02-19 22:15:49

I can see where you might have got the idea from about changing permissions, but that's for when you install fonts manually and not via pacman, as directed at...
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fonts# … stallation

The wiki pages regarding fonts are fairly vast! I can see from your directory listing that you don't have the misc fonts installed, so as a general recommendation, you might want to...

pacman -S xorg-fonts-misc

Also when you are running X...

xset q

is a command that gives you a list of your current font path.

Slithery · 2022-02-19 22:41:55

paulkerry wrote:

The wiki pages regarding fonts are fairly vast! I can see from your directory listing that you don't have the misc fonts installed, so as a general recommendation, you might want to...
pacman -S xorg-fonts-misc

Why are you recommending this?
None of those fonts are necessary for a working system.

paulkerry · 2022-02-21 10:58:04

Because I was guessing what the OP might be using until we get more info, so please disregard my suggestion.

Arch Linux

#1 2022-02-19 21:54:44

Help understanding font use under x server

#2 2022-02-19 22:02:38

Re: Help understanding font use under x server

#3 2022-02-19 22:06:31

Re: Help understanding font use under x server

#4 2022-02-19 22:15:49

Re: Help understanding font use under x server

#5 2022-02-19 22:41:55

Re: Help understanding font use under x server

#6 2022-02-21 10:58:04

Re: Help understanding font use under x server

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