Re: Re: Re: XFt on Solaris

Jim,

Many thanks for the direction here.  I found a "solaris" build of the library on xfree86.org, but it was an x86 build, not sparc.  I did get the sources to xfree86 4.1 and did a make world.  I then installed the library on LD_LIBRARY_PATH, only to discover that I had libXrender.so.1.1, while openoffice wanted libXrender.so.1.

I soft linked libXrender.so.1 to libXrender.so.1.1 to see what would happen.  Openoffice quit complaining but the text was still ugly and marginally readable.

I wonder if I have a version problem or am missing other libraries, or maybe openoffice shouldn't be placed into a production environment just yet.  I think I'll back off of this until things mature some.  A pity though, my users were looking forward to better M$ filters.

Thanx again,
Marty

________________ Reply Header ________________
Subject:	Re: [Render] Re: XFt on Solaris
Author:	Jim Gettys <[email protected]>
Date:		 Tue, 26 Mar 2002 01:44:24 -0700

Yes, Xft is a client library, that uses the Xrender extension
available on your Linux machines.  You should have no particular
problems building either on Solaris for use across your network
from your Solaris system.  Just build XFree86 on Solaris, and you'll
get the client side support you need.

Xft2, which Keith will be releasing sometime soon, is also be able
to run against unmodified X servers that lack the render extension
(at lower performance, as it has to push the pixels  back and forth
to do so).
--
Jim Gettys
Cambridge Research Laboratory
Compaq Computer Corporation
[email protected]


> Sender: [email protected]
> From: Marty Scholes <[email protected]>
> Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 12:45:54 -0700
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: [Render] Re: XFt on Solaris
> -----
> I have a comment/question on this old topic.  Please forgive me if it
> has been previously covered; I could not find it in the archives.
> 
> We run a Sun (Solaris 7 with a pending Solaris 8 upgrade) with no
> display and Linux boxes on everyone's desk as an X terminal.  All of the
> X clients run on the Sun.
> 
> The other day I went to install openoffice on the Sun and it grumped
> about missing libXrender.so and the fonts (an ugly fallback?) looked
> awful.
> 
> Our Linux boxes are RENDER-ready, but despite searching high and low, I
> cannot find the missing library for Solaris in a binary format.

There are tarballs for Solaris 8 and 7 for XFree86 4.1 that I'd expect
to find the client libraries for Xrender.  As there have been a fair number
of fixes to Xft since 4.1, I suspect you'd be just as well off building
the sources yourself for it (Xrender has been pretty stable over that period).

If all you need is libXrender.so, you might try grabbing it from the
tarballs and seeing if it keeps OpenOffice happy.

> 
> Here's what I think is going on.  I think that the libXrender library is
> a client-side library.  I also think that few (no) shops are trying to
> run render in a mixed platform environment.  Most people run the client
> and server both under Linux and all is well.  I am not blessed with that
> situation.

Lots of people run mixed environments, including a number of XFree86
developers, though Solaris is becoming more rare (e.g. Linux, *BSD, etc).

Applications that really push Xft and Xrender are just becoming common,
however, with KDE support, OpenOffice support, shortly Gnome 2 support,
Wine just hitting the streets recently.
> 
> I think I found the sources at Xfree86 and will attempt to compile them
> and install the library on the Sun box and hopefully openoffice will run
> ok.
> 
> Will this work?  Are there any other problems I will run into?

Should be straight forward.  Let us know if there are any problems:
there shouldn't be.

> 
> Thanx in advance.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Marty
> 
>
			- Jim