Re: fonts

| >  It is possible to patch exmh to make good use of XFT fonts, but I
| > don't believe that this is integrated into the CVS tree.
|
| I think I've got that patch someplace, I'll see what I can do this
| weekend.  One question I have is:
|
| Given that for some configs and releases of Tk it may result in a
| sub-optimal experience, should there be a resource to specify whether
| to prefer XLFD fonts or XFT?

 My understanding is that currently you don't have a choice of which
sort of fonts to use, at least not in any simple way. Tk can be compiled
for either XLFD or XFT fonts but not both, so you get whatever sort of
fonts your Tk binary was compiled to support (and distributions have been
switching their Tk builds from XLFD to XFT over time). There is at best
weak compatibility for using the 'wrong' form of fond description for your
particular Tk; I think that in a lot of cases you just get whatever is the
default font. 

 Certainly my patch doesn't choose to use XFT fonts. It only tries to
auto-detect which font system is in use[*] and then dispatch to code that
does either XLFD or XFT font selection depending on which it is. The
XLFD code is the existing XLFD code in exmh, the XFT code is new in my
patch.

 If new versions of Tk support both in the same wish binary, I would
support such a resource. I think that exmh should auto-detect when this
isn't possible, though; regardless of what the resource is set to, there
is simply almost no point in trying to use XLFD font descriptions in
a Tk that only supports XFT (and vice-versa). Possibly if you set the
resource and it can't be satisified, exmh should give you some sort of
warning about 'not possible to use <X> fonts in this Tk'.

	- cks
[*: by checking '::tk::pkgconfig get fontsystem'.]