[ale] Wine and fonts

[Steven A. DuChene]

Just in case there are some folks here who don't already know these
font tricks...

I installed a new system the other day with SuSE-10.0 and as usual
at some point I get bored enought to fire up Wine with the SOL.EXE
program. As usual the fonts being used to display the score along the
bottom of the app look TERRIBLE. Nearly unread-able.

So it seemed this SuSE-10.0 system needed my normal font tune-up.

Many standard Linux systems seem to ALWAYS come with the following
font search paths for X Windows (set in /etc/X11/xorg.conf or
/etc/x11/XF86Config):

  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/URW"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/PEX"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/Type1"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/latin7/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/baekmuk:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/japanese:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/kwintv"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/uni:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/CID"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ucs/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ucs/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ucs/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/hellas/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/hellas/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/hellas/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/hellas/Type1"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/sgi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/xtest"
  FontPath     "/opt/kde3/share/fonts"


Why the heck people putting desktop distributions together still
do this I have no idea. Some of the worst fonts that have plagued
X Windows desktop for YEARS reside in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi and /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi
and for some strange reason they always get listed first in the font
search path. When I look to improve the look of my desktop I always
alter this to put any directories containing truetype and Type1 fonts
first in the fontpath search list and
then put the 100dpi fonts after that. Most monitors these days are
running close to 100dpi verses the older 75dpi standard anyway.

So the beginning of my Fontpath listing then looks like:

Section "Files"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local"
  FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"


Next if I have them available I copy the various truetype fonts from
a Windows box into some directory I create under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/

These simple changes always make my desktop look so MUCH better
and also the fonts in Windows solitare (and probably many other
applications run within Wine) become much nicer to read.