fonts

[nelson media mit edu (Nelson Minar)]

Does GNOME have any plans for dealing with X fonts? What X gives is an
unholy mess, it would be nice if Gnome could help out.

The first problem with X fonts is the naming system; it's a
classification that only a serioius geek could love. Has anyone ever
seen a good tool for dealing with X font selection? Both Gimp and
xfontsel basically leave it up to the user to figure out what the hell
"Spacing" or "Set width" mean. Gimp does at least get rid of some of
the more obscure settings but it's still hard to use. It'd be nice if
we could somehow hide the complexity of X's font naming system.
Family, type (bold/italic), and size are about the only things most
users want to know about.

The second problem with X fonts is that there aren't enough nice ones,
in particular not enough attractive and readble fixed width fonts that
come with XFree86. 10x20 and good ol' 6x13 (the usual fixed) are good,
but most of the other fonts designed to be screen fonts don't look
very good. Are there ready sources of screen fonts beyond what comes
with XFree?

Just wonderin,
  Nelson