Re: font handling confusion (in gtk-demo)

[Keith Packard <keithp keithp com>]

Around 15 o'clock on Jan 8, Evan Martin wrote:

> After a bit more looking around, it appears the proper thing to do is
> use an alias.  In my ~/.xftconfig, I added:
>   match any family = "mono" edit family += "Courier New";
> and then requesting a "mono" family gives me a monspaced font.

By convention, 'mono' is the users preferred alias for a monospaced font.  
As TrueType files don't reliably report spacing attributes (mono/
charcell), Xft relies instead on reasonable configuration.  Even 
traditionally monospaced fonts often have characters outside of the 
"usual" range that don't match the monospaced metrics (sigh).

The new version of Xft allows aliases that map well known families to one 
of the three conventional aliases -- this will make 'Courier' failover to 
'mono' if no other Courier font (or alias) exists.

Keith Packard        XFree86 Core Team        Compaq Cambridge Research Lab