From: ib@ivan.esd.sgi.com (Ivan Bach)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: xwsh can't find the right fonts
Date: 30 Aug 92 16:46:12 GMT
Followup-To: <32262@adm.brl.mil>
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA

In <32262@adm.brl.mil>, John Fwu (john@erin.jsc.nasa.gov) writes:
> In our case, the "xwsh" window can't found the right fonts.  It end up using
> a font with diff size.  Users found this by aware the window size changed
> after we upgraded to IRIX 4.0.5.
> Hope SGI aware this is a problem, not a user mistake.

Yes, we are aware of this problem.  Here is what happened.  Many people
complained that they could not find a fixed-width font that would be easy to
read on the screen of a video monitor, and would not cause eye strain.  Rob
Myers from SGI designed Screen and Screen Bold fonts that were easier to
read than, for example, corresponding Courier fonts.

The default font for xwsh is Screen15, because that is what is specified in
the file:

    /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/XWsh

If you look at the file fonts.alias in the directory:

    /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/fonts.alias

on a 4.0.1 system, you will see that all Screen and Screen Bold fonts use
the ASCII character set.

As part of the internationalization of SGI software products, we decided that
all default text fonts should be extended to the full ISO 8859-1 character
set.  We need additional characters to support the keyboards for foreign
countries.  We asked Rob Myers to extend his Screen and Screen Bold fonts to
the ISO 8859-1 character set.  That required a lot of time and effort.  Rob
had enough time to extend only some of his fonts for 4.0.5.  If you look at
the file misc/fonts.alias in IRIX 4.0.5, you will see that some of his Screen
fonts were extended to ISO 8859-1.

We could have specified a wild card (*) for the character encoding in all 
alias specifications for the Screen fonts, but that would have given us a 
font with the ASCII or ISO 8859-1 character set, depending on the resolution
of a video monitor.  Therefore, we intentionally specified the character 
encoding in the font name aliases for Screen fonts.  Since only some of the 
Screen fonts were extended, that effectively reduced the number of default 
bitmap fonts for xwsh windows.  As soon as we extend all Screen and Screen 
Bold fonts to ISO 8859-1, this problem will go away.

I would like to emphasize that we have not removed any of the Screen or 
Screen Bold fonts which were shipped in 4.0.1.  There are several ways to
give you the font that was used for xwsh and winterm (winterm is just a
script that calls xwsh) windows in 4.0.1:

    1. You can select a font for an xwsh or winterm window by using the
       "Font..." option on the XWsh pop-up menu that appears when you put
       a cursor in that window, and press the right mouse button.  Notice
       that the xwsh font browser distinguishes between the extended and
       non-extended Screen fonts.  You can select whichever font you like,
       and apply it to that window.  This change will affect only that
       window.

    2. If you want to make a permanent font change for xwsh and winterm
       windows, you should note the 14-part font name displayed in the
       "Font Name" field in the xwsh font browser window, and use it to
       replace Screen15 in the file:

           /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/XWsh

       You have to login as root to make this change.

    3. If you need just ASCII characters, you can login as root, go to the 
       directory /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc, save the current version of the 
       file fonts.alias in some other directory, and then edit the alias 
       specifications for Screen fonts.  You should replace the character 
       string '-ascii' with '*-*', and the character string 'iso8859-1' 
       with '*-*' in the lines for screen7 through screen18.  All those
       lines should end with 'm-*-*-*'.

       Then enter the command:

           xset fp rehash

       on a UNIX prompt.  This tells the X Window System that a change was
       made to font files, and that it should refresh its list of available
       fonts.

Sorry for the inconvenience.  We will fix this problem as soon as we can.

Ivan Bach, ib@sgi.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi