justLinux.com: TrueType Fonts: Getting to the Point

[ Thanks to Dan Peak for this link. ]

"Fonts are nice little letter stylings that display text in new and interesting ways. But, when you come down to it, a character on the screen is just a collection of pixels. So why is Linux limited in how it displays its fonts?"

"When X Window was designed, it was assumed that font pixels came in one of two forms: black or white. Or green and black, or red and white--the point was that there were just two colors: foreground and background. Today, fonts use something called anti-aliasing when they are displayed."

"Anti-aliasing is a technique where grayscale pixels are interspersed around the outlines of characters to give them a smoother appearance. X, with its two-color mentality, can't do anti-aliasing, and thus the fonts look more jagged."

"Still, fonts junkies like me still like to get a hold of everything we can for our documents, and TrueType fonts are pretty pervasive in the computer world."

Complete story

Related Stories:

• Linuxcare: Dear Lina: Voice recognition and adding True Type Font support(Nov 22, 1999)
• linuxnewbie.org: Where's My True Type Fonts?!?(Nov 14, 1999)
• Using TrueType fonts in Debian mini-HOWTO(Sep 16, 1999)
• Getting TrueType fonts to work in Red Hat: my experience(Sep 14, 1999)