Linux Journal: Is Beauty Only Pixel Deep?, Part 1

“I run a quiet little mailing list on my server where people
talk about Linux, life, the universe and anything else that sounds
like it might run on their systems. One of the topics that crops up
from time to time (and which cropped up a few days ago) is that of
fonts. It seems that fonts under Linux represent one of the great
bugaboos of working in the Linux environment. There’s a mystique
around fonts as though something magical is happening, something
that is better left untouched for fear of angering the X gods. Even
seasoned Linux users tread lightly around this topic: Warning! Here
be monsters.

“The real problem with fonts under Linux (under X actually) is
the many different ways of handling fonts, not to mention different
font types. We have both bitmap and outline fonts; which further
break down into Speedo fonts, portable compiled fonts, Type1,
TrueType, ghostscript fonts and others. This is one place where
“more than one way to do it” hasn’t paid off.

“In this recent discussion, somebody wanted to remove some
particularly ugly fonts from their system. While that seems simple
enough, where are these fonts? What do they look like? How do you
add or remove them? Do we even know what fonts are already
installed on our systems? All good questions. Now, you might think
that you don’t have a lot of fonts installed on your system, and
you’d be surprised at how much is really there…”

Complete Story