[FreeNX-kNX] Font issue

[Gian Filippo Pinzari]

Aaron Kirk (aakirk) wrote:
> I'm using nxclient 1.5 and freenx version 4.3 I believe.  I'm accessing 
> a linux box from a Windows XP box.

Which nxclient 1.5.0 version? AFAIK the latest maintenance release fixes
some of the font problems people experienced on Windows.

> My question is how does nx determine which fonts it has available on the 
> server side.  If I run VNC on my linux box and run xfontselect, I get a 
> list of over 5000 fonts to choose from.  If I connect to the linux box 
> using nx and run xfontselect, I only have ~750 fonts to choose from.  Is 
> there somewhere I can go and configure nx to find all of the fonts I 
> have installed on my system?

I suggest you get a look at the Xnest man page. There is an explaination
on how fonts need to be managed by a X server that, at the same time, is
also a client. Compared to Xnest, nxagent manages fonts in a much better
way, for example by caching the font operations on the server and by
matching and reporting to X clients only the fonts that are present on
both the server and the client side. Note also that the list of 5000 fonts
you get on the server is mostly made of X core fonts. As long as the
RENDER extension is present, core X fonts are unlikely to be used. Both
KDE and GNOME use RENDER in combination with XFT to "download" the
glyphs to the X server, so that the font doesn't need to be originally
present on the client.

/Gian Filippo.