[kde-solaris] How to get AA fonts on Solaris without native XRender ...

[Devendra Deshpande]

Hi,

I managed to get AA fonts working with Qt (I used qt-copy from KDE cvs,
but I suppose Qt-3.1.1 will also work).

Here's what you need to do if you want Anti-aliased fonts, but with the 
standard Sun Xserver (my configuration: Solaris 2.7, Ultra10, Gcc-3.1,
binutils).

Get Freetype2 (http://www.freetype.org)
Get Xft2 (http://www.fontconfig.org)

You will need to compile XRender, fontconfig and Xft (compile and 
install Freetype first). Make sure the PREFIX/bin of freetype/fcpackage
is in path. Note that xrender will want to install stuff in system
directories, so you should be root while installing XRender.

Now config Qt with -xft -xrender. Check qapplication_x11.cpp in
src/kernel, it may have:

bool   qt_use_xrender  = FALSE;

change it to TRUE (although the server does not have XRender extension,
Xft can work with core protocol, albeit a bit slower).

Compile/install Qt.

Get a  bunch of decent fonts (http://www.fontconfig.org has microsoft
webfonts, get them and install them [1]). BTW there are a bunch of
TrueType fonts in /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts too.

Run fc-cache (from fontconfig's bin) as root for all the font
directories, including the /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/* ...

Make sure ~/.qt/qtrc has:

enableXft=true
useXft=true

Alternatively, you may change that from Control Center.

Try running Qt/KDE applications :-)

Thanks,
Devendra

[1] Check http://trolls.troll.no/lars/fonts/qt-fonts-HOWTO.html, it has
    excellent information about finding fonts, configuring them and so
    on. Of particular interest is the bit about cabextract and
    ttmkfontdir (not on my solaris box). I used ttmkfdir from a Linux
    box on the network to process my font directories.