[Konsole-devel] [Bug 52538] console font displays double width

[alan at chandlerfamily.org.uk]

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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52538     




------- Additional Comments From alan at chandlerfamily.org.uk  2003-02-18 21:11 -------
I think I now know at least one part of the problem related to this bug.  The first part of 
the problem is that a request to display the "console" font confuses Xft/fontconfig - 
because it can't find a match against that family name.  It instead uses the Style Hint 
given it by qt to locate the nearest font (which will depend on the fontconfig 
configuration).  Before qt caches the font - it asks xft for it - which asks fontconfig which 
looks for it in the fonts.cache-1 file in the appropriate directory.  It does not find console 
(but instead the name is console8x16.pcf)  
 
This is because when fontconfig creates the font.cache-1 file in each of the font 
directories it asks freetype to look up the font from the font filename at give it its 
parameters.  Due to a bug in freetype 2.1.3 (fixed in cvs I am told) the routine that 
decompresses compressed fonts (console is one of these) reports a file format error 
against the font file and hence fails to get its parameters into the font cache.  
Fontconfig works round the problem by creating the family name from the file name. 
 
However, even with this bug fixed there is still a problem with the console font that 
means that freetype doesn't get its name right.  I believe THIS IS A BUG in the 
console8x16.pcf.gz and console8x8.pcf.gz files distributed with KDE. 
 
The file has "properties" in it, with a string defining the property type and a string 
defining the property value.  These fonts use FAMILY as the property type and console 
as the property value.  I have sampled some other fonts and they have FAMILY_NAME 
as this property type.  Freetype is only looking for the string FAMILY_NAME.  Hence it 
reports a null family name when asked and fontconfig therefore writes the filename into 
the font.cache-1 file. 
 
(I have asked for pointers to the pcf specification on the freetype mailing list to try and 
confirm what I am saving)