http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=542051 User suse@tlinx.org added comment http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=542051#c14 --- Comment #14 from L. A. Walsh <suse@tlinx.org> 2009-10-12 22:50:27 PDT --- In regard to the importance of 'xfs', I had an interesting exchange with someone who works for Lawrence Livermore labs. The said: (_emphasis_, mine...). " My biggest challenge is to get the xorg.conf file for my Linux clients to provide the researchers who I support with enough font choices for their apps. So, I can appreciate their complexity. I go from trying to hard code font paths into the config to running an _X_ _font_ _server_ on each system. Okay, so, “LTSP” is _Linux_ _terminal_ services. Basically, it’s a very thin Linux image that only runs X servers on whatever virtual terminals you tell it to run X servers on. So, you could have say, a Citrix client running on alt-ctrl-f3, a Linux GDM session to another server on alt-ctrl-f4, xeyes running on alt-ctrl-f5, xclock on alt-ctrl-f6, etc… The user community I support does a lot of computing on air gapped networks where their desktop systems are prohibited from having hard drives. Thus, the emphasis on diskless computing." ========= I replied to them about my recent interaction on this bug and SuSE's belief that 'xfs' was virtually unused and could probably be dropped with no one noticing. They replied to me: "We use NVIDIA graphics cards exclusively. The proprietary driver software automatically creates the X config file (/etc/xorg.conf). In most cases, it assigns the following as the Fontpath: FontPath “unix/:7100” That’s the TCP port of the X font server." ============= Maybe a guess, but the hardware rendering of the Nvidia graphics card might make use of the glyphs to create better typography on the screen if it is available. Having access to the direct glyphs might allow some accelerated, finely crafted fonts...? I haven't been able to get my NVIDIA X-server configured under Suse, so I can't say what the X-fonts look like when served by xfs vs. not. I do get alot better X-font rendering by turning off the auto-hinter and letting the fonts do anti-aliasing with 'ttf- code, but I also have most of the windows fonts available to my X-servers. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.