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I had quite a few issues lately until I installed the font-adobe-[75|100]-dpi
packages, such that many programs such as firefox and xmms did not render fonts
properly, whereas other programs like ImageMagick (yes, the newest
version--6.2.5.5) did not even function at all.

I finally traced down the issue to the fact that the helvetica font was missing
and installing those packages seems to have solved any and all issues related
to font rendering in those programs, as well as some others most likely.

Do these programs actually require both 100 and 75 dpi, or either of, or a
specific one?

Not sure. I just added both at the same time and the issues went away. I think
that they just call for one or the other since the programs were looking for
the helvetica font and it was non-existent on the system.

I can confirm that I've had to fiddle with Firefox in the past to get the fonts
right, though I haven't tried this recently...

This looks more like a per-app dependency/configuration issue to me.

Perhaps, but Helvetica is a very common font that should be installed I would
think. It's like not installing Arial/Times almost for some applications...

Well, we were trying to stay away from non-truetype fonts on purpose, but I
don't disagree that it's a pretty common font.

I'm sure Donnie has some further opinion on this, since he knows the fonts much
better than I.

It's a valid point, there will be a lot of apps that use it and it's a
non-obvious dep -- Josh, want to add font-adobe-100dpi?

Done.

*** Bug 122438 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Hi, I believe *no* fonts should be required for xorg, it's up to the user to
choose the fonts - at least make them optional via USE flags, if some are going
to be recommended (e.g. media-fonts/corefonts).

Forcing the installation of bitmap fonts which override (somehow) a user's
far-better-looking truetype fonts, in the configuration nightmare that is
Firefox's font setup, is not good :(

Donnie, do you think it's time to whip out the 'bitmap' USE flag for the
meta-ebuild?

If you want the absolute minimum, you can just install xorg-server. Otherwise,
you can live with what we consider to be a "reasonable working X installation"
sufficient for most purposes.

My workaround is to add to ~/.fonts.conf:

  <!-- Reject bitmap fonts -->
  <selectfont>
    <rejectfont>
      <pattern>
        <patelt name="scalable"><bool>false</bool></patelt>
      </pattern>
    </rejectfont>
  </selectfont>

*** Bug 127935 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 138754 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 139816 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

If some users request bitmap fonts, why not simply make them an option - eg. 

- media-fonts/font-adobe-75dpi
+ bitmap? ( media-fonts/font-adobe-75dpi )

and let people who don't need these fonts to just disable them with USE=-bitmap
?

The bitmap fonts currently in xorg-server deps are there because binaries
installed by xorg-server require them to run. It's not optional.

This sounds strange, as not only me found those fonts useless. So the solution
for now is to modify the ebuild (1) or remove the font package after installing
xorg-server (2). That's sad - Gentoo was meant to be an OS of user choices.

I've been using Xorg without those ugly bitmap fonts for some 3 years - without
any fuss.

I guess you haven't tried to run xorgcfg then.

*** Bug 143627 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

(In reply to comment #12)
> My workaround is to add to ~/.fonts.conf:
> 
>   <!-- Reject bitmap fonts -->
>   <selectfont>
>     <rejectfont>
>       <pattern>
>         <patelt name="scalable"><bool>false</bool></patelt>
>       </pattern>
>     </rejectfont>
>   </selectfont>

That doesn't work for me since i use artwiz fonts and only want to reject the
100 and 75dpi adobe fonts.

(In reply to comment #19)
> I guess you haven't tried to run xorgcfg then.

Didn't know that existed, why don't you make xorgxfg optional then? Or are
there more packages that need font-adobe*?


(Garrette Cooper wrote:)
> such that many programs such as firefox and xmms did not render fonts 
> properly, whereas other programs like ImageMagick

ImageMagick and xmms still work fine here after uninstalling font-adobe*
firefox also, in fact, most distributions disable bitmap-fonts at fontconfig
level, so firefox doesn't even see them.

xorg-6.8 had the bitmap-font flag that produced a fat warning when disabled. I
agree with comment #9, we should be able to choose.

(In reply to comment #22)
> (In reply to comment #19)
> > I guess you haven't tried to run xorgcfg then.
> 
> Didn't know that existed, why don't you make xorgxfg optional then? Or are
> there more packages that need font-adobe*?

USE="minimal xorg" will disable xorgcfg as well as all X servers other than the
Xorg server.

Haven't you ever think, that Helvetica and others DO NOT have any cyrillic, or
greek, or anything else non-latin?! Why do i HAVE TO see squares instead of
words in all X applications like xine-ui which  use bitmap fonts by default and
know any other language except of English?

And you marked this issue as resolved... phe... :-(