RFC: Making the xfs font server optional in Fedora Core and its derivatives.

[Mike A. Harris]

Mike Chambers wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-05-22 at 14:15 -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote:
> 
>> What I'm actually a bit more curious about though, is just
>> how many apps included with Fedora Core 6 will not work
>> properly if core fonts has a limited default configuration
>> out of the box.  ;o)
>>
>> It'd be an interesting test for someone to disable xfs, and
>> to configure the X server to have only the "misc" font dir
>> as a configured font path in xorg.conf, and then see what
>> all apps no longer work.
>>
>> Second to that, many apps will work, but will probably look
>> hideous, as they'll have a far reduced set of fonts to use
>> with such a configuration.  It'd be interesting to see what
>> apps totally break or otherwise become unuseable with such
>> a setup.
>>
>> If anyone feels up to trying this, please post your results
>> back to the list.
> 
> Not sure if this is something I want to tackle or not (then again, I
> have reinstalled a few tiems and don't mind doing it again a time or two
> if need to), but I might be willing to give it a shot.  You might need
> to guide me a little as what to do (or create a step by step guide on
> what to enable/disable so I/we do it correctly), so can make sure I/we
> are doing a good test.

- Run ntsysv (or equivalent) and disable the xfs service from
   starting at boot time.

- Run "service xfs stop" to shut down xfs

- Edit xorg.conf and comment out the unix:/7100 font path.
   Add a FontPath that points to the "misc" font directory.

- Start the X server.  It should start correctly as long as you
   have properly configured the misc font path, as it will then
   still be able to find "fixed" and "cursor".


You may or may not have errors or application failures during
your desktop's startup, depending on wether you're using GNOME,
KDE, or some other setup.  If your setup uses apps that use
core fonts, they may or may not start depending on how picky
they are about finding specific fonts.

Once your desktop is started, open a terminal and run various
non-GNOME, non-GTK2, non-KDE, non-Qt applications.  For example,
run Xt, Xaw, Motif, and other such apps, and see if they work
properly, or if they fail miserably.  If any apps fail and
report an error about a missing font or other font related
problem, make note of it.

Summarize testing results to the list.

That's about it.



-- 
Mike A. Harris  *  Open Source Advocate  *  http://mharris.ca
                       Proud Canadian.