![Font in remote X connection](https://linux22.com/image/1380375/Font%20in%20remote%20X%20connection.png)
I have a headless Gentoo box and would like to run X app on it but forward the display to a Cygwin Xorg server running on my Windows PC.
It works but I am not sure in this case if I specify some fonts to use in the X app, which font will be actually used? the one on the Gentoo box(where the X app is running)? or the one installed in my Cygwin (where the X app is being displayed)?
For example I want to use font DejaVu Sans Mono
in urxvt, my ~/.Xresources on the Gentoo box looks like this:
URxvt*font: xft:DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12
On the Gentoo box I have the font installed and enabled. The following is the output of eselect fontconfig list
[1] 10-autohint.conf
[2] 10-no-sub-pixel.conf
[3] 10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf *
[4] 10-sub-pixel-bgr.conf
[5] 10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf
[6] 10-sub-pixel-vbgr.conf
[7] 10-sub-pixel-vrgb.conf
[8] 10-unhinted.conf
[9] 11-lcdfilter-default.conf
[10] 11-lcdfilter-legacy.conf
[11] 11-lcdfilter-light.conf
[12] 20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans.conf
[13] 20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans-mono.conf
[14] 20-unhint-small-dejavu-serif.conf
[15] 20-unhint-small-vera.conf *
[16] 25-unhint-nonlatin.conf
[17] 30-metric-aliases.conf *
[18] 30-urw-aliases.conf *
[19] 40-nonlatin.conf *
[20] 45-latin.conf *
[21] 49-sansserif.conf *
[22] 50-user.conf *
[23] 51-local.conf *
[24] 57-dejavu-sans.conf
[25] 57-dejavu-sans-mono.conf *
Then run xrdb on the Gentoo box to enable the resource (this makes me believe the font on Gentoo box will be used):
xrdb ~/.Xresources
When I start urxvt it complains:
urxvt: unable to load base fontset, please specify a valid one using -fn, aborting.
UPDATE
As grawity has pointed out, it turns out my urxvt was built without xft support. It is solved after I append xft
to the system wide USE
. Thank you very much!
答案1
It works but I am not sure in this case if I specify some fonts to use in the X app, which font will be actually used? the one on the Gentoo box(where the X app is running)? or the one installed in my Cygwin (where the X app is being displayed)?
Both.
While I'm not sure about the exact rules which fonts are used when, the basics are:
If the program uses XLFDs to select fonts, then it usually lets the X11 server (i.e. Xorg, Xwin.exe, or such) draw them. They need to be installed in the server; you can use
xset q
to query the server's current "font path".However, modern programs render fonts client-side using FreeType + {Xft, cairo, Qt} [+ {Pango, HarfBuzz}]. In this case, fonts need to be installed on the client, and Fontconfig is used to find them.
In your case, using xft:
in urxvt means the client-side (Gentoo) fonts will be used. (Cygwin's Xwin is the server, urxvt on Gentoo is the client, according to the usual X terminology.)
However, normally urxvt does not display any errors when an unknown xft:
font is given. So I have a guess that your urxvt is actually built without Xft support at all. Run ldd /usr/bin/urxvt
and check whether it's linked to libfreetype
and libXft
.