On Sun, 7 Jun 1998, Thomas Gerner wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 07, 1998 at 11:09:38AM +0100, chris_gray wrote:
> > > As far as I konw the X fonts archive contains compressed fonts, but
> > > unfortunately the Server can't work with compressed fonts. Can it
> > > be that your fonts are compressed?
> > 
> > Indeed it could. :[  So I should uncompress them?  Will do.
> 
> As an alternative I can send you a X server which should work with
> compressed fonts. The reason why the Atari servers on ftp.netbsd.org
> can't use compressed fonts is that the servers are XFree 3.2 while the
> other parts are XFree 3.3. But I guess using compressed fonts will
> slow down the server, because the server must uncompress every font
> every time which the font is asked for. The advantage of compressed
> fonts is that it uses less disk space.

Given the speed (or lack thereof) at which the X server runs, I think
uncompressed fonts would be better ...

I uncompressed everything, including the filenames in each of the font.dir
files (i.e. I did a :%s/.Z//g or :%s.gz//g as appropriate).  Some directories
(IIRC 100dpi) had every font twice, once as .gz and once as .Z -- so much
for saving disk space!

So to summarise for posterity:
  in each of the subdirectories under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts (or wherever):
    gunzip *.Z (or gunzip *.gz, depending)
    vi fonts.dir
      :%s/.Z//g (or :%s/.gz//g)
      :w! ('cos file is normally read-only)
      :q

Oh, and you need to be root to do all that.


Thenks for the help

Chris

P.S. it's bloody slow, ain't it?