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The fontconfig library (media-libs/fontconfig) is intended to provide uniform font selection and configuration amongst all GUI applications. Although it is common for a desktop environment to provide its own font overrides and configuration utilities, fontconfig is still the underlying library.

安装

当需要 fontconfig 时，它应该是已经安装好了的。 如果没有，请确保你正确安装配置好了图形系统 (即 X 或 Wayland) 和desktop environment 。

USE 标记

fontconfig 并没有什么USE标记。

USE flags for media-libs/fontconfig A library for configuring and customizing font access

doc	Add extra documentation (API, Javadoc, etc). It is recommended to enable per package instead of globally
nls	Add Native Language Support (using gettext - GNU locale utilities)
test	Enable dependencies and/or preparations necessary to run tests (usually controlled by FEATURES=test but can be toggled independently)

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2024-02-14 18:22 More information about USE flags

配置

Note
所有对 fontconfig 文件的更改只有在重新启动程序后才会生效！

通用配置

fontconfig 使用来自 /etc/fonts/ 目录的 XML 文件生成内部配置。 默认情况下，它会解析/etc/fonts/fonts.conf (普通用户不应该编辑此文件！) ，它会使用一些默认的配置并解析 /etc/fonts/conf.d/ 内的内容。 另外还有个 /etc/fonts/conf.avail/ 目录包含了 fontconfig 的各种配置文件。 一般我们把需要的文件链接到 /etc/fonts/conf.d/ 目录。 这些文件按照它们的命名排序使用，它们以俩位数字开头，第一个数字（10）表示文件的影响力（类别）

Gentoo特色

Gentoo有一个 eselect 模块 (eselect fontconfig) ，完全符合通用配置方式-它管理 /etc/fonts/conf.avail/ 中的链接，通过删除或添加到 /etc/fonts/conf.d/ 目录的链接。 当然，更改这些配置也需要适当的权限（Root）。

以下几个小节将介绍如何使用 fontconfig 模块

可用文件列表

list 命令可以显示 fontconfig 可用的文件列表， 并标记启用的配置为星号(*)。

root #eselect fontconfig list

Available fontconfig .conf files (* is enabled):
  [1]   10-autohint.conf *
  [2]   10-no-sub-pixel.conf
  [3]   10-sub-pixel-bgr.conf
  [4]   10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf
  [5]   10-sub-pixel-vbgr.conf
  [6]   10-sub-pixel-vrgb.conf
  [7]   10-unhinted.conf
  [8]   11-lcdfilter-default.conf
  [9]   11-lcdfilter-legacy.conf
  ...

Warning
不同的系统在 fonts.avail 有不同的配置文件，所以输出可能会不一样。 切勿盲目使用其它来源的列表号码 (比如博客或维基文章)。

启用配置文件

配置文件可以通过文件名或序号启用。这俩者没有区别：

root #eselect fontconfig enable 10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf

root #eselect fontconfig enable 4

禁用配置文件

同样也可以这样禁用：

root #eselect fontconfig disable 10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf

root #eselect fontconfig disable 4

定制全局配置

如果你想创建自定义的 fontconfig 全局配置，请启用 51-local.conf 并创建 /etc/fonts/local.conf （这是一个XML文件）。

FILE /etc/fonts/local.conf设置sans-serif为首选字体的后备配置

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <alias>
    <family>sans-serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Ubuntu</family>
      <family>TakaoPGothic</family>
      <family>Droid Sans</family>
    </prefer>
    <default><family>DejaVu Sans</family></default>
  </alias>
</fontconfig>

以上配置简单来说就是当使用sans-serif字体时，倾向使用Ubuntu， TakaoPGothic 和 Droid Sans 字体（按顺序）而不是 DejaVu Sans字体（只有在必要时才使用）。当然，你也可以设置不同的字体。

单用户配置

如果要创建使用单用户 fontconfig 配置，启用 50-user.conf （可能已经被默认启用），用户最后将使用 ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf 配置文件。该文件与 local.conf 同为XML格式。

Note
This is one way how a desktop environment might try to affect font rendering. It might be prudent to disable this to be sure that what's being shown is actually system wide configuration when customizing it. Disabling it also makes font rendering more uniform across user accounts.

Note
The previously used ~/.fonts.conf is now deprecated in favor of the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME based location. This variable by defaults points to ~/.config.

Checking configuration

Check the default font replacement, for example for Arial, by typing:

user $fc-match Arial

Anti-aliasing, hinting, and sub-pixel rendering

Rendering aspects can be tuned as well. In the following sections the Anti-aliasing, Hinting and Sub-pixel rendering features are tuned.

Feature	Description
Anti-aliasing	is enabled by default and makes fonts less blocky.
Hinting	is an attempt to cope with the low pixel count per unit of area of current displays. Correct hinting makes characters more crisp but since font metrics aren't changed (and arguably should not change) affects how overall the rendered text looks like.
Sub-pixel rendering	uses the fact that LCD matrix has three primaries to effectively triple the resolution of text but can make characters appear not entirely black. To combat that lcdfilter is to be used with sub-pixel rendering (available for newer fontconfig) but it can blur the characters too much. In the end this entirely depends on person how they like their text.

Forcing hinting

The default fontconfig behavior regarding hinting is rather undocumented, but it can be made deterministically sub-optimal by making a system wide default.

1. First enable /etc/fonts/local.conf
2. Edit the local.conf file to include full hinting by default

This local.conf snippet enables full hinting:

FILE /etc/fonts/local.confSetting hinting to full

<match target="font">
  <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle">
    <const>hintfull</const>
  </edit>
</match>

Note
Most fonts look best with full hinting but others need slight or more rarely some other other hinting option. Some fonts for one reason or another will always be ugly.

Using sub-pixel rendering

It's important to determine the sub-pixel layout of the LCD matrix. It's usually RGB (10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf) but the only way to be sure is to either consult display specification or use this sub-pixel layout test to determine it.

Once determined, enable the appropriate 10-sub-pixel-<matrix type>.conf file.

root #eselect fontconfig enable 10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf

It's strongly advised that lcdfilter, if available, is used with sub-pixel rendering. It comes in different varieties but the default (11-lcdfilter-default.conf) should be appropriate for all common fonts.

root #eselect fontconfig enable 11-lcdfilter-default.conf

Warning
The bindist USE flag in media-libs/freetype disables sub-pixel rendering altogether due to potential patenting issues. In order to use sub-pixel rendering, the USE flag must be disabled (i.e., -bindist) for this package.

Regarding autohinter

Autohinter attempts to do automatic hinting disregarding any existing hinting information. Until recently it was the default because TrueType2 was covered by patents but now that they have expired there's very little reason to use it. From technical point of view it does better than broken or no hinting information but it will be strongly sub-optimal for fonts with good hinting information. Generally system fonts are of the second kind so autohinter should not be used.

Warning
Autohinter is not compatible with sub-pixel rendering, do not use the two together!

Infinality

Infinality is a (somewhat controversial) set of patches for FreeType and accompanying fontconfig files. The goal of Infinality is to provide higher quality font rendering including emulation of other OS font rendering styles.

Note
As usual with software still in development it is prudent to always use only the latest version available unless there are known problems with it.

Enabling Infinality

Enable the 'infinality' USE flag by editing make.conf either manually or by using the euse tool.

root #euse -E infinality

Next, rebuild the affected programs.

root #emerge --ask -uvDU @world

Unless messages shown after rebuild tell otherwise, enable 52-infinality.conf.

root #eselect fontconfig enable 52-infinality.conf

Configuring Infinality

Infinality can be configured in various ways including custom configurations, but easiest is to use pre-made profiles shipped in media-libs/fontconfig-infinality that along with eselect modules should have been installed as dependencies of the infinality USE flag.

Quick and reasonable config

root #eselect infinality set infinality

root #eselect lcdfilter set infinality

Note
As always, fontconfig changes affect only applications started after changes have been made.

It's also recommended to disable all fontconfig settings except for 52-infinality.conf as they interfere with the rendering of infinality styles:

root #eselect fontconfig disable <number>

Certain fontconfig settings do not interfere with how the fonts are rendered, but rather determine the default fonts for font-types (such as Monospace, sans-serif, etc.). Such settings (for example the 62-croscore-*.conf configurations) can be left enabled.

Explanation

Infinality provides FreeType environment variables that can be used to configure features introduced with its patches as well as fontconfig files to be used with these changes. fontconfig file sets are administrated on Gentoo via eselect infinality while the FreeType behaviour is set using eselect lcdfilter.

These eselect modules function as usual:

• Listing available fontconfig file sets.

root #eselect infinality list

• Listing available FreeType variable sets.

root #eselect lcdfilter list

• Both sets should match of course except when there are multiple matches possible such as shown below.

root #eselect infinality set win7

root #eselect lcdfilter set windows-7-light

Picking fonts

Choosing the right font can be trickier than deciding on the right hinting type. For one reason or another, some fonts will never be perfect — but it's certainly possible to make them look better than, say, the Windows 7 default font configuration.

Here are some recommendations regarding well known fonts in Gentoo:

Font family	Pros	Cons
Liberation media-fonts/liberation-fonts	Red Hat's fonts, which are metric-compatible with MS TrueType corefonts, have a decent, modern look. This is the Gentoo Fonts team recommendation for default Latin fonts. Covers about 2,600 code points.	Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Hebrew only. A few glyphs may have hinting trouble.
Linux Libertine media-fonts/libertine	Very similar to Liberation, covering about 2,700 code points. Linux Libertine itself is proportional serif only, but the package contains less extensive sans and mono fonts, as well. Can be used as a fallback for some glyphs not in Liberation.	Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Hebrew only. Sans and mono fonts are limited.
Noto media-fonts/noto	Google's font family that aims to support all the world's languages (so, well over 60,000 code points). It goes well with Liberation or Droid. Adobe's Source Han Sans fonts are included for CJK. Recommended as a fallback for many glyphs not covered by Liberation.	Big download.
DejaVu media-fonts/dejavu	Many styles and covers a lot of code points (about 6,100 for sans).	Exceptionally wide — even condensed is wider than same-height monospace. Overall second to Verdana (an MS font) in width. Sans-serif font is only average.
Droid media-fonts/droid	Covers a lot of code points and scripts.	Very dry, wide yet thin glyphs. Clearly designed with handheld devices and their small screens in mind.
Gentium Plus media-fonts/sil-gentium	Fairly distinctive; might appeal to people who like narrow fonts.	Serif only. As with other SIL fonts, the hinting is questionable.
Ubuntu media-fonts/ubuntu-font-family	Used in Ubuntu (obviously). A distinctive font family with a style which might not appeal to everyone. Overall looks good and covers a fair number of code points.	Only the sans-serif font is truly polished; narrow and monospaced versions are unfinished. No known serif font that would accompany it well.
URW media-fonts/urw-fonts	Metric compatible with popular Adobe fonts (among others?).	Seem to require slight hinting.
MS TrueType corefonts media-fonts/corefonts	Includes most fonts used in documents and on the web.	MS does not distribute them nowadays, so the available fonts are from many years ago and do not reflect their current state (not to mention the state of the art). Obviously, lacks fonts introduced more recently. Require full hinting.
Unifont media-fonts/unifont	Covers a lot of code points.	In addition to being ugly as sin, it also fails some basic requirements to be considered a typeface. Is it sans-serif? Is it serif? Please never use this.

External resources

• In-depth articles from Arch Linux wiki on:
  • Font configuration
  • Infinality
• Official fontconfig documentation for users
• Wikipedia article on font hinting