[Bug: 21.4.17] Proportional font too large

[Aidan Kehoe]

 Ar an seachtú lá déag de mí Márta, scríobh Ralf Angeli: 

 > If that's the same font I am using, try to imagine how it looks on a
 > 120dpi display.

:-) 112 locally. 

 > > "-Adobe-Helvetica-Medium-R-Normal--25-180-100-100-P-130-ISO8859-1"
 > 
 > Here this returns
 > 
 > "-urw-nimbus sans l-regular-r-condensed--42-300-100-100-p-194-iso8859-1"
 > 
 > $ find /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ -name fonts.dir | xargs grep "nimbus sans l-regular-r-condensed" 
 > /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/fonts.dir:n019043l.pfb -urw-nimbus sans l-regular-r-condensed--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
 > /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/fonts.dir:n019043l.pfb -urw-nimbus sans l-regular-r-condensed--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-2
 > /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/fonts.dir:n019043l.pfb -urw-nimbus sans l-regular-r-condensed--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
 > 
 > n019043l.pfb is part of the gsfonts-x11 package in Debian/sid.
 > 
 > > I _suspect_ this is a peculiarity of your local X11 installation, but give
 > > us more details and we can try to work that out. 
 > 
 > $ xdpyinfo 
 > name of display:    :0.0
 > version number:    11.0
 > vendor string:    The XFree86 Project, Inc
 > vendor release number:    40300001
 > XFree86 version: 4.3.0.1
 > [...]
 > 
 > This is the version distributed with Debian/sid, so not really a
 > vanilla XFree86 4.3.0.

Okay, if you move the 100dpi directory befor the Type1 directory in either
the font path of your X server or of your font server, as appropriate, you
should get a much better looking font. (You may need to install some package
to make it available.) There’s nothing wrong with the URW font, it’s just
that the XFree86 Type1 font renderer is unfinished, and as such the bitmap
(.pcf) fonts are much better when they’re available.

Strangely, I get 

"-urw-nimbus sans l-medium-r-condensed--19-180-75-75-p-85-iso8859-1"

when I repeat your steps but with nimbus sans l instead of helvetica; if you
are using a font server, there’s a default DPI setting there that may
explain our differences. 

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