4. XFree86 4.x

XFree86 4.0 introduced native support for TrueType fonts, along with other new features. The enhanced font support is based on xfsft from Juliusz Chroboczek, which in turn is based on the FreeType font library originally from Mark Leisher, so the configuration is similar to xfsft and Redhat's patched xfs.

The FontPath is still in XF86Config, as always. For Redhat 6/7 using a stock XFree86 4.x (i.e. NOT the Redhat 7.x supplied version), this will mean moving the Redhat xfs FontPath from /etc/X11/fs/config back to XF86Config. A separate font server is no longer needed just for TrueType support. You may disable it, unless it is needed to serve fonts to other clients in a network environment. See the section below for Redhat 7.x specific configuration issues.

 Section "Files"
  FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
  FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
  FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo"
  FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1"
  FontPath "/usr/local/share/fonts/ttfonts"
  FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
  FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
 EndSection
    

In order to use TrueType, you must also specify which font module the X server should be using in the "Module" section:

 Section "Module"
  Load  "freetype"
  Load  "speedo"
  Load  "type1"
 EndSection
    

You also must to create fonts.scale and fonts.dir file for each TrueType font directory, just like for xfsft and Redhat's xfs. ttmkfdir will come in handy for fonts.scale. See the xfs Section 3.2.2 above for more details and examples.

xtt is another available TrueType module that is best known for supporting ideographic (Oriental) type fonts. You can use either, but only one at a time.

X server commandline options are still the same as previous versions of X:

$ startx -dpi 100

4.1. Redhat 7.0 Differences

Redhat 7.0 introduces some changes to X configuration over previous Redhat versions. It is also different from the stock XFree86 configuration as addressed above. Notable differences: