18:29 <helmut> hi. I would like to keep the font I'm using with xterm when switching to foot. using xfontsel I identified it as -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--20-140-100-100-c-100-iso8859-1

18:30 <helmut> if I pass that to foot -f, I get dejavu and a warning about it not being monospace. it looks completely different

18:30 <helmut> I suppose I'm doing it wrong, but maybe you know how to do better :)

18:53 <dnkl> helmut: foot uses fontconfig for font lookup. You can use fc-list to list the names (in the format foot expects) of all fonts.

18:53 <dnkl> fc-list also prints the filename of the font file, so if you can get xfontsel to print the filename, you can use that info to match the fontconfig name

18:55 <helmut> dnkl: thank you. that matches 100% what I figured thus far. unfortunately, fc-list refuses to show the font. it's a pcf font, so I tried converting it using fonttosfnt, but fc-list never lists it from ~/.local/share/fonts even though fc-cache -v -f says that it found it

18:56 <dnkl> fontconfig should handle .pcf-files

18:56 <dnkl> you shouldn't have to convert it

18:57 <dnkl> maybe it's just in a directory that isn't searched by fontconfig by default?

18:58 <helmut> tried the unconverted now (copying it to ~/.local/share/fonts as that definitely is searched). fc-cache -f -v tells me about it. fc-list doesn't know aboutit

18:58 <helmut> /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc: skipping, looped directory detected

19:03 <dnkl> not sure what could be wrong. I'd probably start strace:ing fc-list, to see if it even tries to look at that font

19:05 <dnkl> maybe need to run mkfontdir/mkfontscale in ~/.local/share/fonts?

19:07 <helmut> neither of those helped. with strace I can see that it considers the directory. it reads the relevant ~/.cache/fontconfig file that contains the font metadata and then proceeds to do something else. i.e. the font file itself is never opened nor listed

19:08 <helmut> though that may not mean too much as fc-list does not open any fonts. it works from the cache alone and the cache seems reasonable

19:34 <dnkl> helmut: maybe you have bitmap fonts globally disabled in fontconfig

19:35 <dnkl> there should be a conf-file included with fontconfig that enables bitmap fonts. See if enabling it helps

19:35 <helmut> you're my hero of the day again. spot on.

19:38 <helmut> I've looked through /etc/fonts/conf.d earlier, but it was many files and I didn't know what to look for.

19:41 <dnkl> glad we managed to get it working 🙂. Which font are you using?

19:42 <helmut> still figuring out how to express it to fc

19:43 <helmut> I happen to hate antialiased fonts in the terminal even though everyone else likes them

19:48 <dnkl> I use bitmap fonts too...

19:50 <helmut> Fixed-10

19:54 <dnkl> helmut: "foot -f "Misc Fixed:style=Regular"?

19:54 <dnkl> play around with the size to get the right one

19:54 <helmut> I happen to miss some font package and it falls back to dejavu

19:55 <dnkl> if you have the pfc-file and fc-list sees it, then it's just a matter of setting the font-name correctly

19:55 <dnkl> you can test it with fc-match (instead of restarting foot)

19:55 <helmut> I did tests with fc-match, yes

19:56 <dnkl> if fc-list sees it, you should be able to use everything after the ": " as font-name in both fc-match and foot

19:56 <helmut> unfortunately, that text is not unique and I get a different fontsize

19:57 <dnkl> that's why I said play around with the font size

19:57 <dnkl> fc-match "Misc Fixed:style=Regular:size=X"

19:57 <helmut> also fc-match interprets fonts slightly differently to foot. size=N seems to be height for fc-match and width for foot

19:58 <dnkl> no, it's definitely *not* width

19:58 <dnkl> but foot uses your monitor's DPI to size the font

19:58 <dnkl> not sure what fc-match defaults to. Maybe 75

19:59 <dnkl> try pixelsize=N instead of size=N

19:59 <helmut> that probably is the difference. I happen to not know how wayland communicates dpi (only for X I know it)

19:59 <dnkl> wayland doesn't, really. But it does provide enough information that foot can calculate it

19:59 <helmut> right again.

20:00 <dnkl> you may want to read the foot.ini man page, and specifically the dpi-aware option

20:01 <helmut> the physical size in wlr-randr looks reasonable to me

20:01 <dnkl> foot will log the DPI. If you want to compare with fc-match, you can manually set the dpi: "fc-match font-name:size=N:dpi=X"

20:03 <helmut> foot's dpi calculation result looks reasonable to me.

20:04 <helmut> it all just works once you figure that debian disables bitmap fonts by default and figure out how to name the font. none of that was foot-specific. I'm not surprised given my earlier attempts at foot where none of the issues were due to foot. (-:

20:04 <dnkl> note that foot is more or less unique here. Most applications use a fixed DPI of 96. Meaning, fonts of size 'N' will typically have a different size in foot, compared to other applications.

20:05 <dnkl> thanks :) but foot has/have its share of bugs too