Unfortunately there is no unified font handling system for Linux. You will have
to configure each individual program so you can use TrueType, Type 1 or fonts
that pique your fancy. And each program may well have its own way of doing
this so you will have to RTFM. Desktop Environments like GNOME and KDE may
provide much of this functionality however for apps that are under their
control.
Most GUI apps should be able to use TrueType, and Type 1 fonts too.
Wordperfect for Linux, however, cannot use TrueType. (See the
links section below for more on Wordperfect.) Text editors, terminal programs
and the like need fixed width fonts, and do not play well with TrueType or
other scalable fonts.
Though not discussed here, Type 1 fonts provide many of the same benefits
as TrueType and are historically better supported in the Unix world. You
likely have many of these installed already. Unfortunately however, Type 1
are not a web standard like TrueType. But they are suitable for many other
purposes. They are where it's at for printing. See ghostscript for more on this.
While it is possible to specify a default point size for the xfs font
server, very few applications will actually use this value.
Abiword comes with a suite of fonts, called 'Abisuite'. Apparently,
some of these fonts have the same names as some of the well known MS
TrueType fonts: Arial, etc. And apparently, these are of much less
quality. And because of the way X searches for fonts, it may find these
first and use these, even if the 'real' ones are installed and may be the
preferred choice. The solution is to uninstall 'Abisuite'.
The new Xft rendering extensions of XFree86 4.x will mostly supplant
similar features as provided by xfs, and older XFree86 extensions. For
instance, font aliasing should be done in XftConfig
if the new extensions are being used. This would only be true where
the application is built against a toolkit (like QT or GTK) that supports
the new extensions. This is still not universally supported. In fact,
only KDE is wide spread support.
The
Video
Timings HOWTO, the ins and outs of getting the most from your monitor.
(Applicable only to XFree86 v.3.x.)
Font HOWTO
Many good tips for installing fonts and for applications such as StarOffice,
Applixware, Wordperfect, Ghostscript, TeX/LaTeX.
A TrueType HOWTO, good tips for printing, and a few application specific tips.
xfsft Homepage,
TrueType font support for X. This is the origin of the "freetype" font module
for XFree86 4.x, and Red Hat's xfs. Good site, and good links to other
information related to fonts and TrueType.
Wordperfect for Linux -- Fonts
and Printers by Rod Smith, the author of
Using Corel Wordperfect 8 for Linux
from Que. Excellent information on Wordperfect and where TrueType fits in.
XFree86 Project, the guys and gals
who do an incredible amount of work to give us a killer GUI environment. Some
info on fonts in
XFree86 4.x.
Microsoft
Web Fonts direct from the Lion's den -- and they are free! These
can be unpacked in Linux (see above).
Sebastiano Vigna's http://freshmeat.net//webFonts4Linux automates the downloading,
extracting and installation of the Microsoft fonts all in one neat
package.
Two sources of 'free' TrueType fonts with large Unicode support are
Bitstream Cyberbit, which covers Roman, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic,
combining diacritical marks, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and more, and is
available from ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/communicator/extras/fonts/windows/Cyberbit.ZIP.
And Lucida Sans Unicode, which is included in IBM's JDK 1.3.0beta for
Linux, and covers Roman, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, combining diacritical
marks. This can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.maths.tcd.ie/Linux/opt/IBMJava2-13/jre/lib/fonts/
as LucidaSansRegular.ttf and LucidaSansOblique.ttf. Thanks to Tzafrir Cohen
for these references. He also has a nice page on Hebrew fonts and related
topics at http://www.iglu.org.il/faq/?file=133.