Re: Not matching our bitmap Helvetica

[David Holland <dholland-tech%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Fri, Aug 09, 2019 at 10:25:15AM -0400, Mouse wrote:
 > The "modern" way, as I understand it (I don't use it, so my
 > understanding may be incorrect) moves font handling to the client,
 > which has upsides and downsides.

Pretty much only upsides. The old way (for bystanders: traditionally
fonts are handled on the server side of the X11 client/display
connection) has all kinds of architectural defects (e.g. unprivileged
apps either can't install or use their own fonts, or they can but it's
an instant root exploit vector) and the only advantage it has is that
_if_ you use a remote display _and_ everything is using only the
subset of the standard X11 fonts that's guaranteed to be available
everywhere (which doesn't allow you much more than "fixed") _and_
you're using a very low-bandwidth link, it's faster.

Which is not to say that font handling isn't still a disgrace. It's
just always been a disgrace.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost