Fonts

Fonts are Article description::a core part of the system and are necessary in order to represent text on a display.

Font installation in Gentoo is handled much like other distributions. It can be as easy as copying the font file into the proper directory. Other methods, such as are also possible.

Home directory
When installing fonts on a local basis, each user can create a directory in their home directory. This directory can then be filled with font files:

Check in a few applications to see if the newly copied font has been made available. A terminal emulator or an office program should work nicely for this purpose.

Globally available
System administrators (those with root privileges) can copy fonts into the system's directory. This will make fonts available to any user on the system.

OpenRC
In order to use a specific font in the console, set the consolefont variable in to the name of a file found in  (without the  suffix).

Next, verify that the service is in the boot runlevel:

If no runlevel is displayed for, then add it to the proper level:

If you need bigger fonts and more modern looking fonts for HD screens you should install. It has fonts with sizes from 12 to 32 pixels.

GUI font
To configure fonts for use in graphical applications see the Fontconfig article.

Emoji and symbols
Currently available through the GURU overlay:

Non-Latin scripts
Gentoo doesn't install many fonts by default so some characters in some languages may look like squares. If full support of viewing all languages and characters is needed, install the fonts for the following languages.

Additional package considerations
(part of ):

(Meta package for fonts to cover most needs):

Microsoft's TrueType :

Configuring fonts in applications
The way programs handle fonts can be different for every program. But most applications follow a certain convention. They accept the name of the font as a variable for their font configuration. The following command will give the list of all fonts that are currently available to the user issuing it. (all fonts in and )

A line of the output of  looks like this: . Here, the first field after the  (  in this case) is the family of the font that should be used in the configuration of most applications.

External resources

 * In-depth articles from Arch Linux wiki on:
 * Fonts in general
 * Fonts in Xorg - XLFD (and Xft)
 * https://fontlibrary.org/ - A font distribution website that beautifully displays fonts.