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+ Troubleshooting GNU FreeFont
+
+So your text looks lousy, although you installed FreeFont and you seem to be
+using it. What do you do?
+
+Before you blame the problem on FreeFont, take the time to double-check that
+the text you are looking at is really rendered with FreeFont.
+
+Be aware that not all Unicode characters are supported by FreeFont, and
+even characters supported by one face, such as Serif, might not be
+supported by other faces such as Sans.
+
+Also, some systems have settings that strongly affect the rendering
+of fonts. It may be worth tweaking these.
+
+glyph substitution
+==================
+
+When given the task of displaying characters in text, modern font rendering
+software usually tries to display *something*, even if the font it is
+*supposed* to be using does not contain glyphs for all the characters in the
+text. The software will snoop through all the fonts on the system to find
+one that has a glyph for the one missing in the desired font. So although
+you have specified FreeSans-bold, you may be looking at a letter from quite
+a different font.
+
+First double-check that the font in question really contains the character
+in question. If you don't have font development software, this can be
+tricky. In the case of FreeFont, you can check if a given character
+range is supported: <http://www.gnu.org/software/freefont/coverage.html>
+
+Next double-check that your application (web browser, text editor, etc)
+has indeed been properly instructed to use the font.
+
+Then double-check that the font is really installed in the system.
+(This depends on the operating system, of course.)
+
+Linux and Unix
+==============
+
+Modern Linux systems use a system called fontconfig, which maintains a font
+cache, for efficiency.
+
+The font cache can really complicate font installation and troubleshooting
+however. It can happen that when a font is newly installed, what is
+displayed is coming out of an old cache entry rather than the new font.
+
+Just what to do depends on how and where the font was installed.
+
+Fonts installed system-wide are usually put in a directory such as
+ /usr/share/fonts/
+the font cache for these might be in
+ /var/cache/fontconfig/
+Fonts installed just for one user account will typically be in
+ ~/.fonts/
+and the cache will be
+ ~/.fontconfig/
+
+You can clean your local cache merely by emptying the directory
+ ~/.fontconfig/
+In any case, to clean the cache, you can use the fontconfig command
+ fc-cache -vf
+If run as root, it will clean the system cache, if run as a normal user,
+it cleans only the normal user's cache.
+
+The procedure for local fonts is:
+ 1) shut off any program using the fonts in question
+ 2) clean the cache
+ 3) re-start the program
+The procedure for system-wide fonts is:
+ 1) log out of the X Windows session
+ 2) in a console, clean the cache
+ 3) log in to an X Windows session
+
+LibreOffice / OpenOffice
+========================
+These products have their own font rendering libraries, which have
+idiosyncratic behavior.
+
+It has recently been reported that as of LibreOffice 3.5.1, font features
+are disabled for OpenType fonts. If you use FreeFont with these products,
+you may want to install the TrueType versions of the fonts.
+
+Windows
+=======
+
+The most common complaint has to do with "blurry text". There are two
+causes.
+
+The first is that ClearType smoothing is turned off. The best way to check
+is to use the native Windows Web browser. Do a search for "ClearType Tuner".
+The Microsoft pages install a tuner for ClearType. A security block notice
+will appear at the top of the window--you have to allow the installation.
+Then check the box "Turn on ClearType". The change happens immediately.
+
+The secont cause is that the FreeFont version with cubic spline outlines is
+installed. As of the 2012 GNU FreeFont release, the TrueType builds have
+quadratic splines, which work best with Windows' rendering software.
+ TTF (TrueType) quadratic splines Windows 7, Vista, Windows XP.
+ OTF (OpenType) cubic splines Linux, Mac
+
+Note also: Firefox has a setting for ClearType:
+ gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.rendering_mode
+A value of 2 sets it to old-style GDI rendering, while -1 is the default.
+
+reporting problems
+==================
+
+If you really think you're seeing a bug in FreeFont, or if you have
+a suggestion, consider opening a problem report at
+ https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=freefont
+It is best that you make a Savannah account and log in with that, so
+you can be e-mailed whenever changes are made to your report.
+
+$Id: troubleshooting.txt,v 1.10 2011-07-16 08:38:06 Stevan_White Exp $