I've installed Type1 fonts (Postscript), which give better, smoother contours for letters in graphics programs like GIMP. Trouble is, the Type1 fonts don't seem to work well under Netscape, so I had to leave some of the 100dpi and 75dpi fonts around for Netscape to use (it seems to be able to scale these more effectively under my Redhat 6 OS).

Under Redhat 6, there is a fontserver called <b>xfs</b> that is started at boot time. I've learned that the config file for this server is /etc/X11/fs/config. The fonts on my system are located at /usr/X11R6?/lib/X11/fonts/ (sub-directories of this folder like Type1, 100dpi, 75dpi, etc.). In order to remove some of the fonts I didn't want or weren't really functional, I removed the font files, such as jiskan16.pcf.gz, and then typed the command to rebuild the folder's font database (fonts.dir, fonts.alias). That command is "mkfontdir" and must be typed inside of the affected directory. After removing and rebuilding the database, I restarted the xfs server using the init mechanism:

    /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs restart

Then I killed the X server and restarted it by exiting the window manager and restarting it (startx). At this point, I could launch GIMP and the font I was trying to get rid of was then no longer in the font list. This sytem is ridiculous, and I'm writing it down in part so I'll be able to remember how to do it when Redhat 7 comes along, assuming they don't make this a bit easier!

Finally, in order to install the Type1 fonts, I located RPM files like xfreefonts-0.10-9.noarch.rpm, freefonts-0.10-9.noarch.rpm, and type1inst-0.6.1-2.noarch.rpm and ran the Redhat package manager install procedure (rpm -i some.rpm) on each.

I now have lots of good fonts to work with in GIMP and can use a few fonts that look alright in Netscape. I'm not saying you should do exactly as I have, but at least these notes may illuminate how Redhat 6's default font functionality can be improved.