 One of the most frustrating things about using a computer are sometimes the pieces of software that you use on a daily basis, some of the software you depend on, some of the maintainers of these pieces, especially free and open source software, they make major changes. They make major rewrites. They change some things that in some cases break your existing configurations. And that is the case with XMObar, which is the panel that I use in my Xmonad window manager. For those of you that use my Xmonad configs, and I know hundreds, maybe thousands of people have used my Xmonad configs over the years, and you guys are using my XMObar config as well. Those of you that have the DTOS core repository of software enabled on your Arch Linux based system, you guys of course get my configs as well. And I've been getting a lot of requests here in the last couple of days that basically issues opened on my GitLab that XMObar is broken. These fonts, these are much bigger than they used to be. This is like a 14, maybe a 16 point font, and it's like a default like sans font. It's not actually styled correctly. It's not using the correct font family that I typically use in the bar. So what has happened is the developers of XMObar, they actually made a major change with XMObar a couple of months back, actually, it's just now that XMObar, this latest edition, has made it into the Arch repository. So this is just now affecting us over on the Arch side, but they've made some major changes to how fonts work in your config. So if I actually open my config, so let me open my XMObar config here. And what I've done is this is an example of what your fonts used to look like in the older versions of XMObar. You had XFT. So they were XFT styled fonts colon and then name a font, then colon pixel size colon. You would probably have anti alias equals true colon. And then you also had, I think, hinting equals true as well. And this was the case for every font you had listed in XMObar. But they have gotten away from using XFT fonts. And now they're going to this style of font here. They're using Pango rather than XFT. So they're using a different kind of font rendering here. And you can see the names of the fonts are slightly different in this Pango format rather than the XFT format. So if I actually write this and restart XMObar, you can see I get back my XMObar the way it used to look with the proper Ubuntu font family, which is for most of the characters here. And I'm using font awesome for the Unicode glyphs here. So for all of you guys that have XMObar looking all wonky and can't figure out the reasons why this is the reason why if you're using my XMObar configs, are you using any of my DTOS configs, the DTOS core repository of software. All of this has already been repackaged and I've already rebuilt all the packages on DTOS. So you should get the latest XMObar config looking exactly like this now with these correct fonts. Now, there is one issue with these new Pango fonts rather than the XFT fonts. Remember in the XFT fonts, you had a option to turn on or off anti aliasing. Well, there's no option to do that using the Pango styled fonts. So there is no anti aliasing. So don't be surprised if the fonts look a little blurry. In this case here, the fonts I'm using a Ubuntu bold and then the font awesome glyphs, I can tell there's a difference. It's not quite as crisp as the XFT fonts. I know that's going to annoy the hell out of some people because some people really, I mean, some people have really sharp eyes and they can really see every pixel that is out of place. For me, I don't notice it that much now that I've gotten used to it for a couple of days, but on some fonts, it's going to be really, really bad. Some font families are horrible to look at if you don't have anti aliasing. Yes, some of the blocky squared styled fonts, maybe things like Terminus, you know, I don't know. Some of those may look a little weird. I haven't tried them, but just know that anti aliasing is now not even an option in XMO bar. And I don't know if they're going to be able to put it back in. People have been complaining to the dev, hey, you know, this move from XFT to Pango without anti aliasing, it doesn't look as good. But his point was he needed to make the change at some point because he was cleaning up a lot of code. He needed to move away from XFT. I think part of the thing is by making the move that he's made with this code base, the XMO bar theoretically should be able to eventually work on Wayland so that, you know, if you're using a Wayland Tiling Window Manager, XMO bar could become an option for you guys. Now, one thing I do want to ask you guys is because I know a lot of people are going to complain about the lack of anti aliasing and that may be and, you know, XMO bar now doesn't look quite as crisp and as sharp as it used to. And I know I'm going to get people asking for an alternative. They're going to want an alternative panel. I have Poly Bar installed on the system. It's not configured to actually work with XMO, but if I go into my .config directory, Poly Bar, CD into that. I actually don't really use Poly Bar for anything. I think I had Poly Bar set up to use with BSPWM because, of course, BSPWM doesn't come with a panel and Poly Bar is kind of the bar everybody uses, but you see, it still looks really nice. There's the fonts and they're really crisp and clean, anti-aliased. One thing you're not going to see workspaces here in XMO because I've got to configure my XMOconfig to work with Poly Bar. If that is something I want to eventually do, but I don't know if that is something I want to take the time to do. Do a kill all Poly Bar there. So I want to ask you guys this question. Those of you that are using my XMOconfig, maybe you grab my XMOconfig from my .files over on my GitLab, or maybe you're using the DTOS XMOconfig because you've installed DTOS. Would you guys like me to create a new XMOconfig designed to use Poly Bar instead of XMO Bar? And I'm not going to get rid of my existing XMOconfig that use XMO Bar because I know a lot of people are going to love to keep using XMO Bar. You've already got it configured. Wine change, right? If the anti-aliasing issue is not an issue for you, just stick with XMO Bar. But I might package a second version of XMOconfig one designed to use Poly Bar instead. And that way, when you install DTOS or you go grab my configs off my .files, you have two different versions of an XMOconfig to choose from. You can use XMO with XMO Bar if you are okay with XMO Bar or you can choose XMO with Poly Bar instead. And I don't mind giving folks those options. It will take some work though because I would have to now write a new XMOconfig designed to use Poly Bar. And that's going to be a little bit of work, but I don't mind putting in that work. If you guys want it. And of course, I'll make a little video content about that as well. So let me know your thoughts on that in the comments down below. Now, before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this episode. And of course, I'm talking about Gabe James Maxim, Matt Mimic, Mitchell Paul, Roa West, Armored Dragon, Bash Potato Chuck, Commander Anchory George, Lee Methos, Nate Erion, Paul Peace, Archon Vador, Polly Tate, Grella Tease for Less, Red Prophet, Roland Tools, Devler, and Willie. These guys, they're my high steered patrons over on Patreon. Without these guys, this episode about X-MO Bar, really having some font issues. This episode would not have been possible. The show is also brought to you by Hitch and every one of these fine ladies, Angelman as well. All these names you're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters over on Patreon. I don't have any corporate sponsors. I'm sponsored by you guys, the community. If you like my work and want to see more videos about free and open source software, subscribe to Distro Tube over on Patreon. Peace, guys. Maybe it's time to go hardcore and just not use a panel at all.