killed by fonts

xnooby2 · 2008-03-26 02:51:50

About every month I try to switch to Arch, and every month I give up after spending hours and hours trying to get firefox to display fonts properly. The combinations of WM, LCD vs CRT, AUR, nVidia, font packages, results in a never ending battle to get my fonts to look right. Arch needs something like hwd for fonts. I end up randomly guessing at the magical combination that will make my fonts look like a screenshot from a pro's box. but it never happens. I end up going back to ubuntu which renders webpages perfectly after a fresh install. There are too many combinations of things.

Divingstar · 2008-03-26 03:51:43

I had the same problem when I first came to Arch. A quick fix for ugly fonts that I have found is to:

$pacman -S ttf-ms-fonts

Then change all fonts to sans-serif. Some Linux purists frown on MS fonts (or MS anything for that matter:P) but it gets my system to look great with minimal fuss. Then you can look around for other fonts etc without all the ugliness.

Good luck,
Jim

eerok · 2008-03-26 07:13:08

With a topic like this it's a good idea to provide screenshots of what you have and what you want, because there are many different opinions on what looks good.

brebs · 2008-03-26 07:31:01

xnooby2 wrote:

There are too many combinations of things.

Yeah, but just attack them one at a time. Get the window manager fonts looking good, *then* start tweaking firefox.

If Ubuntu's firefox is working well, then write a pkgbuild for it - example.

peets · 2008-03-26 11:54:21

This is how I got my fonts to look pretty: from a fresh install,

pacman -S ttf-bitstream-vera

I set firefox to use Bitstream Vera Serif or Bitstream Vera Sans.

But I know this depends on monitors and such. Here're some screenshots

peppy wrote:

Never give up. Trust your instincts.

But remember he did go on to say "It's a trap!"

Ramses de Norre · 2008-03-26 12:43:19

In gnome and kde, installing a decent font (DejaVu in my case) and using the right settings in their font-config was all it took, those dialogs aren't hard to get right. In a lighter WM you can be fiddling more, but I normally don't have to do much to get everything fine on my lcd.

xnooby2 · 2008-03-27 01:46:14

I've been told this is too many fonts:

pacman -S ttf-ms-fonts ttf-dejavu artwiz-fonts ttf-liberation

I'm now trying ArchLinux inside VMWare on XP, so I don't have to keep reinstalling it everytime I screw up my fonts. Ultimately my 2nd box will run Arch natively, once I get the fonts straight.

If the fonts look weird under VMWare (which is possible), I go back to the native box and use Clonezilla to roll it back. I try so many things I forget what i've changed, thats why I like go back to a previous image.

I'm thinking of using the tiling WM "Awesome" to test the fonts with Firefox, so I don't have any WM stuff going on. I installed GNOME on my native box, and it made all the small fonts fuzzy. I could also try OpenBox, FluxBox, or IceWm, but I can never figure out which one I like. Tiling WM's solve my lack of art skills by eliminating all the eyecandy, lol.

From the responses, it looks like I should only install the bitstream-vera fonts or microsoft fonts, then tell Firefox to use them. I thought if I load a ton of fonts it would increase my chances of the webpages looking good, but I guess that is wrong thinking.

EDIT:

I got a major improvement on my native box by using an nVidia-specific tweak, by specifying the DPI in the xorg.conf to be 96x96. I still have issues, but at least it looks a lot better than it did. I'll post screenshots once I learn how to make them.

Last edited by xnooby2 (2008-03-27 02:23:01)

xnooby2 · 2008-03-27 02:48:42

The font wiki says to do this:

tar xfz freetype2-lcd*.tar.gz
cd freetype2-lcd
makepkg -c

but my machine did not have 'patch' or 'make' on it, so I had to manually install them.

bender02 · 2008-03-27 03:17:06

xnooby2 wrote:

but my machine did not have 'patch' or 'make' on it, so I had to manually install them.

Well, if you want to build packages (makepkg), you are supposed to have the packages in the group 'base-devel' installed. Both of those are there.

thayer · 2008-03-27 04:35:23

xnooby2 wrote:

I've been told this is too many fonts:
pacman -S ttf-ms-fonts ttf-dejavu artwiz-fonts ttf-liberation

Someone lied

You can install thousands of fonts if you like... as a designer I have to have a large collection on hand at all times. I can guarantee that 3 font packages are not too many.

danielsoft · 2008-03-27 08:56:36

xnooby2: Type about:config into your address bar. Type dpi into the filter and change layout.css.dpi to 0.

This fixed Firefox font issues for me. It's from the Firefox Arch Wiki page.

Endperform · 2008-03-27 14:21:08

A lot of people seem to have a lot of different ways to fix the font issue. My advice is to try a couple of them out and see what works best. As mentioned, get the window manager fonts looking good first, then focus on Firefox.

thayer · 2008-03-27 15:54:12

One of the most difficult aspects of 'fixing' someone's fonts is that we don't know what they actually want their fonts to look like. Screenshot samples go a long way in cases like this.

A while back I took a bunch of screenshots, each with different font settings. In case anyone else is interested, you can find the results below (each file is named after the settings used):

http://dev.archlinux.org/~thayer/misc/x-font-rendering/

These days, I typically just use autohint and antialias (with manual hinting disabled.) For me and my LCD screen, this produces a nicely antialiased appearance for just about all fonts. I use bitmap fonts for stuff that needs to be really crisp (e.g Openbox menus).

Last edited by thayer (2008-03-27 15:57:20)

xnooby2 · 2008-03-28 12:20:26

72 hours later, I'm going to have to take a break again. Setting my nVidia card to 96DPI in my xorg.conf helped a lot, but the other things just shifted around the problems.

Ironically, one of the websites I was trying to look at properly was desktoplinux.com. There "Most Popular Recent Stories" on the bottom right, is in a font that I can never get to look good. Also CNN.com's story headlines are too bold (the ones under the main page).

I'll have to figure out how to make and post a screen shot, so can I show exactly what I am talking about.

I still think that font settings could greatly benefit from an application like "hwd". Even if it just puts the fonts in some "Arch-preferred way". I never really wanted to know this much about fonts.

Last edited by xnooby2 (2008-03-28 12:22:08)

brebs · 2008-03-28 12:44:47

xnooby2 wrote:

too bold

Read thread. See my posts on its first page. Then read the entire rest of the thread, for lots of hints...

It would be interesting to see a screenshot of what you say Ubuntu does so well, hint hint

danielsoft · 2008-03-28 14:15:42

xnooby2 wrote:

I'll have to figure out how to make and post a screen shot, so can I show exactly what I am talking about.

install the "scrot" package

Arch Linux

#1 2008-03-26 02:51:50

killed by fonts

#2 2008-03-26 03:51:43

Re: killed by fonts

#3 2008-03-26 07:13:08

Re: killed by fonts

#4 2008-03-26 07:31:01

Re: killed by fonts

#5 2008-03-26 11:54:21

Re: killed by fonts

#6 2008-03-26 12:43:19

Re: killed by fonts

#7 2008-03-27 01:46:14

Re: killed by fonts

#8 2008-03-27 02:48:42

Re: killed by fonts

#9 2008-03-27 03:17:06

Re: killed by fonts

#10 2008-03-27 04:35:23

Re: killed by fonts

#11 2008-03-27 08:56:36

Re: killed by fonts

#12 2008-03-27 14:21:08

Re: killed by fonts

#13 2008-03-27 15:54:12

Re: killed by fonts

#14 2008-03-28 12:20:26

Re: killed by fonts

#15 2008-03-28 12:44:47

Re: killed by fonts

#16 2008-03-28 14:15:42

Re: killed by fonts

Board footer