Arch Linux

Super Jamie

Member

From: Brisbane, AU

Registered: 2008-12-15

Posts: 79

Website

ttf-ms-fonts Tahoma

Where exactly does ttf-ms-fonts get its Tahoma font from?

Tahoma isn't an "official" msttcorefont, you usually have to install it manually in Linux. At first I was quite happy to see Arch includes it in ttf-ms-fonts, but I've been pulling my hair out trying to get Tahoma Bold to look decent, it's been blurry and ugly for me.

I've gone through all the xorg DPI settings, which were correctly detected anyway, installed the -ubuntu font rendering packages from yaourt, and was still getting nowhere.

It turns out, all I needed to do (in addition to the fontconfig, freetype2 and libxft ubuntu packages from yaourt) was put tahomabd.ttf in my ~/.fonts/ folder. I would take this to mean that Arch doesn't actually have a separate file for Tahoma Bold, and just tries to make its own (ugly) bold Tahoma from the original font.

Last edited by Super Jamie (2008-12-19 13:51:34)

VuDu

Member

Registered: 2007-05-11

Posts: 95

Re: ttf-ms-fonts Tahoma

It turns out, all I needed to do (in addition to the fontconfig, freetype2 and libxft ubuntu packages from yaourt) was put tahomabd.ttf in my ~/.fonts/ folder. I would take this to mean that Arch doesn't actually have a separate file for Tahoma Bold, and just tries to make its own (ugly) bold Tahoma from the original font.

Thank you very much for that!

I've been having that problem since... forever! My solution was using Arial instead, but now it look great with Tahoma!
Unfortunatly, no other font beats Tahoma.

Slack

Member

From: Chile

Registered: 2008-10-27

Posts: 52

Re: ttf-ms-fonts Tahoma

I did the same. Many times I saw this problem without Tahoma bold font. However, time ago I copied all ttf fonts of window partition to the ~/.fonts but I got another problem, many fonts were blurred (IE4linux for example). The solution was install the Arch ttf fonts package and copy only the tahoma bold to ~/.fonts font (excuse me for a poor english xd)

---

Excuse my poor english

john_schaf

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-02-24

Posts: 104

Re: ttf-ms-fonts Tahoma

Hi,

I think you should file a bug report.

Super Jamie

Member

From: Brisbane, AU

Registered: 2008-12-15

Posts: 79

Website

Re: ttf-ms-fonts Tahoma

Good idea. http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/12547

metromini

Member

From: Jakarta, Indonesia

Registered: 2005-08-02

Posts: 39

Re: ttf-ms-fonts Tahoma

Is there any good and free tahoma-look-like replacement font?

Super Jamie

Member

From: Brisbane, AU

Registered: 2008-12-15

Posts: 79

Website

Re: ttf-ms-fonts Tahoma

From searching around, I've found Bitstream Vera Sans is generally considered the best free Arial/Verdana replacement. I think it's hard to replace Tahoma, it's just... perfect.

skottish

Forum Fellow

From: Here

Registered: 2006-06-16

Posts: 7,942

Re: ttf-ms-fonts Tahoma

From searching around, I've found Bitstream Vera Sans is generally considered the best free Arial/Verdana replacement. I think it's hard to replace Tahoma, it's just... perfect.

DejaVu is basically the same as Bitstream except it's a more complete font set.

userlander

Member

Registered: 2008-08-23

Posts: 413

Re: ttf-ms-fonts Tahoma

From searching around, I've found Bitstream Vera Sans is generally considered the best free Arial/Verdana replacement. I think it's hard to replace Tahoma, it's just... perfect.

DejaVu is basically the same as Bitstream except it's a more complete font set.

+1

and Arial is just a microsoft rip-off of Helvetica, which they made worse (like they do with everything they rip off).

VuDu

Member

Registered: 2007-05-11

Posts: 95

Re: ttf-ms-fonts Tahoma

From searching around, I've found Bitstream Vera Sans is generally considered the best free Arial/Verdana replacement. I think it's hard to replace Tahoma, it's just... perfect.

You're right, I couldn't find any free replacement for Tahoma. Dejavu and friends are all Verdana-like... not Tahoma.

I think gnome people have already realised that. Check Gnome's 3.0 art roadmap: http://www.bomahy.nl/hylke/wip/gnome-ar … -draft.pdf

Fonts
Bitsream and Dejavu are quite spacious, a condensed type kan show more text in the same
space without losing readability. Nicer smoother fonts that look great bold as well, a good
bold font is important for dialogs etc. and where you want attention on the text Use color
tints in UI (have a secondary font color?)

Last edited by VuDu (2009-01-07 11:07:15)