Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

Lazer · 2008-09-27 18:17:01

Didn't use linux for a long time and never needed such things before. But fonts look ugly on a lcd screen and therefore i need to enable it now. Especially subpixel rendering.
I thought this would be an easy job. But i only found non-working solutions, all different...

I always thought desktop environments are nothing for me but now im even too stupid to enable aa without a fancy gui. :o
First i tried:

xft.dpi:        96
xft.antialias:  true
xft.rgba:       rgb
xft.hinting:    true
xft.hintstyle:  hintslight

But that doesn't change anything. Then i found another solution:

<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="antialias"><bool>true</bool></edit>
</match>

But that doesn't help either.

After googling a while with no real solution im asking here.
Am i missing some packages? I only have xorg and openbox after doing a minimal installation.
There seem to be so many ways to archive anti aliasing, fonts.conf, those symlinks in conf.d, xft, no clue whats the difference between them... but none of them works.

Last edited by Lazer (2008-09-27 18:17:50)

skottish · 2008-09-27 18:21:17

This is my entire ~/.fonts.config file and anti-aliasing is working system wide for me:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <!-- Enable antialiasing for all fonts -->
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="antialias"><bool>true</bool></edit>
  </match>
</fontconfig>

Is this already what you have?

zhuqin · 2008-09-27 18:29:38

You need to recompile cairo, libxft and fontconfig with lcd support.

Erik Xian · 2008-09-27 18:36:32

zhuqin wrote:

You need to recompile cairo, libxft and fontconfig with lcd support.

You can find them in the AUR, along with other patched versions. I personally recommend the Ubuntu versions (cairo-ubuntu, libxft-ubuntu, etc.).

andre.ramaciotti · 2008-09-27 18:48:30

Maybe you're missing some ttf fonts. Have you installed 'ttf-bitstream-vera'?

freakcode · 2008-09-27 18:52:48

There's NO need to recompile anything. The LCD packages are patched versions with allegedly improvements for LCD, but the vanilla packages already include pretty decent antialiasing. If its looking poor, it's probably because it's badly configured or you're using poor fonts.

The basic to get antialiasing working, without Gnome or KDE, would be putting in your .Xdefaults:

Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.antialias: true
Xft.rgba: rgb
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight

And then, be sure to set fonts with Xft syntax for you terminal ("Fontname size", not fontname-*-*-14-*-*-*).

Also, I'm betting that you don't have Gtk or Qt fonts properly configured, as you're going all cowboy with Openbox, and that's a reason why they should be looking like crap.

Check this:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fonts
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/How … _look_nice
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Openbox#GTK_Fonts

Lord Illidan · 2008-09-27 19:16:12

I also use the ubuntu packages, looks quite good to me.

Lazer · 2008-09-27 19:19:45

Very odd. I installed xfce, but never started it. Now i get anti aliased fonts in openbox even without the .Xdefaults.
Does xfce depend on an package which is needed for getting aa? Or does it change some configuration file after installation? I have no .fonts.conf nor xfce created .Xdefaults.
My gtk-font is set to "sans" and bitstream-vera is not installed.

Lazer · 2008-09-29 16:20:26

Sorry for pushing but i still don't know why aa is on after installing xfce.
I can force aa to be off trough the .fonts.conf, but when i delete it aa is activate.
Before installing xfce4 it was off the whole time, even after setting it in fonts.conf. Some package must be installed which gives me this effect. I looked trough the /etc/fonts/fonts.conf and there is no entry which enables anti aliasing.
Also i totally see no difference after enabling subpixelrendering, like it seems to be off (or on?) the whole time. Didn't try to force it off yet, like i did with aa to see if it already is enabled by magic (but it looks like its off).

This is confusing and i don't want to install xfce4 everytime i need aa with openbox.

Last edited by Lazer (2008-09-29 17:11:43)

Diaz · 2008-09-29 17:08:28

That thing that happened to you happened to me, but instead of openboxm me was gnome, and instead of xfce4, me was kde4

Still don't know why...

ghostHack · 2008-09-29 17:22:40

Lazer wrote:

Sorry for pushing but i still don't know why aa is on after installing xfce.
I can force aa to be off trough the .fonts.conf, but when i delete it aa is activate.
Before installing xfce4 it was off the whole time, even after setting it in fonts.conf. Some package must be installed which gives me this effect. I looked trough the /etc/fonts/fonts.conf and there is no entry which enables anti aliasing.
Also i totally see no difference after enabling subpixelrendering, like it seems to be off (or on?) the whole time. Didn't try to force it off yet, like i did with aa to see if it already is enabled by magic (but it looks like its off).
This is confusing and i don't want to install xfce4 everytime i need aa with openbox.

If you are using openbox-session then the default autostart.sh looks for gnome-settings-daemon or xfce-mcs-manager to set gtk+ apps properties, since you installed xfce you will probably find that xfce-mcs-manager is being run so you get the default xfce aa settings.

Lazer · 2008-09-29 18:38:55

Ah that makes sense, i changed openbox-session to openbox, yet aa is active. Does the xfce-mcs-manager changes a config file which enables aa too?

Lazer · 2008-10-06 14:16:20

Still looking for a solution. Installing xfce just to get aa is no solution.

smakked · 2008-10-06 22:16:27

I had the same issue when i was trying Openbox , font s looked terrible till i install xfce and then all was well, seems a bit strange you need to install something you may not use to get aa enabled?

Misfit138 · 2008-10-07 17:02:05

As was suggested above, check here first.
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fon … er_enabled

Lazer · 2008-10-07 18:56:45

I enabled aa in fonts.conf -> Nothing
I enabled it via .Xdefaults -> Nothing
I installed xfce -> AA Active, yet no fonts.conf, .Xdefaults or symlinks in /etc/fonts/conf.d was edited or created (i removed the changes in both mentioned files before doing that, as they didn't work)
I did neither install the lcd-packages nor any other package except xfce4 and its depencies.
All i want to know is why anti aliasing is now working for me, and especially why it is active without anything done mentioned in the Fonts wiki entry.
So i know how to enable anti aliasing on my next setup of arch without installing xfce4 just for the sake of getting anti aliasing.

Bestiapeluda · 2008-10-07 21:18:55

the same thing happened to me too in openbox after installing xfce

smakked · 2008-10-07 22:24:06

seems to happen to a few people, i tried a clean install again and followed the wiki with fonts and they still look crap till xfce was installed?

RagePie · 2009-05-31 14:00:39

freakcode wrote:

There's NO need to recompile anything. The LCD packages are patched versions with allegedly improvements for LCD, but the vanilla packages already include pretty decent antialiasing. If its looking poor, it's probably because it's badly configured or you're using poor fonts.
The basic to get antialiasing working, without Gnome or KDE, would be putting in your .Xdefaults:
Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.antialias: true
Xft.rgba: rgb
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
And then, be sure to set fonts with Xft syntax for you terminal ("Fontname size", not fontname-*-*-14-*-*-*).
Also, I'm betting that you don't have Gtk or Qt fonts properly configured, as you're going all cowboy with Openbox, and that's a reason why they should be looking like crap.
Check this:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fonts
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/How … _look_nice
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Openbox#GTK_Fonts

I know this is an older post, but I just tried this, and it worked great for me.

Full_Metal_Yakuza · 2009-06-01 11:53:24

No need to recompile anything

Just make local.conf in /etc/fonts and put this content (this is my local.conf)

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<!--  Use the Autohinter --> 
  <match target="font">
    <edit name="autohint" mode="assign"><bool>true</bool></edit>
  </match>
<match target="font">
         <test name="weight" compare="more">
             <const>medium</const>
         </test>
         <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">
             <bool>false</bool>
         </edit>
     </match>
<match target="pattern" name="family" >
 <test name="family" qual="any" >
  <string>Tahoma</string>
 </test>
 <edit mode="assign" name="family" >
  <string>Verdana</string>
 </edit>
</match>
<selectfont>
        <acceptfont>
            <pattern>
                <patelt name="family"> <string>Terminus</string> </patelt>
            </pattern>
        </acceptfont>
   </selectfont>
</fontconfig>

By default,newer versions of X server disables bitmap fonts so I added exclusion lines for Terminus fonts and also replace lines for Tahoma fonts

To improve look for Open Office fonts,look also here

http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic … 2cb23823b9

Next,in your Gnome/KDE settings adjust font size/type to your likeness,and also set DPI to 96 and antialias to "full"

Finally, restart X server and fonts should look perfect after all that

Also-don't forget to install MS and DejaVu fonts

pacman -S ttf-ms-fonts ttf-dejavu

Last edited by Full_Metal_Yakuza (2009-06-01 11:55:42)

hseu · 2009-11-20 22:19:00

Sorry to bring up an old thread -but seriously- for anyone having this problem and/or the strange phenomena of aa'd fonts suddenly appearing after a DE install:
It is very likely that the magic that the DE install did was actually just installing some ttf fonts.

try installing the ms fonts from the extra repo:

[root@ology ~]# pacman -S ttf-ms-fonts
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...

Targets (2): cabextract-1.2-2  ttf-ms-fonts-2.0-2  

Total Download Size:    3.32 MB
Total Installed Size:   3.88 MB

Proceed with installation? [Y/n] 
:: Retrieving packages from extra...
 cabextract-1.2-2-x86_64   31.3K  215.1K/s 00:00:00 [#####################] 100%
 ttf-ms-fonts-2.0-2-...     3.3M  498.7K/s 00:00:07 [#####################] 100%
checking package integrity...
(2/2) checking for file conflicts                   [#####################] 100%
(1/2) installing cabextract                         [#####################] 100%
(2/2) installing ttf-ms-fonts                       [#####################] 100%
extracting fonts... done.
rebuilding font cache... done.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-09-27 18:17:01

Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#2 2008-09-27 18:21:17

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#3 2008-09-27 18:29:38

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#4 2008-09-27 18:36:32

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#5 2008-09-27 18:48:30

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#6 2008-09-27 18:52:48

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#7 2008-09-27 19:16:12

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#8 2008-09-27 19:19:45

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#9 2008-09-29 16:20:26

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#10 2008-09-29 17:08:28

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#11 2008-09-29 17:22:40

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#12 2008-09-29 18:38:55

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#13 2008-10-06 14:16:20

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#14 2008-10-06 22:16:27

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#15 2008-10-07 17:02:05

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#16 2008-10-07 18:56:45

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#17 2008-10-07 21:18:55

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#18 2008-10-07 22:24:06

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#19 2009-05-31 14:00:39

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#20 2009-06-01 11:53:24

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

#21 2009-11-20 22:19:00

Re: Anti Aliasing? Im lost...

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