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#1 2016-05-19 23:12:44

smrz
Member
Registered: 2016-05-12
Posts: 24

Fonts? I Need some general help

I recently installed my first archlinux system and while everything is legible, fonts in many applications don't look very good.  I suspect that I need to install and/or manage fonts explicitly, but it's not clear where to start. 

I have looked at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/fonts#Font_formats and while it has lots of useful information, it doesn't make recommendations.

Here are a few of the things I'd like to fix:

  • The default fonts in Seamonkey and rstudio are particularly bad: uneven and rough looking, as if anti-aliasing is off.

  • In Firefox and Thunderbird, the menu fonts are too large (these apps let you choose fonts for content, but not for menus).  The default content fonts are a little rough.

Thus far, I haven't done anything to explicitly install or manage fonts.  I have whatever was pulled in when I installed graphics related packages, presumably

  • xorg-server

  • xorg-server-utils

  • xorg-apps

  • gdm

  • mate

  • enlightenement

and various applications. 

FYI re my system:

  • archlinux is up to date per 'pacman -Syu'.

  • Graphics chip: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller

  • Monitor: Benq 1920 x 1080 60hz.

I'd appreciate any suggestions re how to proceed and/or what to read about fonts.

thanks

PS Looking around the arch documentation, I came across the package https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Infinality that looked promising but I wasn't able to get it to install.

I added

[infinality-bundle]
Server = http://bohoomil.com/repo/$arch

[infinality-bundle-fonts]
Server = http://bohoomil.com/repo/$arch

[infinality-bundle-multilib]
Server = http://bohoomil.com/repo/multilib/$arch

to pacman.conf and ran

pacman-key -r keyid 962DDE58

But when I tried to install infinality

pacman -S infinality-bundle

I got the error message

warning: database file for 'infinality-bundle' does not exist
warning: database file for 'infinality-bundle-fonts' does not exist
warning: database file for 'infinality-bundle-multilib' does not exist
error: target not found: infinality-bundle

Any thoughts about this package and why it won't install?

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#2 2016-05-19 23:16:25

Slithery
Administrator
From: Norfolk, UK
Registered: 2013-12-01
Posts: 5,776

Re: Fonts? I Need some general help

You need to sync the new repos after adding them before pacman knows about the packages they contain.

pacman -Syu

No, it didn't "fix" anything. It just shifted the brokeness one space to the right. - jasonwryan
Closing -- for deletion; Banning -- for muppetry. - jasonwryan

aur - dotfiles

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#3 2016-05-19 23:43:58

smrz
Member
Registered: 2016-05-12
Posts: 24

Re: Fonts? I Need some general help

Thanks.  Looks like there's a problem with the infinality key.  I.e.

# pacman -Syu
error: infinality-bundle: signature from "bohoomil (dev key) <bohoomil@zoho.com>" is unknown trust
error: infinality-bundle-multilib: signature from "bohoomil (dev key) <bohoomil@zoho.com>" is unknown trust
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 community is up to date
 infinality-bundle                                                                            4.3 KiB  1439K/s 00:00 [######################################################################] 100%
 infinality-bundle.sig                                                                      287.0   B  0.00B/s 00:00 [######################################################################] 100%
error: infinality-bundle: signature from "bohoomil (dev key) <bohoomil@zoho.com>" is unknown trust
error: failed to update infinality-bundle (invalid or corrupted database (PGP signature))
error: failed retrieving file 'infinality-bundle-fonts.db' from bohoomil.com : The requested URL returned error: 404
error: failed to update infinality-bundle-fonts (unexpected error)
 infinality-bundle-multilib                                                                   2.0 KiB  0.00B/s 00:00 [######################################################################] 100%
 infinality-bundle-multilib.sig                                                             287.0   B  0.00B/s 00:00 [######################################################################] 100%
error: infinality-bundle-multilib: signature from "bohoomil (dev key) <bohoomil@zoho.com>" is unknown trust
error: failed to update infinality-bundle-multilib (invalid or corrupted database (PGP signature))
error: database 'infinality-bundle' is not valid (invalid or corrupted database (PGP signature))
error: database 'infinality-bundle-multilib' is not valid (invalid or corrupted database (PGP signature))

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#4 2016-05-19 23:47:48

Slithery
Administrator
From: Norfolk, UK
Registered: 2013-12-01
Posts: 5,776

Re: Fonts? I Need some general help


No, it didn't "fix" anything. It just shifted the brokeness one space to the right. - jasonwryan
Closing -- for deletion; Banning -- for muppetry. - jasonwryan

aur - dotfiles

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#5 2016-05-20 20:50:05

smrz
Member
Registered: 2016-05-12
Posts: 24

Re: Fonts? I Need some general help

I did install the keyid before trying pacman -Syu, and got the above errors.  I'm going to give up on Infinality for now.

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#6 2016-05-20 21:01:54

Ropid
Member
Registered: 2015-03-09
Posts: 1,069

Re: Fonts? I Need some general help

You mention that you ran "pacman-key -r ..." to import the key, but not that you signed it with "pacman-key --lsign-key ...". Did you forget to do that?

Last edited by Ropid (2016-05-20 21:02:26)

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#7 2016-05-20 22:36:07

smrz
Member
Registered: 2016-05-12
Posts: 24

Re: Fonts? I Need some general help

I had not, thanks.  I was able to access

[infinality-bundle]
Server = http://bohoomil.com/repo/$arch

([infinality-bundle-fonts] and [infinality-bundle-multilib] still generated errors,, so I removed them from pacman.conf)
and did install infinality-bundle.

Now it remains to be seen if it makes a difference.

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#8 2016-05-20 22:42:08

smrz
Member
Registered: 2016-05-12
Posts: 24

Re: Fonts? I Need some general help

Installng the infinality-bundle does seem to have improved things.  Now I need to figure out what it actually did.

Did it substitute a different set of fonts and/or did it change something re rendering?

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#9 2016-05-20 22:51:44

jasonwryan
Anarchist
From: .nz
Registered: 2009-05-09
Posts: 30,424
Website

Re: Fonts? I Need some general help


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