Arch Linux

MrMaester

Member

Registered: 2017-11-10

Posts: 4

Fonts look skinny compared to Windows

Recently installed arch and got the driver settings correct. Now everything runs smooth on Arch KDE, except that the fonts in Visual Studio Code or Atom seem too skinny compared to Windows.

VS Code on Arch - https://image.ibb.co/mi5GH8/vs_code_arch.png

VS Code on Windows - https://image.ibb.co/i2gWH8/vs_code_windows.png

Font is "Fira Code Retina" on both the platforms, and the images show that the fonts look a lot "filled" on Windows than on Arch. I know this can be fixed with some config files, just looking for some indications.

Regards

Mod Edit - Replaced oversized images with links.
CoC - Pasting pictures and code

Last edited by MrMaester (2018-06-21 17:01:52)

Slithery

Administrator

From: Norfolk, UK

Registered: 2013-12-01

Posts: 5,776

Re: Fonts look skinny compared to Windows

Is this still a Manjaro installation?

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MrMaester

Member

Registered: 2017-11-10

Posts: 4

Re: Fonts look skinny compared to Windows

Is this still a Manjaro installation?

Nope, installed Arch day before.

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,017

Re: Fonts look skinny compared to Windows

https://github.com/electron/libchromium … issues/384
https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/10955

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MrMaester

Member

Registered: 2017-11-10

Posts: 4

Re: Fonts look skinny compared to Windows

https://github.com/electron/libchromium … issues/384
https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/10955

Thanks for your response.
As suggested in the above links, I needed to downgrade freetype2. I had the version 2.9.1-1 and tried downgrading to 2.8.2, 2.8.1, 2.7.1-1, however, all these result in Arch not being able to reach desktop on boot.

Whenever arch boots, it gets stuck on "/dev/sdb2: clean, --some-numbers files, --some-numbers blocks". The way out of this is to switch back-and-forth between ttyl1 and ttyl2 2-3 times until SDDM shows up. This has been the behaviour from when I installed arch 3 days ago.

Downgrading to any version of freetype2 results in the OS being stuck at the "/dev/sdb2: clean" message with no way out even with switching back-and-forth between ttyl1 and 2.

If there was any other indication in the above links besides using a different freetype2, please guide me to it.

On the other hand, to verify if this is an electron issue, I tried running IntelliJ on both platforms. Here are the results:

IntelliJ IDEA on Arch - https://image.ibb.co/b3LOEo/intellij_arch.png
IntelliJ IDEA on Windows - https://image.ibb.co/m0OX78/intellij_windows.png

As can be seen in the images, Windows fonts look only slightly more 'weighted' than on Arch. The difference in VS Code is however quite noticable, so I would say this is an electron-related issue.
Any workaround to make the fonts more 'filled in' in VSCode on Arch?

EDIT: Got a workaround by manually adjusting the font weight in VS Code. Adding "editor.fontWeight": "500" to user settings makes the font more weighted, exactly the way I wanted.

@seth
Thanks for your help anyway.

Last edited by MrMaester (2018-06-22 04:08:49)

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,017

Re: Fonts look skinny compared to Windows

electron/chromium mostly ignores fontconfig settings and the latter saw drastic changes in the bytecode interpreter.
You can try whether altering the BCI implementation "fixes" that for you, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … _.28BCI.29

This would change font rendering all over the place, but might get you the desired results in electron.
By changing the font weight you simply make the font bolder (close to actually "bold" which starts at 600) to compensate for the "bad" rendering. Notice that this might make bold chars indistinguishable.

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cfr

Member

From: Cymru

Registered: 2011-11-27

Posts: 7,132

Re: Fonts look skinny compared to Windows

Whenever arch boots, it gets stuck on "/dev/sdb2: clean, --some-numbers files, --some-numbers blocks". The way out of this is to switch back-and-forth between ttyl1 and ttyl2 2-3 times until SDDM shows up. This has been the behaviour from when I installed arch 3 days ago.

Shouldn't you address this issue first?

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seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,017

Re: Fonts look skinny compared to Windows

I thought this was related to the downgrade attempt, if not: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/58355 ?

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