Arch Linux

esters

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Registered: 2006-11-04

Posts: 173

[SOLVED] Beautifing font rendering on LCD

The one thing that I miss in Linux very much is proper font rendering on a LCD monitor. As some of you may know in Windows there is a technology called Cleartype. Arch Linux has *-lcd packages in community which do font rendering very well on my Samsung SyncMaster 740n.

I have read some articles on Arch wiki, Slackwiki, Gentoo wiki about font rendering and how to display them properly. My .fonts.conf

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<!-- /etc/fonts/local.conf file to configure system font access -->
<fontconfig>

    <match target="font">
        <edit name="autohint" mode="assign"><bool>false</bool></edit>
        <edit name="rgba" mode="assign"><const>rgb</const></edit>
        <edit name="hinting" mode="assign"><bool>true</bool></edit>
        <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign"><const>hintslight</const></edit> 
        <edit mode="assign" name="antialias"><bool>true</bool></edit>    
    </match>

</fontconfig>

I'm running XFCE4 with multiple GNOME applications. Some of them had rendering problems, without the .fonts.conf entries (See the screenshots)

Without .fonts.conf - http://xs226.xs.to/xs226/08144/epiphany1630.png

With .fonts.conf - http://xs226.xs.to/xs226/08144/epiphany2404.png

By default I use Tahoma 8pt font, 96DPI, RGB subpixel hinting and Hinting type - Slight. From what I have seen in my .fonts.conf, I think everything is like as it should be. For several times I have tried to render the fonts properly (like in the second epiphany screenshot), but on openbox, they look like as they were without .fonts.conf - http://xs126.xs.to/xs126/08144/gtkchtheme528.png

I know that many of you use Openbox with LCD patches, so please give me some ideas or suggestions

= Update =

Solution thread

Simply create .Xdefaults file in your home directory and add the following -

!Xft settings
Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.hinting: 1
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
Xft.antialias: 1
Xft.rgba: rgb

@cinan Currently I'm using the -ubuntu patchset, which I find the most pleasant for my eyes but feel free to experiment. Also the lcdfilter is set to lcddefault in "/etc/fonts/conf.d/11-lcd-filter-lcddefault.conf"

Last edited by esters (2009-01-28 21:45:13)