[SOLVED] Bold monospace fonts and rendering

fm · 2012-01-09 15:02:49

Hi everybody,

I chose to use the Inconsolata font (http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html) everywhere I need a monospace font.
However I have an issue with this setup. Since Inconsolata font doesn't have a bold variant, when "bolding" it, it gets rendered with a different width (it's not monospace anymore)

This happens, for example, inside an Eclipse editor or even in gEdit.

I've also noticed that in some applications (e.g., gnome-terminal or x-chat), bold is correctly displayed using the same width of the normal variant.

I've read the https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_Configuration page and, in particular, the "disable autohinter for bold fonts". I actually don't use the auto-hinter so I tried different configuration but without luck.

Does anyone have an hint for solving this inconsistency?

Thanks.

P.S.: To better understand what I am talking about you can have a look at this image: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/85 … olata.png/

Last edited by fm (2012-01-14 21:41:36)

bohoomil · 2012-01-09 15:22:17

In your /etc/fonts/conf.avail, you should have a file called 90-synthetic.conf. Create a symbolic link to it in /etc/fonts/conf.d and check the result.

fm · 2012-01-09 16:05:24

bohoomil wrote:

In your /etc/fonts/conf.avail, you should have a file called 90-synthetic.conf. Create a symbolic link to it in /etc/fonts/conf.d and check the result.

It was already there, so what I described is the behavior with that file already in my conf.d

Thanks

bohoomil · 2012-01-09 16:33:30

You can try a slightly different version of the approach offered by Infinality patches -- it's working fine for me to force oblique Lucida Grande font. I presume you would have to install the patched version of freetype2, though. The fontconfig file is called 70-forced-synthetic.conf there.

brebs · 2012-01-09 16:59:16

fm wrote:

I actually don't use the auto-hinter so I tried different configuration but without luck.

If the app doesn't use fontconfig, then changing fontconfig settings won't help

fm · 2012-01-09 21:20:47

brebs wrote:

fm wrote:
I actually don't use the auto-hinter so I tried different configuration but without luck.
If the app doesn't use fontconfig, then changing fontconfig settings won't help

That's clear. But gnome-terminal and gEdit aren't they supposed to use the same backend, i.e., fontconfig?
Because gnome-terminal works fine. gEdit doesn't.

Thanks.

fm · 2012-01-09 21:24:28

fm wrote:

That's clear. But gnome-terminal and gEdit aren't they supposed to use the same backend, i.e., fontconfig?
Because gnome-terminal works fine. gEdit doesn't.
Thanks.

Hmmm... Well, that could be a sign that the two don't use the same backend
So I will rephrase the question... How do I understand which backend is used by which application? Finally they are all GTK based (gEdit and also Eclipse via SWT)

Thanks.

fm · 2012-01-14 21:41:23

fm wrote:

Does anyone have an hint for solving this inconsistency?

I actually found a solution. Installing the infinality patched version of freetype will solve the issue.

After that, both gEdit and Eclipse render monospace fonts using the same width for nomal and bold.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-01-09 15:02:49

[SOLVED] Bold monospace fonts and rendering

#2 2012-01-09 15:22:17

Re: [SOLVED] Bold monospace fonts and rendering

#3 2012-01-09 16:05:24

Re: [SOLVED] Bold monospace fonts and rendering

#4 2012-01-09 16:33:30

Re: [SOLVED] Bold monospace fonts and rendering

#5 2012-01-09 16:59:16

Re: [SOLVED] Bold monospace fonts and rendering

#6 2012-01-09 21:20:47

Re: [SOLVED] Bold monospace fonts and rendering

#7 2012-01-09 21:24:28

Re: [SOLVED] Bold monospace fonts and rendering

#8 2012-01-14 21:41:23

Re: [SOLVED] Bold monospace fonts and rendering

Board footer