Need a little help with abnormal fonts in Thunar

koei · 2012-03-14 01:15:48

I just recently installed Arch on my file server and so far I am very happy with it. It's clean, stable and fast. It took some time to get most of it configured properly and setup the desktop environment and some customizations, and I am afraid I head a problem that has me stumped.

Attached below are the file manager (Thunar) displaying Japanese/Korean files with ugly/strange fonts. I've gone through just about all the results in Google I could come up with related to fonts/locale settings but none of it seem to affect what Thunar uses to display these filenames. I've also checked appearance, theme and windows manager settings but none of those seem to work either.

I do not have a whole lot of experience customizing desktop environments, so I am hoping someone on the forum could provide some guidance/pointers.

The box is running on SLIM+Xfce4, with all en_US, JP and KR locales enabled. I've also installed all the related fonts for the respective languages.

http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/3310/72472031.png
http://img805.imageshack.us/img805/5224/45227414.png

Moderator edit: Those images are too big therefore I reduced them to their links. -- bernarcher

Last edited by bernarcher (2012-03-14 01:29:44)

KingX · 2012-03-14 04:06:18

Have you checked the wiki? Especially this article. The fonts on your system are not "abnormal" those are just the default fonts that are available .

bohoomil · 2012-03-14 04:12:06

Your fonts are generic bitmap fonts that provide all the glyphs your locale requires. You may want to enable outline fonts, TTF/OTF in most cases, system wide. In this article you will find all that you should know to make it possible. For the time being, look at the files in /etc/fonts/conf,d (linked to config files in /etc/fonts/conf.avail), find two pieces looking like that:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<selectfont>
  <rejectfont>
    <pattern>
      <patelt name="scalable" >
        <bool>false</bool>
      </patelt>
    </pattern>
  </rejectfont>
</selectfont>

<match target="font" >
  <edit name="embeddedbitmap" mode="assign">
    <bool>false</bool>
  </edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>

-- and enable them. If can find nothing like that, create an xml compliant config file with the content as above.

And read the Wiki, please!

Edit: 6 minutes too slow, but still relevant.

Last edited by bohoomil (2012-03-14 04:13:03)

koei · 2012-03-15 04:26:34

I appreciate the quick answer. I've gone through the wiki and I have a general understanding of how the font configuration is now.

I did a little more researching. The font I am currently using for my UI default is "fixed" which seems to be a bitmap font, and when do, all the asian language fonts default to system default bitmap ones. (Just one the ones seen in the screenshots) If i switch the UI font to say arial, which I believe is an outline font, then all the asian fonts would change too, to ones that look much better than the system bitmap defaults.

My question is now is, how do I disable the system defaults for the asian bitmap fonts while still allowing myself to use "fixed" as the UI font? I've tried the method of creating symbolic link to "70-no-bitmaps.conf" and that effectively hides all the bitmap font choices but that also removes some of the fonts I want to use in the process.

brebs · 2012-03-15 08:43:21

Just take a look at fontconfig rule examples - lots in /etc/fonts/conf.avail/. Match on the font, then turn embeddedbitmap off.

Last edited by brebs (2012-03-15 08:44:18)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-03-14 01:15:48

Need a little help with abnormal fonts in Thunar

#2 2012-03-14 04:06:18

Re: Need a little help with abnormal fonts in Thunar

#3 2012-03-14 04:12:06

Re: Need a little help with abnormal fonts in Thunar

#4 2012-03-15 04:26:34

Re: Need a little help with abnormal fonts in Thunar

#5 2012-03-15 08:43:21

Re: Need a little help with abnormal fonts in Thunar

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