infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

bohoomil · 2013-06-20 01:04:12

karol wrote:

You can ask the moderators to merge these threads.

I have already done that.

jasonwryan · 2013-06-20 01:17:51

bohoomil wrote:

karol wrote:
You can ask the moderators to merge these threads.
I have already done that.

...and, like magic, the merge occurs!

bohoomil · 2013-06-20 01:18:59

Thank you.

brebs · 2013-06-20 06:12:42

drog wrote:

nope looks worse

Looks like you have fontconfig's antialias as false. So of course it looks awful.

Some debugging info: Run winecfg, then:

$ lsof | grep -i ttf | grep -i wine
... tahomabd.ttf
... tahoma.ttf

vgivanovic · 2013-06-21 03:44:37

bohoomil wrote:

I dare to bump the thread since I believe I have good news for you.
Today a new version of freetype2 has been released. Since I was trying to resolve an issue reported yesterday as well as fix a few more I have been struggling with recently, I decided to try and tailor the existing patches so that I could quickly apply them to 2.5.0. I have created new infinality-settings.sh and am currently fine tunning fontconfig settings to eliminate minor glitches. Here are the results: click and click (enlarge both, please). Personally, I'm more than happy with this and I hope that at least a few of you will find this release of infinality-bundle a milestone.
In a few days time I will upload to my Dropbox binaries for testing. As always. your comments, feedback and opinions are welcome.
Thanks.

Good looking, indeed, but I think the "Po" kerning should be tighter.

bohoomil · 2013-06-21 04:13:22

Unfortunately, this sort of things are terribly difficult to control. Only yesterday I reworked almost the entire infinality-settings again, which eliminated (at last!) a dozen of little glitches of this kind, but I am aware of the fact that there will always be bits that aren't perfect, just like the one you've mentioned. On the other hand, when the overall impression is positive, reading is not a painful experience and texts look +95% OK, I believe this is a pretty good final score. It seems even better when you can recall the state of text reproduction in Linux 6, 8 or 12 years ago and perform a quick 'now | then' comparison.

Besides, when they still need to improve freetype2 and fontconfig, I think it's fair that there's something left for me to be improved, too, isn't it?

Edit

When we discuss various aspects of font rendering, like kerning, we cannot forget about other factors that build the final picture. Think of a font itself: here you have exactly the same page, the same freetype2 settings and the same fontconfig configs, but instead of Arial (my default sans face) I have now used Liberation Sans, TeX Gyre Heros and Noto Sans. Being asked to choose the best one from the group of four, which would you pick up, assuming you don't know / aren't sure which fonts were used? Now let's take the same font family in three different versions--TTF, OTF and T1--and apply the default fontconfig settings we have for each of them. Now take three (or more) releases of the same font, by the same e-foundry, and read the same piece of text again. Now compare different text layout systems (pango, xulrunner, webkit, qt…) and see what's happening. And so on, and on. This is exactly what I used to do (OK: I still sometimes do it) when I wanted to find the best looking font face foo in the global toolbox. Or replace family foo with family bar, because the former simply didn't want to behave… All in all, this is just one complex matter to make a single, and apparently a simple thing like a short piece of text displayed in sans serif, look always the same, regardless of conditions, circumstances, not to mention the hardware used. Or at least -- make it look typographically absolutely correct (because we do know what the correct model should look like). Each and every solution either sucks, or will suck for some reason when the wrong day comes. However, I've somehow got used to it.

And yes, I almost forgot to mention it: If you know how to improve it and/or you have a working configuration that does the thing better, I'd be very happy if you could share it with us. Everybody would.

Last edited by bohoomil (2013-06-21 08:25:09)

cfr · 2013-06-21 20:44:01

I thought they looked excellent.

Perhaps I am missing something but isn't e.g. the Po kerning a matter for the *font* rather than the font rendering?

Incidentally, pacman is reporting connection refused for the infinality repo.

Last edited by cfr (2013-06-21 20:44:30)

bohoomil · 2013-06-22 03:56:08

The answer to your question is positive, of course: the font itself holds this sort of information (hence the examples I provided). However, with a rich set of freetytpe2 tunable parameters, it became possible to 'mask' undesirable behaviour of a font, under certain conditions at least. In the pending release I've used such tricks very sparsely, though: I decided to avoid brute-force-fixing-by-masking where possible since it has too often produced new weird issues. Hence the 'Po' controversy as a proof that every solution sucks.

The repository seems to be working fine right now. I'm slowly becoming paranoid when I read that the server is offline again… Just in case, I asked the server stuff if there was anything I should be aware of because I don't feel like going through a suspended account story again… Anyway, thank you for mentioning the problem.

Unia · 2013-06-22 09:19:30

I'm still getting this, started yesterday:

error: failed retrieving file 'infinality-bundle.db' from bohoomil.cu.cc : Connection timed out after 10012 milliseconds
error: failed to update infinality-bundle (download library error)
error: failed retrieving file 'infinality-bundle-multilib.db' from bohoomil.cu.cc : Connection timed out after 10009 milliseconds
error: failed to update infinality-bundle-multilib (download library error)

triplc · 2013-06-22 09:34:00

Unia wrote:

I'm still getting this, started yesterday

Me too

bohoomil · 2013-06-22 10:34:02

At the moment I'm either getting the error, or the connection is established but it takes a few seconds more than it usually does. I've been investigating this and as far as I can tell everything seems to be working fine on the server side: I can ping the host successfully, log in and perform all the usual maintenance. The tech staff confirmed that having performed their own tests. The problem must occur on the domain provider's side then. I have already verified that I didn't make some stupid mistake, entering wrong data for example, and reset the configuration. As it typically takes a few hours for the new configuration to become effective, we will see if this helps. If it doesn't, I will contact the domain registrar and ask for assistance.

Thank you for reporting and sorry for the hassle…

cfr · 2013-06-22 20:43:37

I'm not seeing the error now. pacman reports my databases for infinality are up to date.

bohoomil · 2013-06-22 22:08:51

Personally, I'm seeing nothing (the inner life of /dev/null), so I already have a backup account ready in case the situation persists. One way or another, the repository will be active soon.

Last edited by bohoomil (2013-06-22 22:10:34)

WonderWoofy · 2013-06-22 23:42:06

bohoomil wrote:

Personally, I'm seeing nothing (the inner life of /dev/null), so I already have a backup account ready in case the situation persists. One way or another, the repository will be active soon.

I know I have told you this numerous times before, but thank you again for all your hard work you are putting into this. My fonts have never been happier! Or maybe, I have never been happier with my fonts... either way.

Edit: BTW, in some of the screenshots your provide as examples, you sometimes have shots of dwb. I am curious if you use the default font familes in the settings, or if you make any changes. Also, what is it that you actually use in terms of font packages? Do you use the windows AUR packages?

Last edited by WonderWoofy (2013-06-22 23:48:34)

bohoomil · 2013-06-23 12:27:49

I can see that for many hours everything has been in working order again, so let's believe it is going to stay this way from now on. Just in case, there's a parallel repository up and running with exactly the same content, so if in a couple of days people keep on reporting issues with bohoomil.cu.cc, we will simply switch the domain (this is a 1 minute operation).

Dwb has been my default web browser, that's why you can see it in the screenshots (I wish it was based on xullrunner rather than webkit, though). All the fonts are infinality-bundle defaults, which means Windows for default families as well as most non-latin scripts (W8 at the moment), and several free fonts which are used to replace proprietary families they are typographically based on. Ideally, I'd like to make the bundle an all-free solution by default. However, there's still a lot to be done about the coherence and uniformity of the picture you eventually get, especially when you think of non-latin languages. Of course, in technical and linguistic terms this is already possible.

I use neither font packages (other than ttf-dejavu), nor a font manager. I never have. I'd rather keep track of font files myself, starting with a customized directory tree inside /usr/share/fonts, which by default is an overcrowded black hole. Now that I'm reworking the documentation, I often have to search the AUR for the existence of particular packages and this is a painful experience (think of all the duplicates / triplicates, chaotic naming followed by cryptic content, especially with multifont collections, update & versioning randomness, etc). In my opinion, manual maintenance of your font collection is faster and more effective, not because creating a font package is difficult, but because in most cases using existing font packages from the AUR may result in one hell of a mess.

anonymous_user · 2013-06-23 14:34:44

Wouldn't it be better to fix those "messy" font packages then?

bohoomil · 2013-06-23 15:16:44

300+ and growing, including changing the default directory structure? Even if we kept the TTF and OTF directories as we know them, there's still a good chance that new font packages would duplicate existing ones, or come as monstrous bloats containing the entire Google font archive for example… I've been thinking of providing custom, pre-built packages for selected fonts, including some present in the official Arch repositories, but I'm not sure if this is what people wanted to use and if another font source didn't produce even more confusion. The problem could be easily solved, or made less visible for that matter, if the AUR content was maintained properly, which is not a single person's task.

Last edited by bohoomil (2013-06-23 15:24:25)

WonderWoofy · 2013-06-23 15:31:35

The reason I asked that is because the most recent update of LibreOffice for some reason does not like the ttf-ms-win8 (I think some of the other windows font AUR packages break things too) so I had to change the packages I am using. Basically there is just no UI text in LibreOffice. But ininstallation of that particular package makes the issue go away... I even kept the rest of the other language packages that the win8 package used to create.

So now I have installed ttf-google-web-fonts, which requried a download of a >1GB source, but the fonts included are numerous and actually replace a good number of the fonts that I had on my machine. I figure one package with a bunch is fine, so long as I am not losing anything. I actually tried to use the ttf-chromeos-fonts, but the link for the source was down at the time.

Anyway, so now that I no longer had the largest font package on my sysem, and I had a new giganto font package on my system, I was trying to figure out what was different and so forth. So while I was going through things, I thought I might as well ask you if there were any specifics about your system that might be of help to me. I was noticing some random pages where the text was a bit blurry, but I either cannot seem to find them now, or I had just not properly restarted dwb or the xserver or something that was mucking things up a bit.

bohoomil · 2013-06-23 15:52:04

If you experience problems with MS fonts in LO, try disabling Segoe and everything should be working again.

anonymous_user · 2013-06-23 16:56:11

bohoomil wrote:

300+ and growing, including changing the default directory structure? Even if we kept the TTF and OTF directories as we know them, there's still a good chance that new font packages would duplicate existing ones, or come as monstrous bloats containing the entire Google font archive for example

So the problem is bigger than I imagined then.

bohoomil wrote:

I've been thinking of providing custom, pre-built packages for selected fonts, including some present in the official Arch repositories, but I'm not sure if this is what people wanted to use and if another font source didn't produce even more confusion.

I am curious which fonts you would think of including and which fonts from the repos you would redo.

Also if installation of these fonts would make website text prettier then I am all in favor of it.

cfr · 2013-06-23 23:22:42

I would be more interested in having some kind of documentation explaining how you manage fonts on your system than on having another set of font packages offering variations on a theme. Basically, I suspect that different people will want different fonts for different purposes and documenting a strategy for managing fonts would enable people to satisfy their needs and preferences while hopefully being relatively straightforward to provide.

But maybe I'm in a minority. I feel as if font rendering and font management is a bit of a black hole for me and that bothers me on my Arch machine. With another distro, not so much, but I expect me to understand what is going on on my Arch install and I still find fonts something of a mystery on Linux. [Note: not picking on Linux. OS X was even worse as it had all 3 of the complications I'm aware of with X - fontconfig & non-fontconfig-X and (not rendering really but related) TeX/pdfTeX - and all of Apple's as well.]

donniezazen · 2013-06-23 23:30:19

Are we talking about ignoring system settings and managing both font-rendering and fonts using config files?

cfr · 2013-06-24 00:38:06

donniezazen wrote:

Are we talking about ignoring system settings and managing both font-rendering and fonts using config files?

What do you mean?

anonymous_user · 2013-06-24 01:17:43

cfr wrote:

I would be more interested in having some kind of documentation explaining how you manage fonts on your system than on having another set of font packages offering variations on a theme. Basically, I suspect that different people will want different fonts for different purposes and documenting a strategy for managing fonts would enable people to satisfy their needs and preferences while hopefully being relatively straightforward to provide.

Would you mind clarifying this. If you want a font, you install it (repos, AUR, etc). Otherwise you don't. Or am I missing something?

cfr · 2013-06-24 01:32:43

anonymous_user wrote:

cfr wrote:
I would be more interested in having some kind of documentation explaining how you manage fonts on your system than on having another set of font packages offering variations on a theme. Basically, I suspect that different people will want different fonts for different purposes and documenting a strategy for managing fonts would enable people to satisfy their needs and preferences while hopefully being relatively straightforward to provide.
Would you mind clarifying this. If you want a font, you install it (repos, AUR, etc). Otherwise you don't. Or am I missing something?

bohoomil mentioned managing fonts manually using a customised directory structure. I would be interested to know what structure and why.

Arch Linux

#376 2013-06-20 01:04:12

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#377 2013-06-20 01:17:51

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#378 2013-06-20 01:18:59

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#379 2013-06-20 06:12:42

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#380 2013-06-21 03:44:37

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#381 2013-06-21 04:13:22

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#382 2013-06-21 20:44:01

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#383 2013-06-22 03:56:08

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#384 2013-06-22 09:19:30

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#385 2013-06-22 09:34:00

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#386 2013-06-22 10:34:02

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#387 2013-06-22 20:43:37

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#388 2013-06-22 22:08:51

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#389 2013-06-22 23:42:06

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#390 2013-06-23 12:27:49

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#391 2013-06-23 14:34:44

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#392 2013-06-23 15:16:44

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#393 2013-06-23 15:31:35

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#394 2013-06-23 15:52:04

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#395 2013-06-23 16:56:11

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#396 2013-06-23 23:22:42

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#397 2013-06-23 23:30:19

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#398 2013-06-24 00:38:06

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#399 2013-06-24 01:17:43

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

#400 2013-06-24 01:32:43

Re: infinality-bundle: good looking fonts made (even) easier

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