[SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

cgrif · 2013-06-25 22:36:15

HI All,

In my efforts to get decent looking fonts, I have somehow ended up with a system where the fonts are always sub-optimal no matter what I do. I installed DejaVu-ttf and also the Infinality font set.
I'm not sure how Infinality is supposed to work, but the impression I got from reading instructions is that it is a drop-in replacement of the system fonts, but now that I have mucked with things too much I'm not sure I'm seeing the best result I can get.

Is there a way to just reset my KDE font config to the default (hopefully without resetting my entire desktop)?
Thanks,
Chris

Last edited by cgrif (2013-07-20 04:20:06)

WonderWoofy · 2013-06-25 23:05:16

I'm sure you can just remove all configuration files in your $HOME directory. So this would be ~/.fonts.conf (deprecated anyway), and anything in ~/.config/fonts. Then resintall the fontconfig packages (infinality if that is what you have/want) to ensure that the things in /etc/fonts/conf.d are symlinked to the default things in /etc/fonts/conf.avail.

For super easy font configuration, you should try bohoomils font packages https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162098 as bohoomil is crazy about fonts and does a great job providing quality custom infinality configurations. I have been using his setup for quite some time (even before the packaged all this stuff so nicely), and couldn't be happier. Beware though that if you go this route, kde does some strange shit on its own and create's its own ~/.fonts.conf. There is apparently a way to stop this though... it is in the thread (I think it was cfr who faced and solved the problem).

cgrif · 2013-07-16 18:26:52

HI All,

I am going to mark this unsolved just for a while. My font rendering in the System and KDE looks great now. But I'm still quite unhappy with the fonts in Libre Office and web browsers.
I followed the guidelines for installing bohoomils font packages. I don't know if this should have an effect on fonts in the browser.

Many thanks for any further guidance.

Chris

bohoomil · 2013-07-16 18:56:40

cgrif wrote:

I'm still quite unhappy with the fonts in Libre Office and web browsers.I followed the guidelines for installing bohoomils font packages. I don't know if this should have an effect on fonts in the browser.

Well, this is actually where you should experience the difference in the first place. Did you see the screenshots @ my GitHub account (see my signature)? What does your browser font rendering look like?

cgrif · 2013-07-16 19:05:15

bohoomil wrote:

Well, this is actually where you should experience the difference in the first place. Did you see the screenshots @ my GitHub account (see my signature)? What does your browser font rendering look like?

Thanks for your reply. I will compare and show something when I get home later this evening ;-)

cgrif · 2013-07-17 00:18:01

bohoomil wrote:

cgrif wrote:
I'm still quite unhappy with the fonts in Libre Office and web browsers.I followed the guidelines for installing bohoomils font packages. I don't know if this should have an effect on fonts in the browser.
Well, this is actually where you should experience the difference in the first place. Did you see the screenshots @ my GitHub account (see my signature)? What does your browser font rendering look like?

So here are some snapshots of my font's I would like to look better:

http://picpaste.com/snapshot1-Gu10REP0.png
http://picpaste.com/snapshot2-ecyBOLaT.png

As you cansee, a lot of the page looks fine, but the text in the posting box and the text in the news article looks aweful.

Thanks!
Chris

bohoomil · 2013-07-17 01:02:48

First of all, I'm not sure what your KDE font settings look like. I believe you've left everything as is, so open your control panel and duplicate the values from /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-base-rendering.conf in the appropriate section. This should include hintstyle=slight, antialias=true, subpixel order=rgb, dpi=96. You may try using hintstyle=full if necessary.

Next, check your xft settings. You should see the following:

$ env | grep Xft

Xft.antialias:  1
Xft.autohint:   0
Xft.dpi:        96
Xft.hinting:    1
Xft.hintstyle:  hintfull
Xft.lcdfilter:  lcddefault
Xft.rgba:       rgb

If the output is different, put the values above to your .Xresources file and make sure it gets loaded with your desktop. This should basically duplicate the values you have already set in your KDE control panel.

Next, check if your fontconfig settings are loaded properly. Simply run 'env | grep INFINALITY' and if you get a list of entries starting with INFINALITY_FT_, then everything is OK.

Finally, try changing your default fonts. DejaVu is fine as a backup family, but using it as a base one is not a good idea. If you have access to Win 7/8 fonts, use them. If not, check Liberation, ChromesOS or Droid families. Install them all and set the defaults in $HOME/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/65-latin.conf:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>

  <!-- ## serif ## -->
  <alias>
    <family>serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Liberation Serif</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  <!-- ## sans-serif ## -->
  <alias>
    <family>sans-serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Liberation Sans</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  <!-- ## monospace ## -->
  <alias>
    <family>monospace</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Liberation Mono</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>

</fontconfig>

If you are going to use Windows fonts and don't want to change anything, you don't need this file. By the way, you can find it along with other examples in the infinality-bundle documentation.

cfr · 2013-07-18 01:49:38

Not sure about this but if you are using KDE, you might do better to set your choice of fonts using the KDE settings since otherwise KDE will just fight with your configuration anyway. I set my preference there and it seems to work fine, at least. At any rate, if the .conf file doesn't seem to change things, try setting the fonts in KDE settings as well. [I happen to like Droid even though I've got Windows 7 fonts installed so I wanted to override the defaults.]

EDIT: On reflection, you might need both if you don't have Windows 7/8 fonts or don't wish to use them (I'm not sure if I'm using them but am fine with whatever I'm using). KDE's font settings are more specific though it may default to using the default for sans/serif/mono etc. For example, I have:

General Droid Serif 9
Fixed width Droid Sans 9
Small Droid Serif 8
Toolbar Droid Serif 8
Menu Droid Serif 9
Window title Droid Serif 8
Taskbar Droid Serif 9
Desktop Droid Serif 9

In KDE's font settings, as well as matching the default values for rendering mentioned above. [I'm not recommending these choices, by the way. I'm weird - most people would probably pick sans. But just that what is here will affect the KDE interface, I think, and is worth bearing in mind. I'm not sure what "General" does, to be honest.]

Last edited by cfr (2013-07-18 01:56:25)

cgrif · 2013-07-19 02:06:17

Thank you Boohomil,

I set up the .Xresources with the code you included, but even if I xrdb it directly, I cannot see the xft stuff in the output of env. Not sure what's wrong with that.

However, I set up everything else the way you recommended and things are looking a bit better. I actually have messed with the KDE font settings, but following cfr's advice, I just set everything to Liberation as in the xml code.

For some reason the fonts look much better when I run Gnome than KDE, which bothers me immensely. I moved to Arch because I want to learn to have control of everything, but it looks like I'm kind of stuck on the fonts! No worries, I'll keep chipping away at it as I have time.

Thanks a lot,
Chris

bohoomil wrote:

First of all, I'm not sure what your KDE font settings look like. I believe you've left everything as is, so open your control panel and duplicate the values from /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-base-rendering.conf in the appropriate section. This should include hintstyle=slight, antialias=true, subpixel order=rgb, dpi=96. You may try using hintstyle=full if necessary.
Next, check your xft settings. You should see the following:
$ env | grep Xft

Xft.antialias:  1
Xft.autohint:   0
Xft.dpi:        96
Xft.hinting:    1
Xft.hintstyle:  hintfull
Xft.lcdfilter:  lcddefault
Xft.rgba:       rgb
If the output is different, put the values above to your .Xresources file and make sure it gets loaded with your desktop. This should basically duplicate the values you have already set in your KDE control panel.
Next, check if your fontconfig settings are loaded properly. Simply run 'env | grep INFINALITY' and if you get a list of entries starting with INFINALITY_FT_, then everything is OK.
Finally, try changing your default fonts. DejaVu is fine as a backup family, but using it as a base one is not a good idea. If you have access to Win 7/8 fonts, use them. If not, check Liberation, ChromesOS or Droid families. Install them all and set the defaults in $HOME/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/65-latin.conf:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>

  
  <alias>
    <family>serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Liberation Serif</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  
  <alias>
    <family>sans-serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Liberation Sans</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  
  <alias>
    <family>monospace</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Liberation Mono</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>

</fontconfig>
If you are going to use Windows fonts and don't want to change anything, you don't need this file. By the way, you can find it along with other examples in the infinality-bundle documentation.

brebs · 2013-07-19 03:10:17

cgrif wrote:

env | grep Xft

That's blank for me too, so don't worry - e.g. my Xft.hintstyle setting still affects Skype. I believe the real command is:

xrdb -query

cgrif wrote:

fonts look much better when I run Gnome than KDE

KDE doesn't properly use fontconfig

cgrif · 2013-07-19 12:20:07

brebs wrote:

cgrif wrote:
fonts look much better when I run Gnome than KDE
KDE doesn't properly use fontconfig

So what is there to do? Use Gnome? I'm tempted...

brebs · 2013-07-19 13:05:10

XFCE works fine, that's what I use

cgrif · 2013-07-19 15:55:08

brebs wrote:

XFCE works fine, that's what I use

To be honest, I am growing to enjoy the Gnome 3 experience, but I also LOVE KDE and so I cannot tolerate having my fonts being ugly in KDE even if I'm primarily using Gnome.

How anal retentive is that? Well, hopefully that makes a little bit of sense. Maybe it makes no sense and just illustrates some degree of mental imbalance on my part, so be it. Or maybe I'd be back using KDE if the fonts didn't look so crappy. Mind you, most of the fonts look great, it's only the browser fonts when visiting certain websites that look horrendous. I don't understand the world of fonts, it may be worth investing 3 or 4 hours to just read and understand everything I can find on the wiki, but it's not something I really want to be an expert on, i just want it to work better.

I'm also playing around with Fedora, and the default fonts in Fedora look spectacular ;-)

Chris

cfr · 2013-07-19 21:52:10

Maybe it really is a KDE thing, then. My fonts in Fedora do not look as good as my fonts in Arch though I use KDE on both. Different hardware, though. (But Arch is on a laptop which doesn't generally improve things.)

On the other hand, my text box fonts don't look like yours but seem more like the fonts on the page. I am not sure how KDE and Firefox interact. Is KDE controlling the font rendering in Firefox?

brebs · 2013-07-19 21:59:46

cfr wrote:

font rendering in Firefox

The missing ingredient is sadly commented out in Arch's firefox:

$ grep cairo *
mozconfig:#ac_add_options --enable-system-cairo

So uncomment, and recompile firefox, adding this firefox patch: 6009_fix_system_cairo_support.patch from Gentoo.

cgrif · 2013-07-20 04:19:50

Thanks all. Fonts are looking better.

cfr · 2013-07-20 21:29:11

brebs wrote:

cfr wrote:
font rendering in Firefox
The missing ingredient is sadly commented out in Arch's firefox:
$ grep cairo *
mozconfig:#ac_add_options --enable-system-cairo
So uncomment, and recompile firefox, adding this firefox patch: 6009_fix_system_cairo_support.patch from Gentoo.

Mmm... thanks. I wonder if this is why my fonts do not look like those in the pic but actually better. I am using Mozilla's binary and not Arch's because Arch's does not support my preferred interface language. Maybe better looking fonts are a useful side-effect?

EDIT:

$ ldd /usr/local/stow/firefox-22.0-cy/lib/firefox/browser/components/libbrowsercomps.so  | grep cairo
        libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 (0x00007fea5d49b000)
        libcairo.so.2 => /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2 (0x00007fea5cf2f000)

Last edited by cfr (2013-07-20 21:32:49)

Arch Linux

#1 2013-06-25 22:36:15

[SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#2 2013-06-25 23:05:16

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#3 2013-07-16 18:26:52

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#4 2013-07-16 18:56:40

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#5 2013-07-16 19:05:15

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#6 2013-07-17 00:18:01

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#7 2013-07-17 01:02:48

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#8 2013-07-18 01:49:38

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#9 2013-07-19 02:06:17

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#10 2013-07-19 03:10:17

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#11 2013-07-19 12:20:07

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#12 2013-07-19 13:05:10

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#13 2013-07-19 15:55:08

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#14 2013-07-19 21:52:10

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#15 2013-07-19 21:59:46

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#16 2013-07-20 04:19:50

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

#17 2013-07-20 21:29:11

Re: [SOLVED] How to reset system font settings

Board footer