Arch Linux

MarthaParkin

Member

Registered: 2016-03-19

Posts: 232

Letters crushed together in lxterminal how to fix?

Ive been reading for a good while and can't see any definitive answers how to stop the weird spacing of text in terminal emulator.

I've tried to install a bunch of other terminals from the repos and they are all doing it.

The fixed font works but I was interested in trying other fonts. Since I do loads of terminal stuff I want to get situated comfortbly and I need a font that looks good when it is bigger so I dont strain my eyes.

The text has weird spacing. Some letters are crushed together while others are miles apart. Seem many people have made quesitions about it on different distros but not found a clear answer as to how to prevent it.

The fixed font looks good at 16 but above that and it looks not good at all. Probably due to what someone said about it not being anti aliased.

Last edited by MarthaParkin (2016-06-10 15:46:41)

TheSaint

Member

From: my computer

Registered: 2007-08-19

Posts: 1,536

Re: Letters crushed together in lxterminal how to fix?

I don't have an answer, I've a similar question. That's when the locale is set for Chinese and the terminal uses western characters.

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do it good first, it will be faster than do it twice the saint

WFV

Member

From: ☭USSA⛧⭒⭒⭒⭒

Registered: 2013-04-23

Posts: 290

Re: Letters crushed together in lxterminal how to fix?

@ Martha, check your locale settings, sometimes they change after an -Syu and you have to manually reset them

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∞ hard times make the strong, the strong make good times, good times make the weak, the weak make hard times ∞

Docbroke

Member

From: India

Registered: 2015-06-13

Posts: 1,475

Re: Letters crushed together in lxterminal how to fix?

There are some nice fixed-width fonts like Anonymous Pro.
Actually I use Anonyous Pro everywhere not only in terminal but system-wide, even in my book reader (FBReader).

But I do agree that limitation of using mono fonts may be annoying sometimes.

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Arch is home!
https://github.com/Docbroke

MarthaParkin

Member

Registered: 2016-03-19

Posts: 232

Re: Letters crushed together in lxterminal how to fix?

Hmm so it is more of an avoidance thing than a cure? That is fine if that is the way it has to be but kind of alarming that such an integral thing doesn't have a clear solution.

ah just looking at the wiki I see there is a decent selection of monspaces fonts to choose from and some specially recomended for coding which is what I want it for mostly so I won't sweat it.

oh hold on. I thought monospaced meant fixed which it seems it doesn't since I just tried the font called monospace and it is still crushed.

Last edited by MarthaParkin (2016-06-11 11:24:22)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,543

Website

Re: Letters crushed together in lxterminal how to fix?

Monospaced fonts are necessary for terminals.  Terminals render all fonts with even character spacing, so if you give a proportional font, it will look horrible.

There have been a few attempts at terminals that allow proportional fonts and display them as the font was intended.  The people who start these projects think they are brilliant solutions to a long lasting problem ... until they crash and burn for a complete lack of foresight.  A proportional font in a terminal (rendered proportionally) is a completely disaster.  Commands as simple as ls align colums of output which will completely fail and look like a mess with a proporitionally-rendered font.  Anything where vertical alignment of characters matters will be a mess, and any use of (n)curses would result in a dump of complete garbage onto the screen.  Proportionally-rendered fonts cannot work in a *nix terminal.

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

MarthaParkin

Member

Registered: 2016-03-19

Posts: 232

Re: Letters crushed together in lxterminal how to fix?

Monospaced fonts are necessary for terminals.  Terminals render all fonts with even character spacing, so if you give a proportional font, it will look horrible.

Ah right. Makes more sense then. Thanks for info.

I just installed adobe source code font with pacman but it seemed to make the font system wide rather than just for lxterminal as I would like. How do I make it only change the latter? because it changed the firefox font as well.

I just noticed that monospace font provided by lxterminal is almost if not identical to the adobe source code font so I will be happy with that for now however I would like to know for future reference if I want to experiment again down the line.

Last edited by MarthaParkin (2016-06-11 11:40:47)

MarthaParkin

Member

Registered: 2016-03-19

Posts: 232

Re: Letters crushed together in lxterminal how to fix?

Ok its still not working right. Monospace font was fine when I was using the terminal earlier but when I just reset and opened the terminal again they are in the wrong places again. The only one that hasnt caused issue so far is fixed. but that font isn't the most agreeable. So want to know what is causing this erratic behavior even on suposed monospace fonts.

kso

Member

Registered: 2014-11-09

Posts: 15

Re: Letters crushed together in lxterminal how to fix?

Hi please see:
https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comm … _weird_in/

Basically "Monospace Regular" is an alias for another font. If system does not have a monospace font the letters will look crushed in lxterminal.

Try

$ fc-match monospace
Cantarell-Regular.otf: "Cantarell" "Regular"

Install a monospace font

$ sudo pacman -S ttf-dejavu

Check again

$ fc-match monospace
DejaVuSansMono.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Mono" "Book"

Now close and restart lxterminal and it should look good!
Thanks.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,435

Re: Letters crushed together in lxterminal how to fix?

Please don't necrobump 2 year old threads with information that is readily apparent in the thread already.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co … bumping.22

Closing.