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#1 2017-05-19 16:20:11

nicolo
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[solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

This issue only arises with dwm, not in gnome terminal: if I open a terminal in dwm with alt+shift+enter, the letters there have a very irregular spacing, some of them overlapping with others, some being too far apart.

What is the relevant setup that I'm supposed to check and edit?

Last edited by nicolo (2017-10-11 03:42:12)

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#2 2017-05-19 16:23:28

Ropid
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

What you describe sounds like you are using a proportional font instead of a monospace font.

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#3 2017-05-19 16:27:39

nicolo
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

Hi, thanks for helping. In my case, what I mean is that text is really difficult to read, not a matter of taste as it looks in mono vs proportional font. What is the relevant configuration anyway?

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#4 2017-05-19 16:30:40

nicolo
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

something similar to the issue of this post https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=192452

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#5 2017-05-19 16:30:57

Slithery
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

Which terminal emulator are you using?


No, it didn't "fix" anything. It just shifted the brokeness one space to the right. - jasonwryan
Closing -- for deletion; Banning -- for muppetry. - jasonwryan

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#6 2017-05-19 16:54:53

nicolo
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

Sorry for my ignorance, how do I check this?

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#7 2017-05-19 17:14:29

Ropid
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

nicolo wrote:

something similar to the issue of this post https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=192452

What you link to is exactly that proportional vs. monospace issue. The overlapping characters come from the terminal programs using a character like "x" to decide on what grid to use to paint characters in. Wide characters like "m" then do not fit inside their spot in that grid and overlap onto the following character. This is not a problem with monospace fonts as all characters have the same size.

You need to find out how that particular program you are using gets configured and make it use a monospace font you like.

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#8 2017-05-19 17:21:22

Trilby
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

nicolo wrote:

Sorry for my ignorance, how do I check this?

You shouldn't have to "check" it - you had to set it in your config.h (or config.h.def).  If you are using a pure vanilla dwm, then the default is st.


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#9 2017-05-19 17:35:21

nicolo
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

I haven't compiled it, just installed from pacman in Arch, so I guess I'm using the default of arch linux package.

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#10 2017-05-19 17:52:30

Trilby
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

Is this solved then?


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#11 2017-05-19 18:11:07

nicolo
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

no, in that I have the problem described at beginning

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#12 2017-05-19 18:38:15

Trilby
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

Fix it.

Moved to NC (for now).


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#13 2017-05-19 18:42:52

nicolo
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

very useful.. what do you mean?
both are installed, I haven't edited config.h and would prefer not to compile, unless necessary.

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#14 2017-05-19 18:47:06

nicolo
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

Ropid: I missed you last post. So basically I should configure st to use monospace?

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#15 2017-05-19 20:29:26

Ropid
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

I looked it up for you. It wants to use the font "Fixed" by default. If you install that, things should look fine. That's what you could do if you really don't want to deal with configuring it.

EDIT: I think "fixed" is already installed by default as part of Xorg?

EDIT2: For me here, the font is named "Misc Fixed" for some reason. I guess that's why it's not working. There's something about that in the ArchWiki, mentioning that things got different names when a certain freetype2 version came out. How to get the old names to work is described here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/fo … tmap_Fonts

Last edited by Ropid (2017-05-19 20:36:55)

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#16 2017-05-19 21:00:54

Trilby
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

nicolo wrote:

very useful.. what do you mean?

I mean you need to read.  If you are unwilling to do so, don't expect to have your hand held.

You didn't configure a terminal for dwm, so you got the default st.  You didn't configure a font for st, so you got the default "Misc Fixed".  You did not configure font-config so you got the default result for "Misc Fixed" which is garbage.

If you don't want to do anything for yourself, don't expect it to be done for you.  And if you will not read the wiki and learn, do not expect your threads to remain on these forums.


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#17 2017-05-19 21:15:56

nicolo
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

Thank you Ropid, that's exactly as you say: I did set up in the past terminus-font, which is mentioned in the wiki you cited as becoming corrupted after a certain upgrade.

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#18 2017-05-19 22:06:13

jasonwryan
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Re: [solved] arch + dwm: terminal has odd letter spacing

Please remember to mark your thread as [Solved] by editing your first post and prepending it to the title.

And please make more of an effort to help yourself in future.


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