[SOLVED] Blurry Fonts (Seemingly Everywhere in both KDE Plasma and i3)

mjd119 · 2020-05-19 20:33:03

With the default font settings in KDE Plasma, text in the plasma GUI, in gtk/qt apps, and elsewhere are blurry and kind of pixelated. It's the same story in i3 with an .Xresources file. It's the same result with and without the .Xresources file when i log into Plasma. The only solution seems to be to make the font larger or use a DPI higher than 96, but it is still a little blurry. Display and Font settings are set to defaults for KDE Plasma. I get the same result if I change the General, Fixed width, etc. fonts in the Fonts settings in Plasma. The output of "xdpyinfo | grep -B 2 resolution" is:

screen #0:
  dimensions:    3840x2160 pixels (1016x571 millimeters)
  resolution:    96x96 dots per inch

The output of "xrdb -query" is:

Xcursor.size:	0
Xcursor.theme:	breeze_cursors
Xft.antialias:	1
Xft.hinting:	1
Xft.hintstyle:	hintslight
Xft.rgba:	rgb

I changed the name of my .Xresources file to .Xresources.backup so it wouldn't be read on system startup. I can provide configuration files (system-wide or user) if needed as well as any additional output from the terminal. I clicked the default button in the KDE Plasma settings for Fonts and Display to go back to the original settings.

Last edited by mjd119 (2020-05-20 23:04:20)

seth · 2020-05-19 20:45:39

Screenshot?
Do you run a compositor w/ i3?
Do you use the nvidia driver?
Did you activate FXAA?

mjd119 · 2020-05-19 22:48:52

This is a screenshot in KDE Plasma https://i.imgur.com/666eK07.png. I have an AMD RX 5700. The OpenGL render is the RX 5700. I don't run a compositor with i3.

seth · 2020-05-20 06:35:53

The font is antialiased but neither overly blurry nor pixelated, so it's rather not the font rendering but your output.

dimensions: 3840x2160 pixels (1016x571 millimeters)
resolution: 96x96 dots per inch

Is this a 46" 4k Tv?
Please post the output of "xrandr -q".

mjd119 · 2020-05-20 12:52:19

Output of xrandr -q is:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3840 x 2160, maximum 16384 x 16384
DP-1 connected primary 3840x2160+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 621mm x 341mm
   3840x2160     60.00*+  30.00    25.00    24.00    29.97    23.98  
   1920x2160     59.99  
   2560x1440     59.95  
   1920x1200     60.00  
   1920x1080     60.00    60.00    50.00    50.00    59.94  
   1600x1200     60.00  
   1680x1050     59.95  
   1280x1024     60.02  
   1440x900      59.89  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1280x800      60.00  
   1280x720      60.00    50.00    59.94  
   1024x768      60.00  
   800x600       60.32    56.25  
   720x576       50.00  
   720x480       60.00    59.94  
   640x480       60.00    59.94  
DP-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

seth · 2020-05-20 13:00:33

DP-1 connected primary 3840x2160+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 621mm x 341mm

More like a 28" monitor (not exactly square pixels) - your native DPI is around 160dpi. What if you set that (before running the i3 session)?

Also try "xrandr --output DP-1 --rate 30.00" (in case the monitor has issues with the advertised pixelclock)

mjd119 · 2020-05-20 13:28:51

I hope this doesn't sound like a dumb question, but is setting a higher DPI make it so that rendering is better? When I set a higher DPI, everything gets bigger, but I want better rendering, not necessarily to scale the size of everything up.
EDIT:
Also, the Wiki says that the DPI should be in multiples of 96. Is setting the DPI to 160 acceptable?

Last edited by mjd119 (2020-05-20 13:36:16)

seth · 2020-05-20 13:37:42

What you do atm. is to set a low DPI and compensate that w/ oversized fonts, ie. eg. using 16pt intead of the desired 9pt or 21pt instead of 12pt - this is wrong™ for merely principal reasons and depending on the rasterizer settings not what you want.
At 160dpi you can probably disable antialiasing and get a sharper and smoother font.

That being said: there's nothing really "wrong" with the image you shared.
I'd suggest to look at it on a different device/output to see whether the image actually reflects what you consider problematic.

mjd119 · 2020-05-20 13:59:09

So I should set a high dpi but use smaller fonts? Ok. I use an .Xresources file (using example from Arch Wiki) for i3. What should I do for KDE Plasma? There is a scaling setting in "Display" for System Settings and there's an option to "Force Font DPI" in the "Fonts" setting in System Settings. Does DPI only apply to fonts?
The fonts look better now, but my applications are scaled too large, both in i3 and KDE Plasma with 100% scaling. I'm trying to get sharp fonts with applications with medium sized elements.

Last edited by mjd119 (2020-05-20 16:34:33)

seth · 2020-05-20 22:24:03

You can make the toolkits to not adapt to the DPI (scale factors) - at least Qt and GTK and the others probably won't do that anyway.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

Arch Linux

#1 2020-05-19 20:33:03

[SOLVED] Blurry Fonts (Seemingly Everywhere in both KDE Plasma and i3)

#2 2020-05-19 20:45:39

Re: [SOLVED] Blurry Fonts (Seemingly Everywhere in both KDE Plasma and i3)

#3 2020-05-19 22:48:52

Re: [SOLVED] Blurry Fonts (Seemingly Everywhere in both KDE Plasma and i3)

#4 2020-05-20 06:35:53

Re: [SOLVED] Blurry Fonts (Seemingly Everywhere in both KDE Plasma and i3)

#5 2020-05-20 12:52:19

Re: [SOLVED] Blurry Fonts (Seemingly Everywhere in both KDE Plasma and i3)

#6 2020-05-20 13:00:33

Re: [SOLVED] Blurry Fonts (Seemingly Everywhere in both KDE Plasma and i3)

#7 2020-05-20 13:28:51

Re: [SOLVED] Blurry Fonts (Seemingly Everywhere in both KDE Plasma and i3)

#8 2020-05-20 13:37:42

Re: [SOLVED] Blurry Fonts (Seemingly Everywhere in both KDE Plasma and i3)

#9 2020-05-20 13:59:09

Re: [SOLVED] Blurry Fonts (Seemingly Everywhere in both KDE Plasma and i3)

#10 2020-05-20 22:24:03

Re: [SOLVED] Blurry Fonts (Seemingly Everywhere in both KDE Plasma and i3)

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