Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

ruimoura · 2007-05-08 08:55:07

Hi. I'm new on Archlinux, and i'm absolutely in love with this distro, faster than anything I've used before and really solid rock.

The thing is i can't get the fonts to display like i had on Ubuntu (i have a laptop). I use Dejavu Sans 8 size on all the things, and Dejavu Sans mono 9 size for console, like i had on ubuntu, and the fonts on the system look pretty ok, but on firefox/seamonkey/xchat they look like shit, pardon my language ... I set Firefox/Seamoneky to use Times New Roman and Arial, and courier new to monospace, as i always did on both Ubuntu and Fedora 6.

On Ubuntu i set teh fonts on Gnome to the subpixel (ldc's) option and full hinting, and then i installed this patches (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? … tter+fonts) and the fonts on all internet apps look really smooth and clear ...

Is there a way to get to something like this, here on my marvelous Arch ?

Thank you in advance, and long live Archlinux

Last edited by ruimoura (2007-05-08 08:57:06)

dw · 2007-05-08 09:43:18

Hi.

Try

ln -s /etc/fonts/conf.avail/10-autohint.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-autohint.conf

and log-out and back in.

Bernhard

sH · 2007-05-08 09:51:17

For your Firefox settings you need to do a "pacman -S ttf-ms-fonts", because otherwise you won't have Times New Roman etc.

I always could not stand the font and patches paranoia in ubuntu community. What is wrong with the fonts? I installed Arch with KDE and the look of the fonts is great in all applications. I can't understand why you wanna tweak so much.

When you come from Windows you are used to the really bad looking unaliased fonts, remember that It's just a matter of getting used to the good looking aliased fonts.

ruimoura · 2007-05-08 10:04:46

@dw: that didn't do really nothing .. but thanks anyway ...

@sh: duhh, of course i have the ms fonts already installed ... Well, i don't care about ubuntu parania or whatsoever, but i love the way i have my ubuntu fonts, and i just want to setup them the same way here on Arch.

The patches are here -- http://david.freetype.org/lcd/

Can't i just "patch" the files with this patches? And if so, how can i do that (i'm kind of a noob on unix commands)?

Thank you both, anyway

sH · 2007-05-08 11:10:22

Well ruimoura, you should describe a little more in detail, what you want to achieve with your fonts. Maybe provide some screenshots or whatever. It's a bit hard to help you because as I said, I just did a normal install and I can see nothing that is wrong with the fonts.

ruimoura · 2007-05-08 11:20:35

sH wrote:

Well ruimoura, you should describe a little more in detail, what you want to achieve with your fonts. Maybe provide some screenshots or whatever. It's a bit hard to help you because as I said, I just did a normal install and I can see nothing that is wrong with the fonts.

Ok. Here is is what i got now:

And here it is what i want (big change):

Somehow i'm only getting this problems on Firefox/Seamonkey/xchat and some other programs, but on Firefox i would like to fix it.

Thank you for trying to help

iphitus · 2007-05-08 11:59:32

They're different fonts.

Note the curl on the 'L' in "Welcome" on the first one?
Or the pointed bottoms on the W, also in 'Welcome' in the fist one?
Or the straight commas in the summary on the first one, compared to the curled ones in the second one.
Letter heights in the 'welcome to ubuntu forums'
the 'b' in ubuntu is also entirely different in each.

Definitely different fonts. See what font ubuntu's firefox is using by default, and set our firefox to.

James

mata_svada · 2007-05-08 12:43:44

Try to install patched libxft and cairo and turning BCI on.

lyrae · 2007-05-08 12:53:33

mata_svada wrote:

Try to install patched libxft and cairo and turning BCI on.

And also freetype

ruimoura · 2007-05-08 13:15:18

Thank you both ... I've got that already installed, and i think i got something better by adding this to my .fonts.conf

<match target='font'>
<edit name='autohint' mode='assign'>
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>

How do i turn BCI on ?

iphitus · 2007-05-08 13:27:00

they're entirely different fonts. you can change as much configuration as you like, but as long as you don't change the font, they will continue to look totally different.

james

ruimoura · 2007-05-08 13:31:06

iphitus wrote:

they're entirely different fonts. you can change as much configuration as you like, but as long as you don't change the font, they will continue to look totally different.
james

I've already changed that ... ... it's fine now ... kind off

iphitus · 2007-05-08 13:39:52

ruimoura wrote:

iphitus wrote:
they're entirely different fonts. you can change as much configuration as you like, but as long as you don't change the font, they will continue to look totally different.
james
I've already changed that ... ... it's fine now ... kind off

ah ok. As for enabling cleartype, ubuntu definitely wouldnt have it, so shouldnt be causing a problem.

James

ruimoura · 2007-05-08 13:47:10

Ok, some more research, and i got to this, on .fonts.conf

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

<fontconfig>




<match target="font">
   <edit name="autohint" mode="assign"><bool>true</bool></edit>
</match>

<match target="font">
   <test name="weight" compare="more">
<const>medium</const>
</test>
   <edit name="autohint" mode="assign"><bool>false</bool></edit>
</match>






</fontconfig>

What do you guys think? something weird or this might be the correct setup? Bolded fonts don't look like crap anymore ...

Last edited by ruimoura (2007-05-08 13:47:56)

Valheru · 2007-05-08 17:35:01

Don't listen to the haters - fonts on ARch (and most Linux distributions I've tried) are total donkey wang with the default settings. Why no-one seems to be able to get this right is beyond me. Even Ubuntu fucked it up last time I tried it (Dapper Drake). But with a few tweaks from the Gentoo wiki it'll look better than on any OS there is.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Xorg_and_Fonts

Tweak your .fonts.conf and you /etc/fonts/local.conf according to that page. Then run qt-config if you are in KDE and make sure the font options are set up right. Finall, configure KDE from the Control Center->Appearance and Themes->Fonts and enable Antialiasing and set autohinting to Full. If you have an LCD set sub-pixel hinting to RGB. Force your DPI to 96 (or 120 if you run at high resolutions ~1600x1200 say) and make sure Xorg is running at the corresponding DPI. Restart the X server and all will be penguin.

ruimoura · 2007-05-08 17:43:33

Valheru wrote:

Don't listen to the haters - fonts on ARch (and most Linux distributions I've tried) are total donkey wang with the default settings. Why no-one seems to be able to get this right is beyond me. Even Ubuntu fucked it up last time I tried it (Dapper Drake). But with a few tweaks from the Gentoo wiki it'll look better than on any OS there is.
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Xorg_and_Fonts
Tweak your .fonts.conf and you /etc/fonts/local.conf according to that page. Then run qt-config if you are in KDE and make sure the font options are set up right. Finall, configure KDE from the Control Center->Appearance and Themes->Fonts and enable Antialiasing and set autohinting to Full. If you have an LCD set sub-pixel hinting to RGB. Force your DPI to 96 (or 120 if you run at high resolutions ~1600x1200 say) and make sure Xorg is running at the corresponding DPI. Restart the X server and all will be penguin.

OMG, someone who can actually understand me ... weird ... thank you for the tips.

japetto · 2007-05-08 19:44:56

Don't listen to the haters

Haters?

*scratches head*

Youdaman · 2007-06-04 01:12:44

ruimoura wrote:

sH wrote:
Well ruimoura, you should describe a little more in detail, what you want to achieve with your fonts. Maybe provide some screenshots or whatever. It's a bit hard to help you because as I said, I just did a normal install and I can see nothing that is wrong with the fonts.
Ok. Here is is what i got now:
http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/2650 … craec4.png

And here it is what i want (big change):
http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/8982 … ra1vp2.png
Somehow i'm only getting this problems on Firefox/Seamonkey/xchat and some other programs, but on Firefox i would like to fix it.
Thank you for trying to help

As root do:

pacman -S ttf-bitstream-vera

I recently installed Arch at work and couldn't work out why the fonts looked so crappy compared to my laptop which I've been running Arch on for ages -- then I noticed I was missing the above font package on my work desktop box. Once installed, my eyes were pleased once more

broch · 2007-06-06 01:53:18

that is pretty simple, proper font and freetype2. nothing else (messing with fonts.conf is not required)
Get frutiger, helvetica (original) and so on and you should be all set. frutiger is free with MS reader (install, extract fonts, get rid of reader). A lot of good fonts come with Adobe products too. No need to use crappy MS fonts.

Bogart · 2007-06-06 22:10:46

broch wrote:

No need to use crappy MS fonts.

I agree. In fact, removing ttf-ms-corefonts and configuring Firefox to use Bitstream Vera Sans should solve the problem showed on the screenshot.

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-06-07 12:45:36

Are there any HowTos how to set up Fonts properly? Trying something here and there did not really help - it's not looking better.

The MS fonts for web usage look terrible and in some message boards I do not see the bold parts of a posting - as it is shown in normal weight font. Are there any solutions for that?
If I use the autohinter, some texts look terrible (for instance: Wikipedia articles).

I have not found out about a satisfying solution.

Bogart · 2007-06-07 21:29:16

chaosgeisterchen wrote:

The MS fonts for web usage look terrible and in some message boards

As a rule, if fonts look bad in web pages and not in other applications, it's a problem of the fonts chosen and not a general rendering problem.

Usually, the fonts to blame are MS's. My advice is to remove them from the system altogether. They are responsible for many people thinking that Linux's fonts look bad !

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-06-07 22:05:35

It won't be possible to do so as I need them for word processing and shared word documents - all of which use the MS fonts.

And Konqueror does not force webpages to use certain fonts - as Firefox is able to (still, I would not choose Firefox over Konqueror).

shining · 2007-06-07 22:11:40

Bogart wrote:

chaosgeisterchen wrote:
The MS fonts for web usage look terrible and in some message boards
As a rule, if fonts look bad in web pages and not in other applications, it's a problem of the fonts chosen and not a general rendering problem.
Usually, the fonts to blame are MS's. My advice is to remove them from the system altogether. They are responsible for many people thinking that Linux's fonts look bad !

Wtf ?! ms fonts are never installed by default. You only install them if you're not happy with other fonts, unless you're very weird...
And I generally install them, because every other truetype fonts are of poor quality, poor quality which must be hidden with antialiasing, resulting in somewhat blurred fonts.
That's not that bad though, but I still prefer using high quality fonts like ms ones where I can disable antialiasing, for getting sharp and clean fonts, just like bitmap ones, but without the stupidity of bitmap.
In my opinion, fonts is the only thing (or one of the few things) ms does well. It doesn't mean I like the company behind though.

Anyway, you can prefer another kind of font rendering (like bitstream + antialiasing or subpixel rendering + autohinter or native hinting), but (unfortunately) you can't objectively say that ms fonts are crap

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-06-07 23:57:04

I don't, but they do not look as good as they do on my windows box, which has to to with the X font rendering. It's different from the Windows font rendering method and so the results differ.

Still, I would rather like web pages to be displayed using other fonts which look better when using X. That's it. I like the MS fonts very much, not to misunderstand me.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-05-08 08:55:07

Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#2 2007-05-08 09:43:18

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#3 2007-05-08 09:51:17

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#4 2007-05-08 10:04:46

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#5 2007-05-08 11:10:22

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#6 2007-05-08 11:20:35

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#7 2007-05-08 11:59:32

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#8 2007-05-08 12:43:44

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#9 2007-05-08 12:53:33

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#10 2007-05-08 13:15:18

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#11 2007-05-08 13:27:00

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#12 2007-05-08 13:31:06

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#13 2007-05-08 13:39:52

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#14 2007-05-08 13:47:10

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#15 2007-05-08 17:35:01

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#16 2007-05-08 17:43:33

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#17 2007-05-08 19:44:56

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#18 2007-06-04 01:12:44

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#19 2007-06-06 01:53:18

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#20 2007-06-06 22:10:46

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#21 2007-06-07 12:45:36

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#22 2007-06-07 21:29:16

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#23 2007-06-07 22:05:35

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#24 2007-06-07 22:11:40

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#25 2007-06-07 23:57:04

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

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