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Ramses de Norre

Member

From: Leuven - Belgium

Registered: 2007-03-27

Posts: 1,289

Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

I installed amsn from the arch repo (I think it was in extra or community) but it is looking awful... Here's an example:

As you can see some fonts are so bold that they are hardly readable, and it's even worse in the notification windows that appear when someone comes online and in the preferences dialog.
Does anyone how I can get these fonts readable?

Last edited by Ramses de Norre (2007-04-08 15:07:44)

pressh

Developer/TU

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2005-08-14

Posts: 1,719

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

man that's fugly, I mean not only the bold fonts but all your msn fonts. You really should get some anti-aliasing love

install tcl-devel and tk-devel from aur. Then you need to recompile amsn against it. Well, as you are doing it, why not compile amsn-svn, which is stable and has some nice new features.

gl

Ramses de Norre

Member

From: Leuven - Belgium

Registered: 2007-03-27

Posts: 1,289

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

Ok, I followed this guide and got to the point of compiling amsn, but I get following error on makepkg:

checking png.h usability... no
checking png.h presence... no
checking for png.h... no
configure: error: png headers not found
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.
==> ERROR: Build Failed.  Aborting...

I have libpng installed and I don't see any developing packages for it in the repo... The header seems to be on my system too:

$ locate png.h
/usr/include/png.h
/usr/include/libpng12/png.h
/home/ramses/localpkg/amsn/amsn/src/amsn-0.96/utils/TkCximage/src/png/png.h
/home/ramses/localpkg/amsn/amsn/src/amsn-0.96/utils/TkCximage/src/CxImage/ximapng.h

Where the last entries are in the directory I'm running makepkg in (~/localpkg/amsn/amsn/).

I have no clue how to tell makepkg where to find the header...

pressh

Developer/TU

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2005-08-14

Posts: 1,719

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

do you have pkgconfig installed ?

Ramses de Norre

Member

From: Leuven - Belgium

Registered: 2007-03-27

Posts: 1,289

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

Yes, I do.

linfan

Member

From: Stockholm, Sweden

Registered: 2004-04-23

Posts: 135

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

I have amsn but no ugly fonts.

I use the ttf-ms-fonts and it looks quite ok considering it is tk/tcl.

Linfan

Ramses de Norre

Member

From: Leuven - Belgium

Registered: 2007-03-27

Posts: 1,289

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

I've got those fonts too but amsn looks like the screen I've posted...
I tried to start over with compiling amsn with a new PKGBUILD but I still get the same error:

$ makepkg
==> Entering fakeroot environment
==> Making package: amsn 0.96-1 (Tue Apr 10 14:39:52 CEST 2007)
==> Checking Runtime Dependencies...
==> Checking Buildtime Dependencies...
==> Retrieving Sources...
==>     Downloading amsn-0.96.tar.bz2
--14:39:52--  http://dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/amsn/amsn-0.96.tar.bz2
           => `amsn-0.96.tar.bz2'
Resolving dl.sourceforge.net... 193.1.219.87, 193.190.198.97, 195.141.111.5, ...
Connecting to dl.sourceforge.net|193.1.219.87|:80... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to dl.sourceforge.net|193.190.198.97|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 5,036,129 (4.8M) [application/x-bzip2]

100%[========================================================>] 5,036,129    641.07K/s    ETA 00:00

14:43:44 (637.59 KB/s) - `amsn-0.96.tar.bz2' saved [5036129/5036129]

==> Validating source files with MD5sums
    amsn-0.96.tar.bz2 ... Passed
==> Extracting Sources...
==>     tar --use-compress-program=bzip2 -xf amsn-0.96.tar.bz2
==> Starting build()...
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of executables... 
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... none needed
checking for g++... g++
checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... yes
checking whether g++ accepts -g... yes
checking tcl build dir... ERROR: ld.so: object 'libfakeroot.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
using tcl library in /usr/lib
checking tk build dir... using tk library in /usr/lib
checking for main in -lstdc++... yes
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for X... libraries , headers 
checking for gethostbyname... yes
checking for connect... yes
checking for remove... yes
checking for shmat... yes
checking for IceConnectionNumber in -lICE... yes
checking for egrep... grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for sys/types.h... yes
checking for sys/stat.h... yes
checking for stdlib.h... yes
checking for string.h... yes
checking for memory.h... yes
checking for strings.h... yes
checking for inttypes.h... yes
checking for stdint.h... yes
checking for unistd.h... yes
checking for png_read_info in -lpng... yes
checking png.h usability... no
checking png.h presence... no
checking for png.h... no
configure: error: png headers not found
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.
==> ERROR: Build Failed.  Aborting...

I have no clue how to go about this... This is the PKGBUILD I'm using:

# $Id: PKGBUILD,v 1.4 2006/12/20 17:26:03 voidnull Exp $
# Maintainer: Jeff Mickey <j@codemac.net> and Giovanni Scafora <linuxmania@gmail.com>
#Contributor: Ravi Desai <ravster3@hotmail.com> and Mario Vazquez <mario_vazq@hotmail.com>

pkgname=amsn
pkgver=0.96
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="MSN client written in Tcl/Tk"
url="http://amsn.sourceforge.net"
depends=('gcc' 'libx11' 'libsm' 'tk' 'libjpeg' 'libtiff' 'libpng' 'perl' 'python' 'imlib')
source=(http://dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/$pkgname/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.bz2)

md5sums=('3df6b0d34ef1997a47c0b8af29b2547a')

build() {
 cd $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver
 ./configure --prefix=/usr/
 make || return 1
 make prefix=$startdir/pkg/usr install

 # fix links
 cd $startdir/pkg/usr/bin
 rm *
 ln -sf /usr/share/amsn/amsn amsn
 ln -sf /usr/share/amsn/amsn-remote amsn-remote
 ln -sf /usr/share/amsn/amsn-remote-CLI amsn-remote-CLI
}

Ramses de Norre

Member

From: Leuven - Belgium

Registered: 2007-03-27

Posts: 1,289

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

I changed the fonts in amsn and got it readable now, but still if someone can tell me how to get amsn to compile, I'd be really happy

pressh

Developer/TU

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2005-08-14

Posts: 1,719

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

I never had much problems compiling amsn. I'm on kopete atm. Maybe I'll try later today, but probaby it will be tomorrow. If I succeed I can share the binaries of tk-devel, amsn-svn etc. if you want?
\\\\

Ramses de Norre

Member

From: Leuven - Belgium

Registered: 2007-03-27

Posts: 1,289

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

Have you been able to compile the package?
And if so, would you mind posting the output of locate png.h?

pressh

Developer/TU

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2005-08-14

Posts: 1,719

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

Have you been able to compile the package?
And if so, would you mind posting the output of locate png.h?

oops I completely forgot about it....sorry about that. I have got some time now so I do it right away

pressh

Developer/TU

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2005-08-14

Posts: 1,719

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

$ slocate png.h

/home/ronald/amsn-svn/pkg/usr/share/amsn/utils/TkCximage/src/CxImage/ximapng.h
/home/ronald/amsn-svn/src/amsn/utils/TkCximage/src/CxImage/.svn/text-base/ximapng.h.svn-base
/home/ronald/amsn-svn/src/amsn/utils/TkCximage/src/CxImage/.svn/prop-base/ximapng.h.svn-base
/home/ronald/amsn-svn/src/amsn/utils/TkCximage/src/CxImage/ximapng.h
/home/ronald/amsn-svn/src/amsn-build/utils/TkCximage/src/CxImage/.svn/text-base/ximapng.h.svn-base
/home/ronald/amsn-svn/src/amsn-build/utils/TkCximage/src/CxImage/.svn/prop-base/ximapng.h.svn-base
/home/ronald/amsn-svn/src/amsn-build/utils/TkCximage/src/CxImage/ximapng.h
/usr/share/amsn/utils/TkCximage/src/CxImage/ximapng.h
/usr/include/wx-2.8/wx/imagpng.h
/usr/include/png.h
/usr/include/libpng12/png.h

As you see I did build amsn-svn without problems after installing tcl-devel and tk-devel

dmartins

Member

Registered: 2006-09-23

Posts: 360

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

I know this is off topic, but I came across another MSN client today. It's called emesene and it's available through AUR (in unsupported). I'm a Gnome user and I've been switching back and forth between aMSN and gaim for a couple of years now and have never really liked either. I find aMSN is just ugly, and gaim might be nice if I used multiple IM accounts but I only use MSN which I don't really find it's suited for.
emesene is written in python + gtk and is made to resemble M$'s client. I find it very nice and simple + it fits right in with my Gnome desktop.

P.S. I don't work for or develop emesene, I just think it's way better than the MSN clients that get all the attention

Last edited by dmartins (2007-04-18 08:53:35)

Ramses de Norre

Member

From: Leuven - Belgium

Registered: 2007-03-27

Posts: 1,289

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

Is that amsn-svn the same as the amsn I got from ABS?
And if not, has it got any disadvantages (unstable/testing release, often broken, ...) and where can I get it?

pressh

Developer/TU

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2005-08-14

Posts: 1,719

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

officially the svn version is unstable, but it has never crashed on me. The svn version is far more pretty, has support for offline messagin, winks, and more.
You can find it in the AUR: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?d … s=0&SeB=nd

The only problem the package has is that it doesn't find the tls package, so you can must install in on a per user base (it goes automatically when running). You might want to remove the dependencie from the PKGBUILD.

synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

Just to let everyone know, I followed the guide Ramses de Norre linked to on providing amsn's dependencies with antialiased fonts and it worked perfectly!  Thank you!

patroclo7

Member

From: Bassano del Grappa, ITALY

Registered: 2006-01-11

Posts: 915

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

I am the author of that guide and I have not been able to reproduce the problem encountered by Ramses De Norre. If he found the causes and a solution, I will be happy to insert it in the guide.

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Mortuus in anima, curam gero cutis

Ramses de Norre

Member

From: Leuven - Belgium

Registered: 2007-03-27

Posts: 1,289

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

I haven't tried again, I'm mostly using emesene-svn now.

synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

I remember it just working after I installed the devel versions of the dependencies.  I think amsn works without any hassle if you install the tls module first, then amsn.

jinn

Member

From: Gothenburg

Registered: 2005-12-10

Posts: 506

Re: Amsn incredibly ugly bold font...

I really would prefer gaim.. but:
1. gaim sucks at msn file transfer..  !!!!
2. no voice clip or cam support  (this is very minor thing.. not the deciding factor in my case)

but amsn is not perfect either:
1. not gtk or qt ( I mean why choose tcl/tk..) !!!
2.  doesnt support other protocols..

gaim has had the transfer problem for ages now.. it really sucks of them not to fix it.. amsn should really make a gtk or qt version..

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The ultimate Archlinux release name: "I am your father"