Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

broch · 2007-06-08 02:26:11

http://img168.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ubuntu3ts1.png
one font
http://img240.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ubuntu2ir1.png
second font

both rendered in Arch/Bon Echo, better than ubuntu in my opinion (softer letter look, wider kerning). At least effect is compareble (if one prefers shart thin fonts)
no modifications done to any config file (e.g. ~/.fonts.conf)
freetype2-2.2.1-1/freetype2-cleartype-2.2.1-1
cairo/cairo-cleartype (current)
libxft/libxft-cleartype (current)

Last edited by broch (2007-06-08 02:36:31)

emmybear · 2007-06-08 04:15:48

I am not exactly sure why people dislike using AA sometimes or whatnot. Perhaps it is because they do not have the settings tweaked the same way I do, or perhaps it is merely a question of taste. Anyway, I have not had issues with fonts in Arch at all. Perhaps I am just lucky or something, but my fonts look wonderfully crisp and smooth, at least to me. Anyway, here is a screenshot of rendering the Ubuntu forums within Konqueror, including the rest of the screen so you can see whatever else.

http://daimeria.ath.cx/screenshots/ubuntuforums.png

The font I generally use in KDE is Verdana, which is the one that you will see quite often. I must also say that despite Microsoft's ability to get a lot of things right, fonts are not one of the things that they mess up on.

Anyway, my font directory consists of the following folders/font groups.

1001      aquapfont       fonts.alias       terminus
100dpi    arphicfonts     fonts.cache-1     ttf-bitstream-vera
75dpi     artwiz          freefont          ukr
CID       baekmuk-fonts   ja-ipafonts       unifont
Mac       bitstream-vera  kochi-substitute  urw-fonts
Speedo    corefonts       lfp-fix           util
TTF       cyrillic        local
Type1     default         mikachan-font
aquafont  encodings       misc

In my local.conf, the only line that does anything in there(the others are commented out) is...

  <match target="pattern">
    <edit name="dpi" mode="assign"><double>96</double></edit>
  </match>

Therefore, nothing all that exciting is going on. xD In KDE, I have full RGB sub-pixel hinting enabled, and the same with GTK and both look identical. I hope this helps you to some extent. Cheers.

shining · 2007-06-08 09:21:00

emmybear wrote:

I am not exactly sure why people dislike using AA sometimes or whatnot.

Antialiasing is for smoothing the sharp edges of bad fonts. Why enabling it if you don't need it?
It costs more processing power for adding blur that you don't need.

Perhaps it is because they do not have the settings tweaked the same way I do, or perhaps it is merely a question of taste.

It's merely a question of taste.

Anyway, I have not had issues with fonts in Arch at all. Perhaps I am just lucky or something, but my fonts look wonderfully crisp and smooth, at least to me. Anyway, here is a screenshot of rendering the Ubuntu forums within Konqueror, including the rest of the screen so you can see whatever else.
http://daimeria.ath.cx/screenshots/ubuntuforums.png

That looks better than some others, but still too blurry for my taste
Here is how it looks here :
http://img489.imageshack.us/img489/9091 … 00stx5.png

Ankka · 2007-06-08 09:56:57

shining wrote:

Here is how it looks here :
http://img489.imageshack.us/img489/9091 … 00stx5.png

CRT?

I find the default settings and fonts to look great. Not too fuzzy, but not anti-antialiased either.

http://koti.mbnet.fi/azy/fonts.png

This on a laptop-screen. Any fuzzier (cleartype etc) and it looks awfully messy.

shining · 2007-06-08 11:48:45

Ankka wrote:

shining wrote:
Here is how it looks here :
http://img489.imageshack.us/img489/9091 … 00stx5.png
CRT?
I find the default settings and fonts to look great. Not too fuzzy, but not anti-antialiased either.
http://koti.mbnet.fi/azy/fonts.png
This on a laptop-screen. Any fuzzier (cleartype etc) and it looks awfully messy.

I'm using a laptop most of the times, so lcd.
What's nice with lcd is that you can use subpixel rendering (like on your screenshot), which results in a more precise, less fuzzy anti-aliasing.
I agree that this looks alright on lcd, and that any other kind of anti-aliasing looks messy
I think I still prefer good fonts without anti-aliasing, but that's really just personal taste.

I also have a desktop with a crt, but I mostly use it for playing, don't read much so I didn't care a lot about fonts. Maybe standard greyscale anti-aliasing looks better there.
But good fonts without anti aliasing always look good to me anyway

broch · 2007-06-08 13:10:38

if you look here:
http://daimeria.ath.cx/screenshots/ubuntuforums.png
at the letter 'n' for example, in the phrase
"Absolute Beginner Talk" you can see that top of the letter 'n' is of different thickness than sides.

one needs both good quality rendering engine (crappy in freetype2 2.3.x) and good quality fonts. Third factor is hardware (or rather how rendering engine takes advantage of monitor capabilities), still this is software role to make picture look good.

So this is not really Arch's fault that fonts may look bad, though sometimes "bleeding edge" is not the best solution if it worsens quality of user's experience as in the case of freetype2.
Why get better looking fonts? Because it is possible, because this is XXI century desktop gui, because as with everything else: users tweak kernels, video players, the look of desktop (monthly screenshots) and so on. Finally why not?

Kenetixx · 2007-06-08 13:28:28

I use what it says on the gentoo wiki
WOrks good for me Looks way better then any windows fonts and Ubuntudontwannareallyuselinx does

shining · 2007-06-08 13:42:20

broch wrote:

if you look here:
http://daimeria.ath.cx/screenshots/ubuntuforums.png
at the letter 'n' for example, in the phrase
"Absolute Beginner Talk" you can see that top of the letter 'n' is of different thickness than sides.

And if you look here :
http://img168.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ubuntu3ts1.png
or here
http://img240.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ubuntu2ir1.png
you get an awful mess of pixel

I know it's highly subjective, so why don't I just give up? I must be stupid
It's like if we were arguing about how blue looks much better than green.

Btw, I just looked at this :
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cle … Step1.aspx
and I find that the real cleartype looks much better (much cleaner and precise and less fuzzy) than the one from freetype.

broch · 2007-06-08 15:30:51

tell me which one is from windows and from Arch:
http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?imag … ypemy6.jpg
http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?imag … pe2vc4.jpg

there are differences visible so if windows is better which one is from windows?

Last edited by broch (2007-06-08 15:31:43)

RaisedFist · 2007-06-08 20:40:56

@broch
LOL ... when you did the screenshot you had a windows specific thng in your image

pkraw · 2007-06-08 20:42:45

I've just ported some patches taken from PLD cairo and libxft libraries. I saw them on PLD developer's weblog (http://room-303.com/blog/2007/05/24/pld … ig-printer) and I thought it'd be nice to achieve similar results in my Arch.

In fact, those are very close to David Turner's patches mentioned in the beginning of this thread. If someone's interested, have a look at cairo-lcd and libxft-lcd, both available in AUR. Just stock packages with one additional patch, as my goal is not to modify original ones too much.

There is no need to patch or recompile freetype package (in opposite to *-cleartype packages, also bit outdated for now). Give it a try .

shining · 2007-06-08 21:34:03

broch wrote:

tell me which one is from windows and from Arch:
http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?imag … ypemy6.jpg
http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?imag … pe2vc4.jpg
there are differences visible so if windows is better which one is from windows?

Jpeg compression messes the rendering, so this doesn't help
In both cases, I find the ClearType picture slightly better than the actual rendering of the browser.
I find that the two rendering (windows and linux) are closer between each other, than with the one on the picture
Anyway, it doesn't matter a lot, since I don't like any of them (rendering on the picture, or in the browser using Windows or in the browser using Linux).

broch · 2007-06-08 23:26:45

with bad ppem and bad appearance of symmetrical and lack of correspondence between thickness of horizontal, vertical and diagonal systems?

Fonts can be thinner, but this
http://img489.imageshack.us/img489/9091 … 00stx5.png
is not the question of a taste.
he, he: "pixel mess"?
here scroll down to see the same (and in fact better effect on OS X)
http://www.xvsxp.com/system/fonts_view.php

@broch
LOL ... when you did the screenshot you had a windows specific thng in your image

whole point is that Arch without much of extra tweaking can be as good (or better) as windows in terms of font display (and better than Ubuntu).

Last edited by broch (2007-06-11 02:59:48)

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-06-08 23:58:06

pkraw wrote:

I've just ported some patches taken from PLD cairo and libxft libraries. I saw them on PLD developer's weblog (http://room-303.com/blog/2007/05/24/pld … ig-printer) and I thought it'd be nice to achieve similar results in my Arch.
In fact, those are very close to David Turner's patches mentioned in the beginning of this thread. If someone's interested, have a look at cairo-lcd and libxft-lcd, both available in AUR. Just stock packages with one additional patch, as my goal is not to modify original ones too much.
There is no need to patch or recompile freetype package (in opposite to *-cleartype packages, also bit outdated for now). Give it a try .

Tried it. Love it. Incredible.

Scren: http://xs116.xs.to/xs116/07236/fonts.png

Kenetixx · 2007-06-09 00:59:40

pkraw wrote:

I've just ported some patches taken from PLD cairo and libxft libraries. I saw them on PLD developer's weblog (http://room-303.com/blog/2007/05/24/pld … ig-printer) and I thought it'd be nice to achieve similar results in my Arch.
In fact, those are very close to David Turner's patches mentioned in the beginning of this thread. If someone's interested, have a look at cairo-lcd and libxft-lcd, both available in AUR. Just stock packages with one additional patch, as my goal is not to modify original ones too much.
There is no need to patch or recompile freetype package (in opposite to *-cleartype packages, also bit outdated for now). Give it a try .

Excellent Job phraw, just compiled and installed , looks really nice

RaisedFist · 2007-06-09 06:17:58

So, I also installed cairo-lcd and libxft-lcd and can't tell a big difference to what I had before. At least for gtk apps. I took a screenshot for you to see the difference between QT apps ang GTK.

So, why is it such a big difference between Opera and Firefox?

pkraw · 2007-06-09 06:40:07

Sure, the difference isn't that big, but noticeable for me. It's a matter of taste I suppose.

I think it's something about your configuration. Weight of your bold fonts lets me suspect you're using autohinter instead of BCI. Also, check your DPI and browsers' settings. I'll try to install Opera later on and see if my Arch suffers the same problem.

RaisedFist · 2007-06-09 06:52:13

I'm not that "expert"... so how do I set BCI instead of autohinter?

And this is my DPI setting:

# xdpyinfo | grep resolution
resolution:    89x87 dots per inch

Last edited by RaisedFist (2007-06-09 06:54:12)

RaisedFist · 2007-06-09 07:14:26

Heh... it seems the problem was the DPI setting. I started X with -dpi 96 and it looks fine now. Still, what about BCI?

pkraw · 2007-06-09 10:59:56

It should be used by default in Arch, so you may have a look in your ~/.fonts.conf file or /etc/fonts/conf.d system-wide configuration. I have no .fonts.conf file, GNOME font rendering settings set to "Subpixel smoothing (LCDs)" and default fontconfig entries in /etc/fonts/conf.d:

[pkraw@faerun ~]$ cd /etc/fonts/conf.d
[pkraw@faerun conf.d]$ ls -l
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 35 2007-05-30 18:19 10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf -> ../conf.avail/10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 39 2007-05-30 17:35 20-fix-globaladvance.conf -> ../conf.avail/20-fix-globaladvance.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 36 2007-05-30 17:35 20-lohit-gujarati.conf -> ../conf.avail/20-lohit-gujarati.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 39 2007-05-30 17:35 20-unhint-small-vera.conf -> ../conf.avail/20-unhint-small-vera.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 33 2007-05-30 17:35 30-amt-aliases.conf -> ../conf.avail/30-amt-aliases.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 42 2007-05-30 17:35 30-replace-bitmap-fonts.conf -> ../conf.avail/30-replace-bitmap-fonts.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 33 2007-05-30 17:35 30-urw-aliases.conf -> ../conf.avail/30-urw-aliases.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 2007-05-30 17:35 40-generic.conf -> ../conf.avail/40-generic.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 2007-05-30 17:35 49-sansserif.conf -> ../conf.avail/49-sansserif.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 2007-05-30 17:35 50-user.conf -> ../conf.avail/50-user.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 2007-05-30 17:35 51-local.conf -> ../conf.avail/51-local.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 2007-05-30 17:35 60-latin.conf -> ../conf.avail/60-latin.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 35 2007-05-30 17:35 65-fonts-persian.conf -> ../conf.avail/65-fonts-persian.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 2007-05-30 17:35 65-nonlatin.conf -> ../conf.avail/65-nonlatin.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 2007-05-30 17:35 69-unifont.conf -> ../conf.avail/69-unifont.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 2007-05-30 17:35 80-delicious.conf -> ../conf.avail/80-delicious.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 2007-05-30 17:35 90-synthetic.conf -> ../conf.avail/90-synthetic.conf
[pkraw@faerun conf.d]$

eWoud · 2007-07-28 21:43:20

Maybe this'll help. This is my personal configuration, so it's subject to my personal taste:

step 0: patched Cairo and libXft

# pacman -Rd cairo libxft
# pacman -S libxft-lcd
$ yaourt -S cairo-lcd

step 1: reset the global font configuration

# rm /etc/fonts/conf.d/*
# pacman -S fontconfig
$ yaourt -S fontconfig-lcd

step 2: turn on the FreeType autohinter (which yields superior results to the bytecode interpreter, IMHO, and David Turner agrees)

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

The autohinter however, will make bold fonts too "bold". To disable autohinting for bold fonts, create a .fonts.conf file in your home directory with the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
 <!-- If the font is bold, turn off autohinting -->
 <match target="font" >
  <test compare="more" name="weight" >
   <const>medium</const>
  </test>
  <edit mode="assign" name="autohint" >
   <bool>false</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
</fontconfig>

step 3: KDE
- go to the KDE System Settings ('systemsettings') -> Appearance -> Fonts
- enable anti-aliasing (the 80's are over), and make sure you force the font DPI to 96 (or 120 if you have a high-res laptop screen)
- also enable sub-pixel hinting in the 'configure...' dialog, and slight hinting.

step 4: Gnome
- open font configuration in the control center (or 'desktop -> gnome -> font_rendering' in the Configuration Editor)
- enable subpixel smoothing, slight hinting again and a resolution of 96 (or 120) dpi.

Make sure you log out and log in again.

What specific fonts you use is up to you.
My configuration in detail:
- KDE and/or Gnome: 'DejaVu Sans 8' (pacman -S ttf-dejavu) for everything, except 'Consolas 8' (ttf-vista-fonts) for fixed width, and 'Arial 8' (ttf-ms-fonts) for window titles
- Firefox (preferences -> content -> fonts&colors -> advanced):
* Proportional: Sans Serif Size: 15
* Serif: Terbuchet MS
* Sans-serif: Verdana
* Monospace: Consolas Size: 15
Minimum font size: None
[X] Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above
- enable CoolType in Acrobat Reader (edit -> preferences -> page display)

Last edited by eWoud (2009-04-02 17:29:12)

RedShift · 2007-07-30 03:45:40

Have a look at this:

http://users.opengate.be/~glenn/screens … hlinux.png

Does this look better?

eWoud · 2007-08-01 09:59:53

Judging from the broken 'r' characters, the disappearing legs of the 'k' and other things, you're using the BCI.

Here's mine:

I must say, in general the GTK+ apps handle kerning and hinting much better than Qt apps.

Cotton · 2007-08-03 22:09:59

Body text on http://lifehacker.com/ in konqueror always looks horrible for me. Opera displays it fine as a sans-serif font, Seamonkey displays it as a serif font but konqueror always shows it at about 6 point in serif (W, O and D characters are jagged).

Never have figured out why just selecting Bitstream or Deja fonts in both Konqueror & Kcontrol settings isn't sufficient to rectify the problem.

How many users are going to attempt the 5 steps described by eWoud? And why should they have to - just to get a page to display properly?

shining · 2007-08-04 09:58:24

eWoud wrote:

- enable anti-aliasing (the 80's are over), and make sure you force the font DPI to 96 (or 120 if you have a high-res laptop screen)

Reading this comment after this one :
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 32#p270432

I think I prefer the previous century.

Arch Linux

#26 2007-06-08 02:26:11

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#27 2007-06-08 04:15:48

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#28 2007-06-08 09:21:00

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#29 2007-06-08 09:56:57

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#30 2007-06-08 11:48:45

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#31 2007-06-08 13:10:38

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#32 2007-06-08 13:28:28

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#33 2007-06-08 13:42:20

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#34 2007-06-08 15:30:51

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#35 2007-06-08 20:40:56

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#36 2007-06-08 20:42:45

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#37 2007-06-08 21:34:03

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#38 2007-06-08 23:26:45

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#39 2007-06-08 23:58:06

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#40 2007-06-09 00:59:40

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#41 2007-06-09 06:17:58

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#42 2007-06-09 06:40:07

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#43 2007-06-09 06:52:13

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#44 2007-06-09 07:14:26

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#45 2007-06-09 10:59:56

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#46 2007-07-28 21:43:20

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#47 2007-07-30 03:45:40

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#48 2007-08-01 09:59:53

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#49 2007-08-03 22:09:59

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

#50 2007-08-04 09:58:24

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

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