Arch Linux

eWoud

Member

Registered: 2005-07-06

Posts: 39

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

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?

They don't. Archlinux fonts are quite acceptable, and completely in line with the keep-packages-as-vanilla-as-possible approach.

Step 0 is only needed until Cairo, libXft and all the other libraries adopt the new LCD filtering. I'm hoping that they will no longer be necessary in a few months.

Archlinux uses the BCI by default, so there would be no need for step 1 and 2 for most people. Using the autohinter could be made easier if they added a disable-autohinter-for-bold-fonts to the fontconfig package. Maybe I should email its maintainer.

The only important thing in step 3, 4 and 5 is the DPI. everything else is optional. This is the area where I think things should be improved. Adding a patch to KDE so it defaults to 96 dpi should be easy (Gnome has this by default). X is another matter. Perhaps a comment in the xorg.install script.

- 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.

I was only kidding really. If bitmap fonts is what you want, then go ahead. They'r OK for terminals, menus, buttons etc. But I find them a bit tiresome when reading large volumes (like webpages).

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tea is overrated

DonVla

Member

From: Bonn, Germany

Registered: 2007-06-07

Posts: 997

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

hello eWoud,

i´ve tried your freetype2-lcd package from aur. and i´ve noticed no mentionable difference. i´ve also tried the cairo-lcd and libxft-lcd packages, but also no difference.
have i possibly missed something?

vlad

ps: sorry, more details:
i haven´t changed anything in the /etc/fonts directory and here´s my ~/.fonts.conf :

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <match target="font" >
   <edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
      <!--  rgb, bgr, vrgb, vbgr, none -->
   <const>none</const>
  </edit>
  <edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
  <edit mode="assign" name="hinting" >
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
  <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
   <!-- hintfull, hintmedium, hintslight, hintnone -->
   <const>hintmedium</const>
  </edit>
 </match>

</fontconfig>

i´ve set rgba to none because all other settings glimmer on my tft-display.

Last edited by DonVla (2007-08-17 23:17:40)

eWoud

Member

Registered: 2005-07-06

Posts: 39

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

My howto is only useful if you have an LCD screen on a DVI connection (not VGA).
You disable any kind of sub-pixel rendering with your ~/.fonts.conf, so there's no noticeable difference.

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tea is overrated

DonVla

Member

From: Bonn, Germany

Registered: 2007-06-07

Posts: 997

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

hi eWoud,
i also noticed (after writing the post) that your howto is supposed for dvi connections.
on a vga connection subpixel-rendering looks like s**t. as i said it glimmers very much.
thanks  for your answer.

vlad

steven

Member

Registered: 2007-07-17

Posts: 56

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

After installing arch and all of the fonts I wanted, I also had an issue, but _only_ with websites when they were using Tahoma, regular or bolded. Firstly, I removed the symbolic link in /etc/fonts/conf.d/ pointing to ../conf.avail/90-synthetic.conf which essentially was there to create a bold / italic for fonts that didn't naturally support it. When websites or a text editor used a bold tahoma, it looked fuzzy. This was the reason. In windows, there are 2 fonts for tahoma. One for regular and one for bold.

So, I removed the link pointing to this config and asked a friend to send me both tahoma.ttf and tahomabd.ttf and I placed them into /usr/share/fonts/ttf/.

Problem solved. Tahoma regular looks better, Tahoma bold looks RIGHT and there's no fuzz.

I hope this helps somebody.

dowoshek

Member

Registered: 2009-03-13

Posts: 5

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

Hello
My first post in here I'm using Arch since before-yesterday One of the first thing i wanted to configure was fonts, and yes, i liked them to be rendered exactly like i have in Ubuntu. So... I MADE IT LIKE IN UBUNTU I couldn't use "Gnome-click-way" because i was using fluxbox, so i did it other way and it works fine in Arch too.

So this is my way:
1.

pacman -Rd cairo libxft freetype2

2. Install yaourt and base-devel
3. This order matter (first freetype then cairo):

yaourt -S freetype2-cleartype cairo-cleartype libxft-cleartype

4. Delete any configuration file u made so far (like .fonts.conf) and simply create file .Xdefaults in your home directory including:

Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.antialias: true
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.hintstyle: hintfull
Xft.rgba: rgb

Belive me - this 5 options are enough to shape fonts the way we like ;P Can use "hintmedium" or "hintlight" in place of "hintfull".

5. Make window manager to read the above file. For example in fluxbox we need to add line in "~/.fluxbox/startup" file:

xrdb -merge -load /home/piotreks/.Xdefaults &

just before "exec /usr/bin/fluxbox". Point 5 maybe not necessery if using other WM (i just don't know).

And now it works

mintcoffee

Member

From: Waterloo, ON

Registered: 2007-10-05

Posts: 120

Website

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

At the risk of sounding obvious... why didn't you try the freetype2-ubuntu and the other *-ubuntu packages if you wanted it to be exactly like Ubuntu?

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Arch on a Thinkpad T400s

dowoshek

Member

Registered: 2009-03-13

Posts: 5

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

Thanks for info - I'll try *-ubuntu too...
In fact, my intention was rather to have simple access for options like hinting, antialising, dpi.

Chrysalis

Member

Registered: 2008-07-07

Posts: 155

Re: Rendering fonts like on Ubuntu

my intention was rather to have simple access for options like hinting, antialising, dpi.

~/.fonts.conf

From what I have seen ubuntus patches are for their version of freetype and often theres problems when theres mismatches. The cleartype patches work fine here.