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#1 2004-06-12 04:03:16

tyler
Member
From: Montreal
Registered: 2004-06-05
Posts: 35

font hell, help me

ok, here is my question : how do i make my fonts in gnome to look as good as the ones on my red hat 9.0 box?

i love Arch, its fast, and way less bloated than rh9... but i have tried for the last 6 hours to setup my fonts to look as good as rh9 and i am going nuts!

rh9 uses the xfs font server, ok. i set up Arch to use the same, i edit all the configuration files the same as my rh9 box. the fonts on my Arch box are still ugly compared to the ones on my rh9 box.

i use linux to code and i like my terminal and editor (gedit) fonts to look good, my prefered font is Luxi mono. and it looks so nice on my rh9 box, but ugly as hell on my arch box. all the settings are the same, everything, i don't understand.


Till human voices wake us, and we drown. -Eliot

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#2 2004-06-12 06:05:00

leejpar
Member
From: Texas, USA
Registered: 2004-05-28
Posts: 51
Website

Re: font hell, help me

IMO, the fonts that seem to look the best on Arch are the Bitstream fonts. My Arch and Redhat/Fedora look about the same now. If the fonts size is less than about 20, the anti-alias fonts look terriable on both Arch and Redhat/Fedora. As a result, I just turn anti-aliasing off.


Linux Registered User #337161
'It's free. It works. Duh.'" - Eric Harrison

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#3 2004-06-12 06:46:42

tyler
Member
From: Montreal
Registered: 2004-06-05
Posts: 35

Re: font hell, help me

the bitstream fonts look ok, but not perfect.
i like Luxi Mono for my code and terminal.

this is the best i could get on my new box :

arch.png

and on my rh9 box :

rh9.png

if you can't see the images go here :

http://haustiergott.digitalzones.com/

the setting are identical, same monitor, same videocard.
i am puzzled.
notice the fuzzyness at the top of each letter and symbol in arch as compared to rh9.


Till human voices wake us, and we drown. -Eliot

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#4 2004-06-12 08:23:32

skoal
Member
From: Frequent Flyer Underworld
Registered: 2004-03-23
Posts: 612
Website

Re: font hell, help me

tyler wrote:

...notice the fuzzyness at the top of each letter and symbol in arch as compared to rh9...

Try turning off the anti-aliasing with Xft.

Put this in `/etc/fonts/local.conf':

<match target="font">
                <edit name="antialias" mode="assign">
                        <bool>false</bool>
                </edit>
</match>

The anti-aliasing seems to blur things on my Arch box as well.  This did the trick, and then all the M$ TT fonts appear clear again.  This will turn off aliasing for ALL your fonts.  You can make the aliasing specific to certain fonts if you wish.

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#5 2004-06-12 10:19:40

tyler
Member
From: Montreal
Registered: 2004-06-05
Posts: 35

Re: font hell, help me

i tried that, but without antialias it really looks horrible :

no-anti-alias.png

or here if you can't see the image:

http://haustiergott.digitalzones.com/

after hours of research with google i found out that it has something to do with hinting.
hinting is automatic with the new freetype, and the auto-hinting algorithm is distorting my beloved luxi mono a bit too much. i would need something in the middle ... as in hintmedium for Xft.hintstyle, although right now the only thing i can do is use auto-hinting (as in slight, medium and full all do the exact same thing).
BUT there is the option to use byte-hinting. unfortunatly i don't know how to turn it on, so, my question would be, how to turn off auto-hinting and turn on the elusive byte-hinting, or maybe i'm just going mad, how how how.


Till human voices wake us, and we drown. -Eliot

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#6 2004-06-14 09:26:31

Namlook
Member
From: France / Montpellier
Registered: 2004-05-30
Posts: 74

Re: font hell, help me

Freetype and xft are incompatible. Did you comment freetype in your XF86config ?

When I change for X.org, my font where good in KDE (ugly before)

juste a thought :-)

Namlook

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#7 2004-06-14 21:01:13

kakabaratruskia
Member
From: Santiago, Chile
Registered: 2003-08-24
Posts: 596

Re: font hell, help me

tyler wrote:

the bitstream fonts look ok, but not perfect.
i like Luxi Mono for my code and terminal.

this is the best i could get on my new box :

arch.png

and on my rh9 box :

rh9.png

if you can't see the images go here :

http://haustiergott.digitalzones.com/

the setting are identical, same monitor, same videocard.
i am puzzled.
notice the fuzzyness at the top of each letter and symbol in arch as compared to rh9.

I just love fuzziness


And where were all the sportsmen who always pulled you though?
They're all resting down in Cornwall
writing up their memoirs for a paper-back edition
of the Boy Scout Manual.

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#8 2004-06-14 22:12:00

tyler
Member
From: Montreal
Registered: 2004-06-05
Posts: 35

Re: font hell, help me

you're thinking about xtt not xft, xft is part of fontconfig and therefore necessary. i am just out of steam about the font thing. i just think that the new hinter in freetype is not very good. X.org? maybe i'll try. thanks.

and no, the little fuzzy hair thing on top of each letter is not nice  smile .


Till human voices wake us, and we drown. -Eliot

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#9 2004-06-15 01:10:26

skoal
Member
From: Frequent Flyer Underworld
Registered: 2004-03-23
Posts: 612
Website

Re: font hell, help me

tyler wrote:

..i am just out of steam about the font thing. i just think that the new hinter in freetype is not very good. X.org? maybe i'll try. thanks...

One thing I forgot to mention, and it sounds trivial but I overlooked it initially when installing the TT fonts from M$.  When I untarred the TT fonts in `/usr/share/fonts' as user "root", I forgot to make the files "readable" (using "chmod") for my normal user.  And, Xft was apparently never using my M$ true type fonts as normal user, but the X core ones instead.

And, by the way, I'm running the X.org server now, and you won't notice a difference between that and XFree86 (as far as fonts go).

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