Chromium and font

toketin · 2009-12-03 17:06:54

Hi, is it normal to see strangely the font under chromium? I mean that i see for example the Aur page with a strong bold font, you can see better in this screen:

leeyee · 2009-12-16 16:12:47

bump up.
I met some similar fonts problem on chromium. The apperance of fonts are quite different in firefox from chromium, and I still didn't find out a way to config it properly. Any idea on font configuration of chromium?

Rasi · 2009-12-16 16:13:43

leeyee wrote:

bump up.
I met some similar fonts problem on chromium. The apperance of fonts are quite different in firefox from chromium, and I still didn't find out a way to config it properly. Any idea on font configuration of chromium?

try to install and run lxde-settings-daemon and restart X - helps for me

jxy · 2009-12-16 20:36:43

I think the font problem is really the show stopper for chromium. Bad hintting results in *EXTRA* bold fonts, vague CJK fonts. And there is no way to change it.

I can't believe it does not respect fontconfig settings.

@Rasi: Are you kidding me? Why do I need lxde-settings-daemon for chromium, the browser?

ozar · 2009-12-16 20:39:12

The overly bold fonts were one of the first things that turned me off about Chromium, as well. I'll be watching this thread for any possible fixes.

Pierre · 2009-12-16 20:56:43

It looks like this for me: https://users.archlinux.de/~pierre/tmp/ … -fonts.png Not perfect but better than yours. I use Dejavu fonts by default.

I guess it looks extremely blurry if ms-fonts are used. In firefox you can disable using non-default fonts.

Nezmer · 2009-12-16 21:29:35

Try this:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xde … t_Settings

sand_man · 2009-12-16 21:40:59

I just thought the chromium completely ignored my font settings. Is it just that it uses it's own (bad) hinting?

rusty99 · 2009-12-16 21:45:08

This is what I get using Droid Sans Japanese

combuster · 2009-12-16 22:36:37

Well I havent changed default fonts in chromium (I use Zekton as desktop font, 96dpi with LCD Slight tinting)

SoleSoul · 2009-12-16 22:40:28

The only fonts package I have installed by myself and not as a dep is ttf-ms-fonts and everything looks good.

Rasi · 2009-12-16 22:50:00

well i am unable to spot a difference, do you see one?

BowlSmoker · 2009-12-16 23:00:06

Mine looks very different too. Chrome doesn't follow my font settings and isn't anti-aliased like everything else...

combuster · 2009-12-16 23:09:35

I'm just annoyed by the font in my adress bar, it uses Zekton and is kinda going up and down when I type, letters like g and p are cut off from the bottom

RobbeR49 · 2009-12-16 23:29:50

I've read Chrome supposedly gets it's hinting information from xsettings, which from what I gather requires the use of some kind of daemon to set/keep the right settings - which means pulling it from one of the DE's: gnome-settings-daemon, xfce4-settings, or lxde-settings-daemon I suppose are the only options.

I tried chromium when it hit extra too, and the fonts were screwed up for me as well. I tried lxde-settings-daemon which instantly changed my GTK theme and as far as I could tell doesn't have any kind of interface to change the settings it controls. That's about as far as I got.

I don't like the idea of xsettings going in and mucking up stuff I've set via fonts.conf and gtkrc.mine.

leeyee · 2009-12-17 01:52:12

For those who are using fonts other than English, I have the following pictures proving that chromium ignores fontconfig
http://hiphotos.baidu.com/wienerlee/pic … 1e1217.jpg
http://hiphotos.baidu.com/wienerlee/pic … 3d6217.jpg
Seems still no accurate answer has been provided on how chromium render its fonts, doesn't it?

Last edited by leeyee (2009-12-17 02:22:11)

sand_man · 2009-12-17 02:02:00

leeyee wrote:

For those who are using fonts other than English, I have the following pictures proving that chromium ignores fontconfig
http://www.linuxsir.org/bbs/attachment. … 1260979380
http://www.linuxsir.org/bbs/attachment. … 1260979380
Seems still no accurate answer has been provided on how chromium render its fonts, doesn't it?

Have to sign up to view...

For me, Thai fonts look fine. Usually in other browsers I have trouble getting them just right. Sometimes they are too small but in Chrome it just looks good.
English however, looks $#%@

leeyee · 2009-12-17 02:23:41

sand_man wrote:

leeyee wrote:
For those who are using fonts other than English, I have the following pictures proving that chromium ignores fontconfig
http://www.linuxsir.org/bbs/attachment. … 1260979380
http://www.linuxsir.org/bbs/attachment. … 1260979380
Seems still no accurate answer has been provided on how chromium render its fonts, doesn't it?
Have to sign up to view...
For me, Thai fonts look fine. Usually in other browsers I have trouble getting them just right. Sometimes they are too small but in Chrome it just looks good.
English however, looks $#%@

Ah..sorry, I've moved images to another address, and it should work now.

Janax · 2009-12-17 13:30:23

Never really thought it was that bad, but that may be because I'm using the system-wide settings for configuring fonts and not the DEs (KDE)... I also am using the "-ubuntu" libxft, fontconfig, etc. from AUR.

gweber@enigma:/etc/fonts/conf.d$ pacman -Q | grep ubuntu
cairo-glitz-ubuntu 1.8.8-1
fontconfig-ubuntu 2.6.0-8
freetype2-ubuntu 2.3.11-2
libxft-ubuntu 2.1.14-2

gweber@enigma:/etc/fonts/conf.d$ ll
total 4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  31 Nov 20 09:03 10-antialias.conf -> ../conf.avail/10-antialias.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  29 Nov 20 09:03 10-hinting.conf -> ../conf.avail/10-hinting.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  36 Nov 20 09:44 10-hinting-slight.conf -> ../conf.avail/10-hinting-slight.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  35 Nov 20 09:08 10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf -> ../conf.avail/10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  43 Nov 20 09:03 11-lcd-filter-lcddefault.conf -> ../conf.avail/11-lcd-filter-lcddefault.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  39 Nov 20 09:03 20-fix-globaladvance.conf -> ../conf.avail/20-fix-globaladvance.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  39 Nov 20 09:03 20-unhint-small-vera.conf -> ../conf.avail/20-unhint-small-vera.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  42 Nov 20 09:03 29-replace-bitmap-fonts.conf -> ../conf.avail/29-replace-bitmap-fonts.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  36 Nov 20 09:03 30-metric-aliases.conf -> ../conf.avail/30-metric-aliases.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  33 Nov 20 09:03 30-urw-aliases.conf -> ../conf.avail/30-urw-aliases.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  30 Nov 20 09:03 40-nonlatin.conf -> ../conf.avail/40-nonlatin.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  32 Nov 19 12:35 44-wqy-zenhei.conf -> ../conf.avail/44-wqy-zenhei.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  27 Nov 20 09:03 45-latin.conf -> ../conf.avail/45-latin.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  31 Nov 20 09:03 49-sansserif.conf -> ../conf.avail/49-sansserif.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  26 Nov 20 09:03 50-user.conf -> ../conf.avail/50-user.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  27 Nov 20 09:03 51-local.conf -> ../conf.avail/51-local.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  42 Nov 20 09:03 53-monospace-lcd-filter.conf -> ../conf.avail/53-monospace-lcd-filter.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  27 Nov 20 09:03 60-latin.conf -> ../conf.avail/60-latin.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  35 Nov 20 09:03 65-fonts-persian.conf -> ../conf.avail/65-fonts-persian.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  30 Nov 20 09:03 65-nonlatin.conf -> ../conf.avail/65-nonlatin.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  29 Nov 20 09:03 69-unifont.conf -> ../conf.avail/69-unifont.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  31 Nov 20 09:03 80-delicious.conf -> ../conf.avail/80-delicious.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  31 Nov 20 09:03 90-synthetic.conf -> ../conf.avail/90-synthetic.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 959 Nov 20 09:03 README

I notice a small difference with firefox and chromium side-by-side, but nothing "horrible". I have a screenshot but don't have a good way to insert it here...

jxy · 2009-12-17 13:40:10

RobbeR49 wrote:

I've read Chrome supposedly gets it's hinting information from xsettings, which from what I gather requires the use of some kind of daemon to set/keep the right settings - which means pulling it from one of the DE's: gnome-settings-daemon, xfce4-settings, or lxde-settings-daemon I suppose are the only options.
I tried chromium when it hit extra too, and the fonts were screwed up for me as well. I tried lxde-settings-daemon which instantly changed my GTK theme and as far as I could tell doesn't have any kind of interface to change the settings it controls. That's about as far as I got.
I don't like the idea of xsettings going in and mucking up stuff I've set via fonts.conf and gtkrc.mine.

There are some programs do not follow fonts.conf. And chromium is one of them. In fact, like old X apps, chromium follows some X server resource database. Usually that is set up using ~/.Xdefaults or ~/.Xresources and xrdb(1). Ideally such programs should let editres(1) to talk to them, but chromium does not, so it's hard to know what are the resources chromium uses. Being an open source program at least enables us to know the features. And as a matter of fact, chromium only respect four xft related resources settings.

Xft.hintstyle
Xft.hinting
Xft.antialias
Xft.rgba

But are these settings enough for normal day uses? Only if you use one kind of font. For me, NO. I cannot live without fontconfig's fonts.conf. I don't want the program pick some non-English fonts I don't like, when it displays English and non-English texts together. And I don't want the program to completely ignore the embedded bitmap fonts in the font especially for Chinese fonts where hinting is just useless.

I can't believe that they actually hard coded most of these settings in the main program and leave no way to configure them by the users. Probably their idea of open source is that users can change the behavior of the program by change the source code?

Meyithi · 2009-12-22 06:44:03

All I needed was to pop

Xft.rgba:       rgb

into my .Xdefaults, Chromium seems to be picking up hinting settings from elsewhere (don't have a .fonts.conf but use lcd packages).

jase · 2009-12-27 10:09:05

Here's some more font strangeness.

Everything is nicely anti-aliased and hinted except the extension popups and tabs that are open from those popups.

Normal and from popup

~ $ cat .Xdefaults
Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.antialias: true
Xft.rgba: rgb
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
~ $ cat .fonts.conf 
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<fontconfig>
    <match target="font" >
    <edit mode="assign" name="rgba"><const>rgb</const></edit>
    <edit mode="assign" name="hinting"><bool>true</bool></edit>
    <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle"><const>hintslight</const></edit>
    <edit mode="assign" name="antialias"><bool>true</bool></edit>
    <edit mode="assign" name="lcdfilter"><const>lcddefault</const></edit>
    </match>
</fontconfig>

Google didn't help much and I'm out of ideas

Gen2ly · 2009-12-27 19:40:49

I haven't read the whole thread but on the wiki I saw an article that fontconfig can override the .Xdefaults which if true (likely is) is not allowing Chromium to use your .Xdefault settings.

jacko · 2010-01-23 22:03:20

I fixed my chromium browser fonts.

edit ~/.gtkrc-2.0, if you don't have it just create it.

gtk-xft-antialias = 1
gtk-xft-hinting = 1
gtk-xft-hintstyle = hintslight
gtk-xft-rgba = rgb

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issue … l?id=18159 comment #24
http://code.google.com/p/xsettingsd/ <-- in case you need a daemon

Last edited by jacko (2010-01-23 22:06:57)

Meyithi · 2010-01-23 22:59:43

It's a shame Google are so stubborn when it comes to software dev, and trying to persuade them to do things properly just frustrates you because of their arrogance.

The AUR packages show just what kind of hacks and workarounds are needed to build it, one problem seems to lead onto another, has really put me off Chromium which is a shame because it had great potential.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-12-03 17:06:54

Chromium and font

#2 2009-12-16 16:12:47

Re: Chromium and font

#3 2009-12-16 16:13:43

Re: Chromium and font

#4 2009-12-16 20:36:43

Re: Chromium and font

#5 2009-12-16 20:39:12

Re: Chromium and font

#6 2009-12-16 20:56:43

Re: Chromium and font

#7 2009-12-16 21:29:35

Re: Chromium and font

#8 2009-12-16 21:40:59

Re: Chromium and font

#9 2009-12-16 21:45:08

Re: Chromium and font

#10 2009-12-16 22:36:37

Re: Chromium and font

#11 2009-12-16 22:40:28

Re: Chromium and font

#12 2009-12-16 22:50:00

Re: Chromium and font

#13 2009-12-16 23:00:06

Re: Chromium and font

#14 2009-12-16 23:09:35

Re: Chromium and font

#15 2009-12-16 23:29:50

Re: Chromium and font

#16 2009-12-17 01:52:12

Re: Chromium and font

#17 2009-12-17 02:02:00

Re: Chromium and font

#18 2009-12-17 02:23:41

Re: Chromium and font

#19 2009-12-17 13:30:23

Re: Chromium and font

#20 2009-12-17 13:40:10

Re: Chromium and font

#21 2009-12-22 06:44:03

Re: Chromium and font

#22 2009-12-27 10:09:05

Re: Chromium and font

#23 2009-12-27 19:40:49

Re: Chromium and font

#24 2010-01-23 22:03:20

Re: Chromium and font

#25 2010-01-23 22:59:43

Re: Chromium and font

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