Arch Linux

pernissila

Member

Registered: 2011-07-28

Posts: 13

Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

Hi!

Recently i switched to Arch 64-bit and everything seems fine but the fonts at some places.
This is what they look like:

This is my .fonts.conf:

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
 <match target="font">
  <edit mode="assign" name="rgba">
   <const>rgb</const>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font">
  <edit mode="assign" name="hinting">
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font">
  <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle">
   <const>hintfull</const>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font">
  <edit mode="assign" name="antialias">
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <dir>~/.fonts</dir>
</fontconfig>

I have installed ttf-ms-fonts, ttf-dejavu, ttf-liberation and ttf-tahoma.

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

Do you want to increase the size of the

System Settings -> ...

etc.?

pernissila

Member

Registered: 2011-07-28

Posts: 13

Re: Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

They looked alot better when i was on the 32-bit arch. There are some settings i just can't get right...

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

They looked alot better when i was on the 32-bit arch. There are some settings i just can't get right...

I still don't know what do you want to do: are they too small, too thin or what?

For me the text inside <pre> tags was too small, so I added

pre { font-size:1.3em !important; }

to my userContent.css (I use firefox). You can find that file in ~/.mozilla/firefox/foobar.default/chrome/ (it won't say foobar for you, you need to change that part of the path).

pernissila

Member

Registered: 2011-07-28

Posts: 13

Re: Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

They are hard to read because they look a little too blurry at that small size.

MoonSwan

Member

From: Great White North

Registered: 2008-01-23

Posts: 881

Re: Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

I use NoSquint in firefox and it suits me just fine.  If all you want are bigger fonts in Firefox then I highly recommend using the NoSquit plug-in.  I've had it for years and aging eyes appreciate my sticking to NoSqint. ;P

NotFromBrooklyn

Member

Registered: 2011-07-24

Posts: 37

Website

Re: Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

I don't know if this will be usefull to you,  but I read somethere that android fots (ttf-droid) behave very well in these kind of things.

pernissila

Member

Registered: 2011-07-28

Posts: 13

Re: Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

I don't know if this will be usefull to you,  but I read somethere that android fots (ttf-droid) behave very well in these kind of things.

I will try it.

pernissila

Member

Registered: 2011-07-28

Posts: 13

Re: Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

I installed ttf-droid but nothing changed.
Here is another screenshot of text in Chromium where the "computed style" is Georgia. It looks terrible!

MoonSwan

Member

From: Great White North

Registered: 2008-01-23

Posts: 881

Re: Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

Did you try the Fonts wiki entries?  There is one part there that addresses beautifying fonts.

pernissila

Member

Registered: 2011-07-28

Posts: 13

Re: Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

Did you try the Fonts wiki entries?  There is one part there that addresses beautifying fonts.

Do you mean https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_Configuration
I've tried most of the stuff there that seemed to make sens for my problem.

azleifel

Member

Registered: 2007-10-28

Posts: 486

Re: Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

If I zoom out a bit in Firefox I get which isn't perfect but is quite readable.  The interesting thing is that I don't have the nasty looking serif font in the text box.  Is one of us missing an installed font?

My /etc/fonts/local.conf

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>

    <!-- *** FONT ALIASES AND FIXES *** -->

    <!-- Fix poorly specified font family names -->
    <match target="pattern">
        <test name="family" target="default" compare="eq">
            <string>Trebuchet</string>
        </test>
        <edit binding="strong" mode="prepend" name="family">
            <string>Trebuchet MS</string>
        </edit>
    </match>
    <match target="font">
        <test name="family" qual="any">
            <string>Trebuchet</string>
        </test>
        <edit mode="assign" name="family">
            <string>Trebuchet MS</string>
        </edit>
    </match>
    
    <!-- *** FONT REPLACEMENTS *** -->

    <!-- Replace Arial with black weight with Arial Black -->
    <match target="pattern">
        <test name="family" target="default" compare="eq">
            <string>Arial</string>
        </test>
        <test name="weight" compare="more">
            <const>bold</const>
        </test>
        <edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="same">
            <string>Arial Black</string>
        </edit>
        <edit name="weight" mode="assign">
            <const>bold</const>
        </edit>
    </match>

    <!-- *** BASE SETTINGS *** -->
    <!-- Check that these links to /etc/fonts/conf.avail exist in /etc/fonts/conf.d

         10-autohint.conf
         10-no-sub-pixel.conf
         20-unhint-small-dejavu-lgc-sans.conf
         20-unhint-small-dejavu-lgc-sans-mono.conf
         20-unhint-small-dejavu-lgc-serif.conf
         20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans.conf
         20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans-mono.conf
         20-unhint-small-dejavu-serif.conf
         20-unhint-small-vera.conf
         25-unhint-nonlatin.conf
         57-dejavu-sans.conf
         57-dejavu-sans-mono.conf
         57-dejavu-serif.conf
         70-yes-bitmaps.conf
    -->

    <match target="font">
        <edit name="lcdfilter" mode="assign">
            <const>lcdnone</const>
        </edit>
        <edit name="antialias" mode="assign">
            <bool>true</bool>
        </edit>
        <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign">
            <const>hintfull</const>
        </edit>
        <edit name="embeddedbitmap" mode="assign">
            <bool>false</bool>
        </edit>
    </match>

    <!-- *** FONT-SPECIFIC VARIATIONS *** -->


    <!-- *** BASE VARIATIONS *** -->

    <!-- For bitmap fonts turn (auto)hinting off -->
    <match target="font">
        <test name="scalable" compare="eq">
            <bool>false</bool>
        </test>
        <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign">
            <const>hintnone</const>
        </edit>
    </match>

    <!-- For bold fonts turn (auto)hinting off -->
    <match target="font">
        <test name="weight" compare="more">
            <const>medium</const>
        </test>
        <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign">
            <const>hintnone</const>
        </edit>
    </match>

    <!-- For italic fonts turn (auto)hinting off -->
    <match target="font">
        <test name="slant" compare="not_eq">
            <double>0</double>
        </test>
        <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign">
            <const>hintnone</const>
        </edit>
    </match>

</fontconfig>

pernissila

Member

Registered: 2011-07-28

Posts: 13

Re: Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

A little update...
I changed the hintstyle of .fonts.conf to hintslight and now the font looks better but more blurry now. hinting is still set to true.
How do i make the font less blurry?

gmesalazar

Member

From: Brazil

Registered: 2011-07-27

Posts: 14

Re: Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

Hi,
when I installed Arch Linux (64 bits, too) I had some problems with fonts. All of them were solved creating symbolic links to configuration presets (that are in /etc/fonts/conf.avail) into /etc/fonts/fonts.d.
Try creating symbolic links to some of those files (10-autohint.conf, for example) and tell us the effect.

Hope this help you.

---

Guilherme Salazar

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Fonts hard to read at small font sizes in browser.

How do i make the font less blurry?

Read the wiki, and the huge Gentoo fonts thread that's linked to from the wiki. This question has been asked many times, and the short answer is to experiment to find what looks best to you.