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Font HOWTO For Linux
Posted by
Hemos
on Fri Oct 25, 2002 07:53 PM
from the making-it-pretty dept.
from the making-it-pretty dept.
big-dog writes "The Register is running a good HOWTO on getting fonts to look better in Linux." Making things look purty is always good.
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Strange (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Strange (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Strange (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really. I think it makes sense - Linux users are often in the midst of fiddling about with some part of their system.
Not trying to be inflammatory, now, 'cause I know all about the embedded stuff, the server stuff, etc. It's just that this particular OS attracts tinkerers.
Parent
Re:Strange (Score:3, Informative)
Now, KDE doesn't start, even after reinstalling it three times and reinstalling X once.
Here I am, looking at
Re:Strange (Score:5, Funny)
No they're not. don't be paranoid.
P.S. If you turn round you'll knock that can off your desk - just a friendly warning
Parent
Re:Strange (Score:5, Funny)
Wake up, Neo.
The Matrix has you.
Follow the white rabbit.
Parent
Purty, huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Step 1 (Score:4, Insightful)
Congratulations, you're finished.
Re:Step 1 (Score:5, Informative)
Getting fonts right isn't just about installing them. Examine the screenshot [theregister.co.uk] from the article, and look at the Tahoma sample text (fifth from top). It is clear that the "q" and "r" and "Q" and "R" need more space between them. The "c" and "d" of Thorndale and Times New Roman, on the other hand, have too much space between them. Note also that you can probably spot these anomalies without even reading the text closely.
Also, it's not hard to confuse Qt (and maybe also Gtk) or a window manager with fonts. Pick a strange font or size, and the resulting size of buttons and such often become ugly or overlap incorrectly with decorations.
So, no, despite FreeType and friends (which are wonderful), we're not done with fonts yet.
Parent
Re:Step 1 (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Step 1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Readable fonts are not eyecandy. Fonts are the primary mechanism for translating computer information into a form compatible with your brain. They are therefore the most important visual part of the UI. Going the other direction, you wouldn't accuse of a good quality keyboard as being "fingercandy".
If readable fonts weren't important, bookstores wouldn't sell anything more expensive to print per word than the stock listings section of a newspaper.
Parent
Fonts are important (Score:4, Insightful)
Fonts are very important.
Fonts are one of the last barriers to a linux migration. That is also one of the first (negative) differences people notice on my monitor.
Never underestimate the lure of a goodlooking UI on the average user!
--Joey
Re:Fonts are important (Score:5, Interesting)
'nuff said.
Parent
Re:Fonts are important (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Fonts are important (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, most users I know who have windows Xp and a laptop can certainly tell if cleartype is turned off once it has been turned on.
I run a 1600x1200, 15.1" lcd with Cleartype, and with Windows set to 120DPI.
I can't believe I'm saying it, but the fonts are leagues better looking than any other system I can get my hands on. Microsoft did something right.
This is so easy to read and so smooth looking, I've actually given up using an X desktop whenever possible. I would rather edit in Codewright in windows than work with the ugly fonts in X. IT's that much easier to read and easier on the eyes.
This is the first system I've ever had where I can really say the fonts look georgeous.
The Before and after shots look backwards (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe it's just me, but the after picture [theregister.co.uk] looks worse than the before picture [theregister.co.uk]. Or, maybe it's just a case of "Oops, I named the files wrong."
Strongly Recommended (Score:5, Informative)
I STRONGLY recommend you try it out - he even includes a pre-compiled libfreetype (built for Red Hat, I think, but works great on Mandrake 9.0). You'll need to put it in the right directory, and create the right symbolic links to it.
I don't know how much of the improvement is due to this guy's improvements, and how many are due to the upcoming freetype2-2.1.3, but whatever - Linux fonts are no longer inferior to look at.
Parent
whatever happened to symlinks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:whatever happened to symlinks? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've had some "seasoned" admins that I've worked with for a few years actually look suprised when I mentioned that you could (gasp) mount /usr as a read only file system if you really needed to protect it.
Licensing Issues (Score:3, Informative)
Am I the only one... (Score:5, Funny)
I want fonts to be antialiased on paper, not on the screen.
If you don't have ClearType or font smoothing, you can approximate the effect.
Just smear Vaseline evenly over your screen - voila! Antialiased fonts!
It worked for Cybil Shepard on 'Moonlighting'.
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:5, Informative)
You don't quite get the concept of anti-aliasing, do you? Aliasing is the stair-step pattern you get on non-orthogonal lines on a bitmap based display (e.g. a CRT or LCD). Anti-aliasing is the apparent removal of those artifacts by blending the line's color with the color behind it.
Printers do not anti-alias printed lines on an offset press. You gain sharpness in printing by increasing the resolution of your source material. A 1200 dpi (or greater) typesetter (or direct to press digital system) will create typography that is, for all intents and purposes, perfect.
Asking for anti-aliased letters on a printed page is like asking to buy someone's used Yugo. It's both dumb and useless.
Parent
Printers do anti-alias (Score:4, Informative)
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AA will kill your eyes (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, merely having TTFs or anti-aliasing isn't enough. Take a look at this [theregister.co.uk] screen shot of TTFs in an OpenOffice.org document. They're clunky and blocky and basically impossible to distinguish from each other. However, with a bit of tweaking we can make them look distinct, slick and refined, as you can see in this [theregister.co.uk] screen shot.
I think everyone agrees that the first one is horrible. And the second... well maybe it's just me, but I can't see a difference between their tweaked AA and my own no-tweaked non-AA...
Re:AA will kill your eyes (Score:5, Interesting)
Proper antialiased fonts are NOT blurry, and ARE easier to read than their blocky counterparts.
The reason screenshots of subpixel antialiasing look like shit is because you aren't using the same display to see them. If I took a screenshot of my 1600x1200 laptop screen, and you display it on your 1600x1200 monitor, the fonts will look crappy to you, because the subpixel rendering is tuned to the exact screen I have, and requires an LCD to boot. Even if you have a 1600x1200 LCD, it may not look the way it looks to me, because different LCDs display things different ways; that's why there are ways to tune the rendering to look right on your display.
Parent
Re:AA will kill your eyes (Score:3, Interesting)
Hrmm. Does Windows 2000 do it's font anti-aliasing differently then? (no, not Cleartype, just basic anti-aliasing) I haven't used Linux a whole lot so I can't really compare the two. I'm just curious if Win2k's idea of AA is different than KDE or Gnome's?
Anybody comment on that? If they are different, and Windows looks noticably better (My text isn't blurry), then what's MS doing different?
A suggestion for RH8 users. (Score:5, Informative)
There is an unbelievably irritating aspect of anti-alised fonts I've found with RH8 (and in previous experiences with Gnome2): GTK+2 apps will insist on using Anti-alised fonts for EVERYTHING, and there seems to be no way to turn it off. While I think anti-aliased fonts are wonderful most of the time, I believe most developers will agree they are not so great in terminal windows or when viewing source code.
If you change your font preferences to "monochrome", you can then set source code editor/terminal fonts to non-anti-aliasable ones, like LucidaTypewriter. Then switch the font prefs back to your previous anti-aliased setting, and the modified programs will retain the non-antialiased font setting.
I don't know whose fault it is that this workaround is required (GTK, Red Hat, the apps themselves, etc), but it would be most appreciated if non-antialiasable fonts appeared in the font-selection dialogs even when antialiasing is enabled.
Re:A suggestion for RH8 users. (Score:4, Informative)
Everything that uses Xft to render anti-aliased fonts (and, except for a few programs with lame software freetype support, this is everything) will be affected by this.
Parent
Re:A suggestion for RH8 users. (Score:3, Informative)
XftConfig is usually in
Re:A suggestion for RH8 users. (Score:5, Informative)
You can turn them off:
export GDK_USE_XFT=0
Parent
Some additional debian specific font info... (Score:3, Informative)
...can be found here. [paulandlesley.org] It's really easy to follow his instructions to get true type fonts working right.
What about Xft? (Score:5, Informative)
I am currently running Redhat 8.0 with an XFT version of Mozilla [newaol.com], and I must may my screenies [zipcon.net] are much prettier.
With Xft, FreeType, and some good TrueType fonts, I finally have a Linux desktop with fonts prettier than WinXP.
Re:What about Xft? (Score:5, Funny)
You have Trillian running in linux?
Don't tell me you've soaked it in wine...
Parent
Fontconfig and Xft2 (Score:5, Insightful)
Subpixel hinting (Score:5, Informative)
So yes - regular antialiasing should be all that's needed on a CRT.
And... I'm currently typing this from Konqueror 3, which renders subpixel antialiased Truetype and Type1 fonts absolutely beautifully, along with the rest of KDE 3, in fact I would say it looks a lot nicer than Cleartype. Especially on a 1600x1200 TFT. Mmm, shiny
Another HOWTO (Score:5, Informative)
Mostly the same stuff, possibly?
HOWTO violate microsoft and apple patents (Score:5, Insightful)
More info: http://freetype.sourceforge.net/patents.html
Look at this thread: (Score:5, Insightful)
Much as the work on getting fonts to work on X is to be commended, I don't think we're ready to start showing off just yet.
Get back to me in a few years when something approaching a workable standard is around.
What?! (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, I think his screenshots look pretty ugly in general. He's managed to duplicate the blocky, hard-edged look of Windows 9x quite well, but I hardly consider this attractive. Red Hat 8.0's fonts look significantly better than his screenshots.
Mac OS X still has a wide lead on best look fonts, but IMO a modern Linux box has superior fonts to any version of Windows.
This guy is whacked. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am posting the same thing here as I posted over at the dot [kde.org] 10 minutes ago. Just a glace at his two Openoffice screenshots showed me this guy is seriously whacked. The second screenshot, which he claimed is "more refined" is clearly much more jagged than the first. A simple look with Xmag sees the only difference between the two is that the second has anti-aliasing turned off. Same with the"results" screenshots at the end.... they look like crap compared to my fonts in KDE, and I did nothing speccial. Just apt-get install msttcorefonts in Debian. There is no anti-aliasing going on at all in these screenshots, they look horrible.
Now, I totally respect people who don;t like anti-aliased fonts. but in KDE (which this article seems to be mainly about) or OpenOffice, disbling anti-aliasing is as easy as unchecking a menu option... if you don't want it, don't use it. What is the point of the whole long process in this article exactly?
why? (Score:3, Interesting)
I cannot comprehend what is so hard about making fonts work. TrueType is a known format. The OS loads it up and the programs use the OS to interact with the fonts, right? Windows and Mac handle it fine, what exactly is the cause of the difficulty under Linux?
Re:why? (Score:4, Insightful)
The freetype bytecode interpreter is possibly infringing on an Adobe patent. MS and Apple both shell out big bucks in licensing fees to Adobe for rights to the patented aspects of TrueType rendering, and it shows in the quality of their screen font rendering. Second, the fonts that are available freely (GNU free, not $0 free) are utter shite. They would look bad on any system. Microsoft has great fonts, which are available for free (as in no money) but there are some restrictions on distributing them, so they are never included in a Linux distro.
Parent
For high-res screens (Score:5, Informative)
pretty != readable (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of TrueType is not to give you more readable fonts than good manually designed ones, it is to give you complete families of decent fonts at many screen resolutions and sizes; that's needed because it would be way too much work to design all those font instances by hand. Still, if you did, you'd only improve the TrueType output.
Furthermore, anti-aliasing, font smoothing, and similar tricks do make pages appear prettier, but they generally don't enhance readability, and may even degrade it. That's why, among other things, many systems let you turn off font smoothing below a certain size. Cleartype and its equivalents, however, may help with readability, since they really do increase spatial resolution (at the cost of color fidelity).
RPM (Score:5, Interesting)
long[0] and I wanted to use them so badly on this thread because I am
really new to this whole X font thing having spent so much time in a
self imposed exile to the command line for two years[1]. So I am back
to using X and this font HOWTO sounded like a great idea. Until I
started reading it. To paraphrase "Just unpack the src RPM". Well
hell I thought HOWTOs were supposed to be distro independent because
the HOWTO might outlive the distro and because not every one uses
Uber_Distro_GNU/Linux. I fit in to that latter category. I run
Slackware and some people run Debian. Now it is possible to unpack
that RPM and futs with it for a little while and hope that it works
no matter what distro you are on but the HOWTOs are supposed to "speak
in a language that everyone can comprehend."[2]
One of the tricks to Linux's success is that is very portable to any
arch. Shouldn't the HOWTOs be written with the same idea?
I really did want to use those mod points here. Oh well better luck
next thread.
[0] remember that 1000 mod pointed post? Well apparently I have
served my time.
[1] to better learn this thing called Linux better than a GUI will
ever allow.
[2] no thats not a Living Color song.
I don't see it (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, I do NOT see nice fonts displayed any time there is an article about fixing fonts in linux.
There is one place and one place only that I have ever seen a screen loaded with nicely antialiased fonts...my KDE desktop using the longtime antialiasing support from QT. The fonts I have are SMOOTH. Let me reiterate that, they are smooth. No jaggy lines, no stairstep angles, just smooth antialiasing. Beautiful.
I then read an article like that at the Register, look at the screen shots, and all I can do is say "What the fu*K are they talking about?! Those fonts are STILL jaggy and they are NOT aa.
I've recently read a few other articles about fonts, aa, and hinting. I look at the results in screenshots and the fonts are either STILL jaggy or they are horrifically smeared. If hinting means "smear the crap out of the font until it makes you think your glasses are greasy or you are developing cataracts" then that hinting crap is working great! Nice looking aa fonts do NOT have to be blurred out of recognition. AA means NO jaggy lines, just smooth, flowing, SLIGHTLY (EVER so slightly) blurred fonts.
So far, mozilla simply has ugly font rendering no matter how you slice it. Its fonts are jaggy/stairstepped. Period. Butt-ugly. Same with Gnome. I have tried to get fonts to look as nice in Gnome as they look in KDE but it just doesn't happen. I either get the greasy glasses effect or jaggy lines.
I have to come to the conclusion that when people SAY antialiasing, they really don't know what their are talking about. Or they are referring to a different antialiasing than I am aware of. If your fonts have jaggy lines, then you are NOT enjoying the fruit of aa. Sorry, but that is a fact.
Wrong Direction (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet one could write a book with a chapter on each different method for displaying fonts in these new distributions. And if you want to get really confused you can look at the 7 or 8 different font configuration files used to put this clusterfuck together. Whatever happened to the good old days where I could just run XFSTT on a port and get all of my TT fonts pretty much the same as in Windows -- and this was even before XFree 4. With the advent of XFS and XFree 4 we got some primitive looking Jaggy things that "claimed" to be our TT fonts -- but at least where I was standing you could not pick them out from a lineup.
I still don't see how we are any better off in the "font world" than we were 4 years ago -- it seems that each toolkit has just decided to try to invent there own ways to render fonts.. Crazy -- Crazy -- Crazy.
Re:Fonts in Linux? (Score:3, Funny)
Who the fuck cares.
Re:Here is the HOWTO (Score:3, Informative)
Because he's RIGHT. (Score:3, Insightful)
Mac OS X: Install a font by dragging it to the fonts folder.
Linux: Some convoluted thing that involves downloading the Microsoft (!) fonts and putting them in several different places.
Windows XP: Turn antialiasing or ClearType on by checking a box in the display properties. (Note: ClearType is only recommended for digital flat panels.)
Mac OS X: Turn antialiasing/sub-pixel rendering on by checking a box in the display properties.
Linux: Recompile this thing, and oh yeah you have to edit a header file, and then do this, and then it will work, except not in Mozilla, because then you have to do this and the other thing. (A three-page description follows.)
I agree with the first post here. Getting Linux to look good on the desktop is possible. Getting Windows XP or Mac OS X to look good on the desktop is easy. Thanks, but I don't want to f*ck with my computer just to make it look good.