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Better Fonts for X11?
Shadow_Font asks: "So I've been using XFree since RedHat 4.1 or so (I'm using XFree 3.3.6 on FreeBSD 4.2 nowadays). I've been using Macs since the 128K machine in 1984. The biggest reason I don't use X day in and day out for development is the status of fonts on the platform. They're just horrible! What's being done about this? Does anyone care about this? X fonts have been a sore sight and far worse than what I had on my Mac in 1984, and yet here we are 17 years down the pike. Are there any solutions? Until I can figure out a solution, my main development machine will continue to be a Macintosh with its anti-aliased text which really makes reading code for hours on end easier on the eyes." Give it a few more months folks, and X11 fonts will improve. And if the traditional 75 and 100dpi fonts are too repulsive for you, support for TrueType and Postscript Type 1 fonts has been around for quite a while.
Besides TrueType fonts, a couple other things to check are:
1) have you told your X server the resolution of your screen, and loaded the correct font files? One of my pet peeves is that the standard fonts are rendered for 75 and 100 dpi, but I usually run my screen around 120 dpi! If you don't give the server good hints (e.g., using the 75 dpi fonts and default screen resolution) your results will be pretty bad.
2) have you specified ":unscaled" fonts before the standard fonts? "xfnt100" means that the server will attempt to scale any font with a matching name, "xfnt100:unscaled" forces the server to only accept exact matches. This is the problem behind the ugly pixel-replicated fonts. Try listing the standards fonts first with ":unscaled," then the scalable fonts (if any), then the standard fonts without "unscaled." And as before, only list the 100 dpi fonts unless you have a good reason to use 75 dpi.
3) Check your monitor cable, video settings, etc. If your video card is putting out higher frequencies than the monitor can handle, the display will always look horrible. Even if you're within spec, a loose connection or cheap KVM can destroy the signal.
4) Finally, try different fonts. Some fonts are widely used for a "traditional" look, not because they're easy to read on a computer screen. Even a difference in the "foundary" can make a big difference because of the way they handle "serifs" and the like.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I upgraded to XFree86 4 and the default fonts are pretty nice. I prefer sans serif fonts and I'm using KDE 2 at 1280x1024.
The fun part is that SuSE included a happy script called 'getmsttfonts' with their XFree4 packages that grabs all of Microsoft's free fonts from ftp.microsoft.com, uncompresses them, and installs them. Ready for immediate use.
I don't find them any better. I have them there, but I'm still using the default helvetica, 100dpi for pretty much everything.
So, the first step is probably going to be upgrading to XFree86 4.