Font HOWTO For Linux

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.

Comments

Re:Strange

[Inthewire]

"Isn't it strange that this gets posted as I'm futzing with my fonts?"

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.

Step 1

[Nailer]

1. Install a distro that actually cares about fonts. Eg, Red Hat 8.

Congratulations, you're finished.

Re:Step 1

[Waffle Iron]

But are most linux users concerned with fonts. I guess this is where linux is divided among those who like eyecandy and those who don't.

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.

Fonts are important

[Joey7F]

I know someone will get on here saying (or at least think it), can't we concentrate on making the 2.5 kernel as stable as 2.2.x. Fonts are just for making things look 'purdy' which doesn't help if you are crashing, blah blah blah

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

whatever happened to symlinks?

[CableModemSniper]

The author recommends you install the fonts in 2 or 3 different places. Whatever happened to installing them in one spot and symlinking to the others? Also removes the need to go thru the whole copy to the other directories rigamorale everytime you reinstall/upgrade.

Fontconfig and Xft2

[ultor]

I'm sorry to say that these people obviously haven't messed with the fonts stuff other than the top layer of complexity. I suggest if you are really interested in font antialiasing and configuration you look at Fontconfig and Xft2. Keith Packard has done an excellent job with these products along many other cool things within X (ie. Render Extension, RandR, the new XCursor system). Compiling everything with Fontconfig/Xft2 support is a little daunting at first, but when you're done it looks great.

Re:Strange

[sasquatchoflove]

Now that kde is being mean and not working, try out other wm's if you haven't before. I use fluxbox and will never use anything ever again. Besides, with only 128mb of ram, kde3 is a bit painful.

Is Linux dead?

[yeti (dn)]

Everybody cares about fonts not being perfect.

Nobody cares grep's -o option doesn't work with -i (well, it's actually already fixed in RawHide, but that's another matter).

After half a year we can expect articles about screensaver settings in Linux while RedHat will stop distributing xterm, because of no one using terminal any more.

Is Linux dead?

HOWTO violate microsoft and apple patents

[jrstewart]

The flag that this article suggests turning on is off by default because the hinting algorithm in question may violate Microsoft and Apple patents. Not the average user really cares about this, but it was irresponsible of The Register to not explain this in the article. On the other hand, this is The Reg we're talking about here...

More info: http://freetype.sourceforge.net/patents.html

Look at this thread:

[peterpi]

• You've obviously not used (insert distro here)
• Well, you just need to edit your XF86Config.
• I read code, so I don't need AA fonts.
• Yes you should have the fonts there, but you actually need to symlink them over here, here, there, and there.
• GUIs are for lusers, you are obviously not 1337.

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.

This guy is whacked.

[brunes69]

I am posting the same thing here as I posted over at the dot 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?

pretty != readable

[g4dget]

Some of the original X11 bitmapped fonts are probably among the most readable fonts anywhere. They were hand-designed and tuned over the years.

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).

Because he's RIGHT.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 2000/XP: Install a font by dragging it to the fonts folder.

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.

Re:Because he's RIGHT.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Correct" does not necessarily mean "insightful" otherwise I'd be doing this:

2+2=4

Mod me up please!

And X being ugly is an opinion. I think it looks fine. The fonts could be a little nicer, but it's a far cry from ugly.

Re:Strange

[rob_from_ca]

Yeah, statistically speaking the average Linux user spends 75.2% of their time at their computer trying to make their fonts look good, so it's actually not that strange at all. :-)

I don't see it

[praedor]

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.

Re:why?

[Cid Highwind]

Two main reasons, both derive from IP issues.
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.

GNU/Linux needs good defaults

[dh003i]

GNU/Linux does have good defaults, for a server.

However, for the most part, it has very poor defaults for the average home-user desktop-user. I'm speaking as a Debian user here.

Distributions should offer a "desktop" option during setup, which will set things up nicely for the average desktop user: that means anti-aliasing, maximum resolution possible, 16-bit color, a reasonable font-set, and a good default GUI-configuration (this does not mean a aqua-esque theme; this means that, for example, if the WM is WindowMaker, icons for the internet, e-mail, spreadsheets, word processors, etc should be on the dock).

All of the right stuff is there to make GNU/Linux. All that developers need to do is set up good defaults. This is simply a configuration issue; it is not something which is going to prevent you from devoting enough time to core technical issues.

Re:GNU/Linux needs good defaults

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for pimping, but Redhat 8.0 does all of those things by default. I mean EXACTLY everything you just asked for is in Redhat 8.0's personal desktop install.

Also thanks to the beauty of opensource the rest of the distros can now look as good by default. I'm sure some will even improve on it and then Redhat can in return improve again.

The days of the ugly linux desktop are over and I couldn't be happier.

Wrong Direction

[SomeOtherGuy]

Well if you look at the font fiascos in recent distributions and desktops (I am speaking of Mandrake 9.0 -- and from what I have heard RedHat), then you end up having about 5000 fonts and each application you run can use about 10 of them. So you end up with some applications able to use some fonts , and other applications able to see others. Depending on what type of app or window manager you are running -- you see a variety of "effects" that may or may not resemble AA. Gtk 1.x apps see some fonts, Gtk 2.x apps see others, QT sees others AND PLEASE don't even get me started on font sizes, most apps just asumme that size 12 is about all they want to use, and some gtk apps occasionally start up with a nice 72 point font staring back at you for some crazy reason or another -- Xfontsel can see a bunch of them but in itself does not do much. (to me it just looks like multiple levels of blur.)

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:C'mon

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a /. article a while back that asked this same question. It apparently is much, much, much harder to make your own fonts than to steal em from Microsoft.

No, he's right about the visual effect

[Reziac]

I do understand anti-aliasing, but the parent post is right -- on some screens, at some resolutions, AA'd screen fonts look fuzzy (worst case, they can be almost unreadable). So I think it's good, even necessary, to allow anti-aliasing to be turned off if the user so desires.

BTW, I frequently need to resize image files of various sorts, and have learned that sometimes (depending on content) they look better when I turn off anti-aliasing.

Re:I could swear....

[terraformer]

That is correct. Fonts (the files) themselves can be copyrighted but I not know if the ones that ship with the OS are. Just as an example, Adobe charges about $30 - $50 for recently released decorative fonts when purchased in individual packs. They get $8,999 (yes, that's right) for 2,750 ($3.27 per) fonts if you buy them in bulk. Imangine what the printing houses that publishers use to print their stuff have to pay for all of those fonts. Adobe is not the only one people use and the printing house has to have their own copy for their presses.