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Updated And Unified Font HOWTO

Posted by timothy on from the glypical-user-interface dept.

avibrazil writes "A new Linux Font HOWTO was published with way more practical info for modern systems. The still-useful parts of the two former Font HOWTOs from TLDP were unified in this new one, to be a definitive one-stop-shop for Linux font solutions."

9 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Fonts will always confuse me on linux by drakethegreat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The reason for this seems to root from the fact that gnome for example attempts to create standards across the system for applications to use in their framework and then applications try to allow you to modify the fonts in them seperately. Then you have multiple ways to adjust fonts system wide as well. I think that a lot of work is still needed with Linux and fonts. Its something (and one of the only things) that Windows and MacOS do better. Its still something that is easily tolerable.

  2. The article in two words... by Ma�djeurtam · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...install Microsoft core fonts or your desktop will look ugly.

    Of course, the legality of installing Microsoft fonts if you haven't a Windows license is doubtful.

    I'm surprised that there aren't successful attempts at designing MS compatible fonts. What would it take? It sure would help Free Software desktops if there was a free (speech) version of Arial, Verdana and friends available. Why wouldn't the open source model work for fonts design?

    --
    Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
    1. Re:The article in two words... by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Of course, the legality of installing Microsoft fonts if you haven't a Windows license is doubtful.

      HPUX 11.0, and probably 11.11, come with the ubiquitous ms truetype fonts. They also come with a license that boils down to "distribute these however you want, as long as this license file is included." I believe the license that HP uses is one of the earliest that microsoft ever applied to those fonts, long before they realized that linux and XFree86 would ride along for free. If I were at work, I'd post the actual text of the license. But I'm not, so you'll just have to believe me. You should believe me, it is something I have double, triple and quadruple checked because everytime this discussion comes up about MS's license of those fonts I start to have doubts and go and re-read the HP license again.

      I think, to be on the safe side, next time I remember to look, I'm going to tar the whole thing up and archive it in case an "upgrade" from HP silently replaces that license file.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    2. Re:The article in two words... by Ma�djeurtam · · Score: 3, Informative

      There is a MS Fonts repository at sourceforge, i.e. they redistribute the files under the old license, like the one you are describing. I believe that one of the usual fonts misses, though (Tahoma, IIRC), because it was released later, and so never with the gentle license.

      It's a good transition solution, but I really think that we (slashdotters) should launch a project aiming at redesigning Tahoma, Georgia, Verdana, Mono, Comic, Courier New, Impact, Arial, Arial Black, Lucida and Trebuchet. It wouldn't be exactly the same fonts, but their properties (size, spacing, kerning) and looks would be equivalents to those they clone, so that interchanging them with MS's ones wouldn't break any documents / web pages.

      Of course, those new fonts would be GPL'd.

      --
      Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
    3. Re:The article in two words... by coaxial · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I really think that we (slashdotters) should launch a project aiming at redesigning Tahoma, Georgia, Verdana, Mono, Comic, Courier New, Impact, Arial, Arial Black, Lucida and Trebuchet. It wouldn't be exactly the same fonts, but their properties (size, spacing, kerning) and looks would be equivalents to those they clone, so that interchanging them with MS's ones wouldn't break any documents / web pages.

      *gasp*

      Didn't you read the HOWTO!?!? That would be wrong! That would be creating a "ripoff"! We're all supposed to create brand new fonts from all original ideas by copying Guttenberg's interchangeable typefaces, not by copying some font that costs $100 for plain text, and then another $100 for bold, and italics. Bold-italics for $150. That's a savings of 25% over buying a bold and italic individually! WOW! What a deal! But what ever we should do, we shouldn't buy cheap fonts. That's wrong. ("Southern Software, Inc [...] but don't buy any of their fonts!")

  3. ...I think the way I made it work was by acousticiris · · Score: 3, Interesting

    $ emerge kde

    A few beers and one long period of REM later (ok...maybe two), KDE was installed ... I messed with the nice KDE control app to configure font smoothing... a few seconds later and my fonts looked fine. I'm a linux newb, ... but what's the big deal here? Everything looks fine...everything appears anti-aliased and pleasent to the eye. I know in other distros from years back that this wasn't the case...but it works now, and didn't take me any real effort to get it working... Is there some mystery here that I accidently stumbled upon, or is this just a problem that has been solved that someone feels necessary to write a really long HOWTO on? Or am I just an idiot? (I'm sure someone will reply with such an answer...this is Slashdot!)

    It does seem that if I *am* an idiot, that I shouldn't be expected to follow a 13 step program to fix it. 12 steps, and I wouldn't have been drinking the beer in the first place...I would have just had a couple of really long restful naps while Gentoo, emerge, the compilers, and whatever other magic occurs while those endless make screens flash up on my screen.

    --
    "God is dead!" - Nietzsche
    "Nietzsche is dead!" - God
  4. Relevant patents expire in 2009, 2012 by Andy_R · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Assuming that the US doesn't extend patents past 20 years, adopting the Apple method of hinting truetype fonts should be legal as of May 2009/2012

    Patent US5155805: Method and apparatus for moving control points in displaying digital typeface on raster output devices. Filed on May, 8 1989

    Patent US5159668: Method and apparatus for manipulating outlines in improving digital typeface on raster output devices. Filed on May, 8 1989

    Patent US5325479: Method and apparatus for moving control points in displaying digital typeface on raster output devices. Filed on May 28, 1992

    --
    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
  5. The default autohinter has gone a long way by abdulla · · Score: 2, Informative

    I just tried out the byte code interpreter rpm they have on the website and under gnome (without hinting turned off for the ranges they say, since I can't find the option). It looks a lot better with the autohinter. This is with both bitstream and microsoft fonts. If you're happy with the latest version of the autohinter, and want your fonts antialiased across the board, don't bother with the byte code interpreter.

  6. Re:...I think the way I made it work was by setagllib · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's fatally exaggerated. Even without KDE's tools the worst you have to do in a sufficiently convenient distribution (Gentoo, for instance) is copy the fonts to the right directory and 'ttmkfdir', then xset fp rehash or restart the server. If the directory is specified in xorg.conf it's done.

    Unified smoothing is another story (but GTK2/Xft just do it for you by default) but not much harder. Still something I never bothered with because us old-fashioned developer types find that extended sessions of smoothed fonts messes with the mind. At the very least, my aMSN, aterm and nedit should never have any smoothing at all. Does KDE's option force all things to smooth or what?

    --
    Sam ty sig.