mousematt Posted April 13, 2003 Report Share Posted April 13, 2003 I am running 9.1 with X11 4.3 - all of the fonts in GTK apps look terrible (worse than they did in 9.0). I have included a screenshot below - it seems that the Helvetica font used by GTK apps doesnt have anti-aliasing switched on at all. Hevetica also looks this bad in Mozilla (although every other font looks fine) - Does anyone have any suggestions? I have posted a screenshot at the address http://www.mbsa.org.au/linux/font.png - Sorry about the image size I am eager to cure a few of my colleagues of their Microsoft Addicition and some really scrappy looking fonts in Evolution, Gnumeric, Gaim, J-Pilot and XMMS (Menus only) aren't going to help my cause. Can I change the default GTK app font to something legible like Arial or Tahoma, replace the version of the helvetica fonts so they look as good as the KDE fonts or switch on anti-aliasing for GTK apps. Please help me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glitz Posted April 13, 2003 Report Share Posted April 13, 2003 I'm sorry that I can't provide a lot of help here, but there is a way to turn on anti-aliasing in Gnome. Luckily, this is in one setting, unlike changing the fonts themselves. Under LM9.0 you had to do some searching to find them all (it's not in an obvious spot and spread out among different parts of the configuration program). There's one spot that only changed the title font. There's another that changed the menu font. There's one hidden in the theme selector (I think) that actually changes the font for most other types of text. And I have no clue how to change the font type used on the Gnome desktop (Although I actually managed to change it once before). Also, the regular Helvetica may not be the best font to use under anti-aliasing. There are basically two types of fonts, bit mapped, and scalable. Usually when selecting fonts you can prevue the fonts. When doing this enlarge the font you want to use up to about size 24 and see if the edges are smooth. If they are then they are scalable. If they are pixelated slightly then they are bit mapped. Don't use the bitmapped ones, they look terrible with antialiasing turned on. Under KDE I use ArmNet Helvetica. This is a scalable font that looks real nice. The regular Helvetica looks terrible. Good luck. Glitz. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted April 13, 2003 Report Share Posted April 13, 2003 Yes, you need to try something other than the reg Helvetica, I suggest Sans in gnome (the default), or nimbus sans. You can put; export GDK_USE_XFT=1 in ~/.bashrc, or ~/.xinitrc, or some other X startup script. The easy way, which should have been the deault and already done for you, is in /etc/profile.d. In gtk2.sh and gtk2.csh change the necessary values to 1. If they already are set to 1, then it's the font you're using. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobGuy© Posted April 16, 2003 Report Share Posted April 16, 2003 Can I change the default GTK app font to something legible like Arial or Tahoma, Don't see why not. I did in version 9.0, looked good too. The sans in 9.1 look ok to me so I havent bothered to install ms fonts yet. Also have anti-aliasing on by default, well in KDE anyways. You might try selecting the iso8859-1 entry, and see what difference it makes. In the font tab in xmms. If your ms fonts are already installed try the tahoma or verdana. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest fubar::chi Posted April 16, 2003 Report Share Posted April 16, 2003 definitely get rid of helvetica. the default Sans or Serif fonts (actual names) are better Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted April 16, 2003 Report Share Posted April 16, 2003 i would also install all the msfonts, msttcore, etc. packages. you can find them in contribs, on most mirrors, or on texstar (there's a link to texstar in everything linux, sticky topic, linux and 2003-i'm too lazy to hunt it down ;-) ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted April 16, 2003 Report Share Posted April 16, 2003 I have the same problem, didn’t post about it yet (other things to do)... But: on my mdk9.1 machine, I use kde. Evolution shows this problem. I changed the gnome font, so under gnome no problem. Under kde, evolution still looks like crap. Bluefish allowed me to change the font, now looks fine... No idea why under kde evolution looks like in your screenshot, but under gnome it’s fine... Also, I made a new user, to make sure it wasn’t some old setting. No good. On the other hand, on my girlfriends machine, all is fine since I installed 9.1, evolution under kde looks great...... weird. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted April 16, 2003 Report Share Posted April 16, 2003 the problem _might_ be that when you go into KDE it doesn't set your styles for GTK apps, but that's just a guess :-/ (is evolution even GTK?) I would try running: gnome-theme-manager while in KDE and see if it helps any. that's just a shot in the dark tho. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted April 16, 2003 Report Share Posted April 16, 2003 I have no idea about evolution being gtk or not (think so though), but in any case, the bad fonts were like that in bluefish, until I changed them (in bluefish), couldn't change them in evolution though (can change the font of the mailcontents, not of the drop down menus etc). Tried gnome-theme-manager, doesn't help... Also tried: gnome-default-applications-properties (something else), gnome-font-properties (close, but this helps to get things ok in gnome, not under kde..), gnome-ui-properties..... none helped out here. So if anyone has an idea, please let me know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted April 16, 2003 Report Share Posted April 16, 2003 Yes evolution is gtk....is it gtk2 yet?....I don't know. When It was gtk1.2 you could put export LC=C export LC_ALL=C in a X startup script (.xinitrc) and if you used fluxbox , and probably others, it would use the artwiz fonts as well. Funny, I never figured out how to change evo's fonts for contents, but if it's still gtk1.2 you can change the toolbar, menus, and dropdown font in the /usr/share/themes/theme_name/gtk/gtkrc file. http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=951 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted April 17, 2003 Report Share Posted April 17, 2003 bvc, thanks for the link to that other thread, .. unfortunately, it didn't help me out... It seems a lot has changed since that thread (October, November last year)... Anyway, I played with the .gtk files in my homedir, and elsewhere, couldn't find anything. Weird thing is, I logged on as a testuser, so clean environment, started a gnome session and played with the font and other settings,... evolution seems to follow a different scheme, it never budged... What really bugs me, is that on my girlfriends computer everything looks fine.. or maybe it's because she has a much lower resolution that I can't tell it's not better..? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregor Posted April 17, 2003 Report Share Posted April 17, 2003 This is how I changed gtk fonts: /usr/share/themes/Galaxy/gtk/gtkrc /usr/share/themes/Galaxy/gtk-2.0/gtkrc fontset = "-*-arial-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-15,*-r-* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted April 17, 2003 Report Share Posted April 17, 2003 mousematt never posted back, and we're taking over his post....unless he's MIA. Mousematt, did you get your prob resolved? What really bugs me, is that on my girlfriends computer everything looks fine.. or maybe it's because she has a much lower resolution that I can't tell it's not better..?Let me ask you this.....does she autologin or use a dm and you startx or Xtart from init 3? If so, this would be the reason for a size diff (don't know why), but and I have no idea why they'd either be diff font's or not AA (the default). You might want to try either from a terminal, X startup script, or create a startup script as described in the link above in ~/.kde/Autostart/ and put (test from a terminal in kde first) gnome-settings-daemon or gnome-session-properties or both. But as gregor pointed out, the fonts are set by the theme. They don't change until you start a new app or restart a currently running app. You could also try to set the font (gtk2) in gconf-editor>desktop>gnome>interface. [EDIT] ooops! make sure there's not a ~/.gtkrc-kde b4 you start gnome apps. Also, fontset = "-*-arial-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-15,*-r-* is for gtk2 themes, and font = "-*-arial-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-15,*-r-*" is for gtk1.2 themes. If the theme doesn't have a font entry you can put one in there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted April 18, 2003 Report Share Posted April 18, 2003 mousematt never posted back, and we're taking over his post....unless he's MIA. Mousematt, did you get your prob resolved? Yes, apologies for hijacking your thread..... Did you manage to solve things and if yes, how? Let me ask you this.....does she autologin or use a dm and you startx or Xtart from init 3? If so, this would be the reason for a size diff (don't know why), but and I have no idea why they'd either be diff font's or not AA (the default). No! I taught her well. Actually, not so long ago I asked if she'd prefer to autologon, and her response was: but that's not good for security, then everyone can start my computer and get to my files.... Anyway, I think I might enlighten you about the font size: this happens when you turn on your monitor AFTER having booted into X; check /var/log/XFree86.0.log and search for the string 'DPI', which you will find after the virtual resolution setting,.... it could be that the DPI value is set according to info from the display, and with a lack of that, it's set to 75 dpi hor and vert.. You can set this with a line like DisplaySize 403 302 in the monitor section of your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 (this one makes my dpi setting 100), so that it doesn't matter whether the screen is on or off when X is started. Back to my gf's computer and mine, I just booted hers and checked, DPI is 75, so made mine the same, without effect... You might want to try either from a terminal, X startup script, or create a startup script as described in the link above in ~/.kde/Autostart/ and put (test from a terminal in kde first) gnome-settings-daemon or gnome-session-properties or both. Tried this in a konsole, does nothing for me; the first doesn't do much, the second gives an error: WARNING **: Could not connect to gnome-session. But as gregor pointed out, the fonts are set by the theme. They don't change until you start a new app or restart a currently running app. You could also try to set the font (gtk2) in gconf-editor>desktop>gnome>interface. [EDIT] ooops! make sure there's not a ~/.gtkrc-kde b4 you start gnome apps. Also, fontset = "-*-arial-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-15,*-r-* is for gtk2 themes, and font = "-*-arial-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-15,*-r-*" is for gtk1.2 themes. If the theme doesn't have a font entry you can put one in there. Thanks for your comment btw Gregor, did try that, without success.. I also did mv /usr/share/themes/Crux/gtk/gtkrc /usr/share/themes/Galaxy/gtk/gtkrc since the Crux theme has a font definition... didn't help either... From error messages I got when playing with /usr/share/themes/Galaxy/gtk/gtkrc and then starting evolution from the cli I know it is reading that file..... This is getting frustrating.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted April 18, 2003 Report Share Posted April 18, 2003 Almost forgot to mention, I booted into mdk9.1rc1 which I still have on another partition and with other usernames... There everything was ok. So I created a new user (in 9.1 final), copied all data from the mdk9.1rc1 useraccount that was good, then started X + startkde,.. and I found it was not ok. So the difference must be in some config files of the system, not the user.... Now as to how to find this difference... ? (note that as that olduser I was using keramic, but also with galaxy the problem arises) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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