Mandrake 10 Fonts

pling · March 19, 2004

I finally bit the bullet and cleared my Mdk 9.0 partitions and did a fresh install of Mdk10. The upgrade from Gnome 2.2 to 2.4 is generally very nice but I have noticed that the anti-aliased fonts seem to be poorly rendered.

I'm using a Dell flat screen driven by an Nvidia GForce2 (latest drivers) and even with sub-pixel aliasing there seems to be a lot of blurring and bold fonts especially seem to be smudged. Part of the problem seems to be that it attempts to anti-alias all fonts regardless of size - even fonts below 8px. The centres of e's are especially noticeable -like an old typewriter. I've played with different fonts in the Gnome configuration panel but can't seem to make it any better. Is this a feature I'm going to have to live with or can it be fixed?

mert · March 19, 2004

I've had this problem on my laptop with with redhat linux, and with Mandrake. I was surprised when I saw that my wife's new Apple iBook also has the same blurry fonts! Some fonts look better than others though. Bitstream Vera sans and charter look great on my screen and I use them as much as possible.

Mike

drake_guru · March 20, 2004

Font renedering on MDK 10 is quite poor. Was much better in 9.x. It takes a bit of

tweaking, but they can be made to look nice. B)

bvc · March 20, 2004

I don't have a lappy but after the install the font's were great. It was after the updates that my fonts got wacked out.

scoopy · March 20, 2004

I seem to remember with the 9 versions people were saying to just install freetype2 or something. Is that the case here maybe? I see I only have freetype installed here, but there is a freetype2 out there.

pling · March 20, 2004

Font renedering on MDK 10 is quite poor. Was much better in 9.x. It takes a bit of
tweaking, but they can be made to look nice. B)

OK thats encouraging - any idea how to go about that?

Uiler · March 20, 2004

I finally bit the bullet and cleared my Mdk 9.0 partitions and did a fresh install of Mdk10. The upgrade from Gnome 2.2 to 2.4 is generally very nice but I have noticed that the anti-aliased fonts seem to be poorly rendered.

I'm using a Dell flat screen driven by an Nvidia GForce2 (latest drivers) and even with sub-pixel aliasing there seems to be a lot of blurring and bold fonts especially seem to be smudged. Part of the problem seems to be that it attempts to anti-alias all fonts regardless of size - even fonts below 8px. The centres of e's are especially noticeable -like an old typewriter. I've played with different fonts in the Gnome configuration panel but can't seem to make it any better. Is this a feature I'm going to have to live with or can it be fixed?

In KDE you can choose not to alias fonts below a certain size in the Fonts panel. I don't think Gnome has that option. However have you tried using gconf-editor, maybe there's an option there?

pling · March 20, 2004

In KDE you can choose not to alias fonts below a certain size in the Fonts panel. I don't think Gnome has that option. However have you tried using gconf-editor, maybe there's an option there?

Thanks for that. Ive had a look and the only keys in /desktop/gnome/font_rendering are the same as those available in the Gnome Fonts panel. There is no indication that there may be more keys available. I'll try a quick google and see if that turns anything up.

thelorax · March 21, 2004

Any suggestions on improving the fonts would be appreciated. I also found that after installing the upgrades my fonts didn't look so good. I also remember having to fiddle around in previous versions of Mandrake to get fonts looking good. but unfortunately I don't remember exactly what i did ;(

I tried to fix the bad fonts by downloading the freetype2 rpms from the plf (libfreetype6-2.1.7plf) I think. This made all my antialiased fonts looked awful, but when I disabled antialiasing, my KDE fonts look ok now (please note that this will probably vary according to your screen resolution, mine is 1024x768). But it also created two problems:

1) Fonts on gtk2 programs look terrible (I assume they must be automatically antialiased). This is not a big problem for me as I don't use many gtk2 programs, but firefox with xft also looks awful.

2) Italicised KDE fonts look terrible. This makes webpages with lots of italics very annoying to read (eg. slashdot). All the rest of the fonts in Konqueror look good though.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to fix these problems, or generally to get good fonts it would be much appreciated.

thanks,

nggalai · March 21, 2004

To the people with font troubles: What does your XFS configuration look like? You can find the file here:

/etc/X11/fs/config

Important bit is the catalogue and order fonts are listed. Here's mine, for comparison:

catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/drakfont/Type1,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/drakfont/ttf,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/mdk:unscaled,
       /usr/share/fonts/default/Type1,
       /usr/share/fonts/ttf/vera,
       /usr/share/fonts/ttf/decoratives,
       /usr/share/fonts/ttf/western,
       /usr/share/fonts/ttf/latex,
       /usr/share/fonts/freefont

My Dell DFP really DOES have 100dpi, hence those fonts first, unscaled. Then my imported ttf fonts, then unscaled 75dpi (hey, you never know), then the rest. Order is important; XFS will go through the catalogue and select the font set that first raises its hand and screams "HELVETICA!!! HERE!!!" or the like.

To check your X server's DPI setting: xdpyinfo . If what's coming out is closer to 100 than 75, make sure those fonts are loaded first.

And chose your fonts wisely. Changing the font definitions in both .gtkrc and .gtkrc-2.0 might be appropriate, too.

93,

-Sascha.rb

Edited March 21, 2004 by nggalai

pling · March 21, 2004

To the people with font troubles: What does your XFS configuration look like? You can find the file here:

/etc/X11/fs/config

Important bit is the catalogue and order fonts are listed. Here's mine, for comparison:
catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled,        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/drakfont/Type1,        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/drakfont/ttf,        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled,        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF,        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo,        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/mdk:unscaled,        /usr/share/fonts/default/Type1,        /usr/share/fonts/ttf/vera,        /usr/share/fonts/ttf/decoratives,        /usr/share/fonts/ttf/western,        /usr/share/fonts/ttf/latex,        /usr/share/fonts/freefont
My Dell DFP really DOES have 100dpi, hence those fonts first, unscaled. Then my imported ttf fonts, then unscaled 75dpi (hey, you never know), then the rest. Order is important; XFS will go through the catalogue and select the font set that first raises its hand and screams "HELVETICA!!! HERE!!!" or the like.

To check your X server's DPI setting: xdpyinfo . If what's coming out is closer to 100 than 75, make sure those fonts are loaded first.

And chose your fonts wisely. Changing the font definitions in both .gtkrc and .gtkrc-2.0 might be appropriate, too.

93,

-Sascha.rb

Thats interesting becuase my default list with Mdk 10 is slightly different

catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/drakfont,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/drakfont/Type1,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/drakfont/ttf,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/pcf_drakfont:unscaled,
       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/mdk:unscaled,
       /usr/share/fonts/default/Type1,
       /usr/share/fonts/ttf/vera,
       /usr/share/fonts/ttf/decoratives,
       /usr/share/fonts/ttf/western

with fonts/misc as the first entry. I wonder if thats significant. I'll switch them around and see if it makes a difference.

thelorax · March 22, 2004

Mine is

Catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/drakfont/ttf,

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled,

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled,

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF,

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo,

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/mdk:unscaled,

/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1,

/usr/share/fonts/ttf/vera,

/usr/share/fonts/ttf/decoratives,

/usr/share/fonts/ttf/western,

/usr/local/share/fonts,

/usr/share/fonts,

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts,

/usr/share/fonts/afms,

/usr/share/fonts/default,

/usr/share/fonts/otf,

/usr/share/fonts/override,

/usr/share/fonts/ttf,

According to xdpyinfo my dpi is 81x81

Playing with the font order doesn't seem to have made a difference so far.

Any other suggestions?

thelorax · March 22, 2004

Here is a screenshot of what slashdot looks like for me, as you can see normal fonts are ok, but italics are terrible.

nggalai · March 22, 2004

Hi thelorax,

I'd re-order like this, in your case:

Catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/drakfont/ttf,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/mdk:unscaled,
/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1,
/usr/share/fonts/ttf/vera,
/usr/share/fonts/ttf/decoratives,
/usr/share/fonts/ttf/western,
/usr/local/share/fonts,
/usr/share/fonts,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts,
/usr/share/fonts/afms,
/usr/share/fonts/default,
/usr/share/fonts/otf,
/usr/share/fonts/override,
/usr/share/fonts/ttf,

restart the XFS. Restarting X will NOT do it. so:

1) exit X

2) as root, type service xfs restart

3) watch the syslog for any error messages. It will list what font directories it couldn't find and stuff.

4) re-start X

Give that a shot.

Also, what fonts have you selected in your .gtkrc and .gtkrc-2.0 ?

93,

-Sascha.rb

P.S. and yes, my fonts were all buggered up, too, until I changed the font order.rb

nggalai · March 22, 2004

Here is a screenshot of what slashdot looks like for me, as you can see normal fonts are ok, but italics are terrible.

That's how it looks on my end.

93,

-Sascha.rb

Mandrake 10 Fonts

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