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Fonts too sharp & smooth


Guest Gish05
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Guest Gish05

I am using Mandriva 10.2 and GNOME, here's a screen of what fonts look like:

 

http://img267.echo.cx/img267/1916/screenshot39xd.png

 

Look at the blue text to the right especially. It's like the anti-aliasing is TOO strong. Even if I turn it off, the fonts seem to have htis edgy, uneven artifact to them.

 

How can I fix this problem?

 

Thanks

Edited by Gish05
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what I did is importing some fonts from my windowb partition:

times new roman, arial, courier new, tahoma, verdana, lucida, helvetica, comics, ... (the main fonts)

 

after that, I configured my favorites fonts in gnome-font-properties (in a terminal, just type gnome-font-properties)

 

the result should be better (that's the case for me!).

 

for your info, here's my preferences:

 

gnome-font-properties

 

Application font: Sans - 8

Desktop font: Sans - 8

Window title font: Sans - 8 - bold

Terminal font: Courier 10 Pitch - 10

 

Font rendering: best shapes

 

firefox

 

Fonts for: Western

Proportional: Serif

Serif: Times new roman

Sans-Serif: Verdana

Monospace: Courier 10 Pitch

 

I hope that can help you to resolve your prob'

 

Theo.

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Guest Adriano1

That's how I see that text too. Sorry, but some fonts will give you some artifacts, no matter what. Until we get more real high quality fonts, and the system for rendering them improves, we'll have to deal with it.

 

I remember the time when antialiased fonts on Linux was an ordeal. Thank Bob those times have passed.

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You may want to check to see if you are using a feature called 'sub-pixel hinting.' This is basically a form of AA optimized for lcd screens. I'm using it on my laptop and it looks great, but if you're on a CRT it's not so great I hear (never seen it myself). I don't know where the setting is in GNOME, but in KDE it's in the antialiasing menu. May want to look for it or look it up.

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Guest Gish05

theo: THANKS, this helps a bit...

 

That's how I see that text too. Sorry, but some fonts will give you some artifacts, no matter what. Until we get more real high quality fonts, and the system for rendering them improves, we'll have to deal with it.

 

All of this open source development on various Linux distros and we still don't have font rendering as good as windows? Wow...

 

Maybe it's because I'm using an ATI driver??

 

btw for some reason I can't get XMMS to install...

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All of this open source development on various Linux distros and we still don't have font rendering as good as windows? Wow...

Hmm, I recently retried Windows (XP Pro with SP2) and one of the minor annoyances was the scraggy fonts on Windows. :unsure: Perhaps its just the way my computer is set up, but you'll have to look elsewhere for a stick to beat Mandrivalinux with!

 

To answer the question, can you set GNOME to use hinting for certain font point sizes like in KDE? If you can, it may be worth having a play as it seems to make fonts more spindly, but clear..

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My recent install of 10.2 has given me very nice fonts in general. Cleaner than 10.1.

 

However, when I use konqueror as a web browser, I continue to see the poor fonts mentioned by Gish05. When I use konqueror as a file manager, the fonts look great.

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Guest Gish05

Perhaps it's the graphics driver, then?

 

I'm using an ATI Card - Radeon 9550 - so that may explain it. ATI drivers are pretty crappy when it comes to Linux, I hear.

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i guess it can be a mix of things. the monitor might be one reason for scrappy fonts, the font type and rendering type and the graphic card can all be sources for crappy fonts (and sometimes, certain graphic cards do not work well with certain monitors etc...).

you will have to experiment a bit on your box in order to find the source of your bad looking font. i know, this ain't much help but i think it is almost impossible to give you perfect answers that work on every box.

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  • 2 weeks later...
I'm using a Samsung SyncMaster 710T, DVI... it can't be my monitor

Sometimes fonts do not look nice because the dpi resolution is distorted. This does not affect ttf fonts, but fonts like times and helvetica can get distorted because of that. These distortions are easy to pick up using xdpyinfo:

screen #0:
 dimensions:    1400x1050 pixels (296x222 millimeters)
 resolution:    120x120 dots per inch

This tells me that my laptop LCD uses 1400x1050 pixels resolution. The displaysize is 296x222 millimeters, and gives me exact 120dpi resolution and nice fonts. If the screen were set to a slightly different displaysize, I could have got e.g. 119x121 dpi resolution, and fonts would be distorted. To correct such distortion, add the line

DisplaySize xxx yyy

to the Monitor section of XF86Config-4/xorg.conf. xxx, yyy are sizes in mm. Guess and check is the best way to get those right.

 

Edit: And yes, sub-pixel hinting is another thing to try.

Edited by coverup
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