Well, running "dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig" (that has changed to "dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config" in Etch) and choosing "Autohinter" or "Native" (plus "subpixel rendering" for LCD displays) is the first thing to do when you want to make fonts look nice and easier on the eyes. I like "Autohinter".
GNU/Linux doesn't have too many good-looking fonts available. For Firefox I use Arial (from the "msttcorefonts" package) as the default font. But for reading long articles and books I often switch from Firefox to ELinks to avoid from getting my eyes tired.
Getting the terminal settings right can require quite a bit of experimenting. I prefer to use ELinks in xterm and I set these xterm values in my ~/.Xresources:
XTerm*font: terminus-20
XTerm*background: gray25
XTerm*foreground: gray90
XTerm*cursorColor: yellow
The font for xterm is, of course, from the "xfonts-terminus" package. The available font sizes I get to see with "xlsfonts | grep terminus". Size 20 fonts show pretty big on my 1024x768 screen, so I can sit back and relax without any need to press my nose on the screen.
Reducing the contrast between background and foreground makes it easier to watch the screen. I first used black background and white foreground for xterm but that made my eyes tired and so I switched the background to gray25 and foreground to gray90.
I use xterm for ELinks because it can do 256 colors while most other terminals are limited to 16 colors. Actually, I use very few of these 256 colors but they are necessary for showing the specific shade of blue that I like ("cornflowerblue"). So, I start ELinks, press F10 and go to Settings -> Terminal Settings and choose 256 colors.
I also need to set xterm to use the 256 color mode, so I start ELinks with this small script:
#!/bin/sh
export TERM="xterm-256color"
xterm -e elinks
Once ELinks has been started, pressing "o" opens the "Option manager" where you can configure ELinks.
"Document" -> "Default color settings" gives several options for setting the default colors. I use these values:
Text color -> gray80
Background color -> black
Link color -> cornflowerblue
Visited-link color -> fuchsia
Image-link color -> chartreuse
Bookmarked-link color -> aqua
Directory color -> yellow
Allow dark on black -> 0
Ensure contrast -> 1
Use document-specified colors -> 0
I find Firefox most convenient for everyday web browsing but this xterm/ELinks setup allows me to also read long documents on the screen without my eyes getting too tired.
