Aliasing/mapping ugly old fonts to smooth new true type ones.

powerpleb · 11-01-2008, 10:25 PM

Sometimes I've visited certain web pages and been struck by how horrible the font looks. On closer examination I've found that this happens when webpages are using the fonts 'Times' and 'Helvetica'.

I think this is why:

Code:

~$ fc-match Times; fc-match Helvetica
timR12.pcf.gz: "Times" "Regular"
helvR12.pcf.gz: "Helvetica" "Regular"

It's using ugly old non true-type fonts.

So my question is, can I map 'Times' to be replaced by, say 'Liberation Serif' (or something similar) and 'Helvetica' to be replaced by 'Liberation Sans'.

I've tried playing with the ~/.fonts.conf thus:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0"?><!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
   <const>none</const>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="hinting" >
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
   <const>hintmedium</const>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <alias>
   <family>Times</family>
   <prefer><family>Liberation Serif</family></prefer>
 </alias>
</fontconfig>

But it doesn't work.

Any ideas? I'm running Firefox on Ubuntu Hardy.

tommcd · 11-02-2008, 02:15 AM

In Firefox go to: edit > preferences > content. Set the default font you want. Then click the "advanced" button. Set a minimum font size if you want. Then uncheck the box that says "Allow pages to choose their own fonts ...". Now all your web pages will use only the default fonts that you set in Firefox's preferences.