Daedra

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Hi everyone, if you seen any of my other post about fonts you will see that I, like many others, have always felt that Linux font rendering was poor at best but with the newer versions of freetype (2.3.0) and above I think that for just plain font viewing that we might finally be catching up with Window$. Here are some recent (well 5 minutes ago ) screenshot comparisons.

Windows and Slack 12-current with no AA and bytecode interpreter enabled
Linux - http://webpages.charter.net/daedra/BCI+NO-AA.png
Win - http://webpages.charter.net/daedra/Win+No-AA.PNG

Windows and Slack 12-current with no AA and bytecode interpreter enabled (different webpage)
Linux - http://webpages.charter.net/daedra/BCI+NO-AA(2).png
Win - http://webpages.charter.net/daedra/Win+No-AA(2).PNG

As you can see the results are almost identical! Now here are the same pages with Win cleartype and Linux sub-pixel rendering .


Windows and Slack 12-current with cleartype/sub-pixel rendering and bytecode interpreter enabled
Linux - http://webpages.charter.net/daedra/BCI+AA+SPR.png
Win - http://webpages.charter.net/daedra/Win+Cleartype.PNG

Windows and Slack 12-current with cleartype/sub-pixel rendering and bytecode interpreter enabled (different page)

Linux - http://webpages.charter.net/daedra/BCI+AA+SPR(2).png
Win - http://webpages.charter.net/daedra/Win+Cleartype(2).PNG

As before, pretty close!

Anyway thanks for taking a look and if there is enough interest in this post I will write a howto for what I did to achieve this.

UPDATE. UPDATE. UPDATE. UPDATE. UPDATE. UPDATE.

I found an updated patch for Cairo 1.4.10 and tweaked my fonts.conf file in my home directory to make the fonts for sub-pixel rendering look closer to windows, very good results IMHO.

uselpa

I wrote a howto which only covers the noAA-bytecode case. I think that the fonts issue is a problem for newbies and that a more complete HOWTO would be a great idea.

XavierP

Best place for a how to is https://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/ - I have always used http://brendan.sdf-eu.org/articles/a...sing_slack.php to sort out the fonts. If your method is better, then I for one would be interested in seeing it.

MS3FGX

I really hate to say this, since I know a lot of people take this stuff really seriously...but I never noticed any difference between the fonts in Linux and Windows.

I mean, I have the general feeling that something looks a little different when looking at a page on a Windows machine and a Linux one, but not enough to ever give it a second thought or make a big deal about it (I have actually spoken to some people who said they didn't want to switch to Linux until it's fonts were better).

It always makes me feel like I am missing something, but then again, maybe I should consider myself lucky I don't notice any problems.

H_TeXMeX_H

I agree. The only difference I've ever found was in rendering proprietary fonts like Time$ New Roman (I HATE this font !!!) ... but that's what Bitstream Charter is for ... it looks better and it's free ! (and it will give you approximately the same words per page so teachers won't complain)

Wynd

I think the default font rendering in Slackware looks MUCH better than anything Windows has. My fonts are smooth, clear and crisp. In Windows with ClearType the fonts look too close together and blurry to me, and without it it's just horribly jagged and hard to look at.

Screenshot of mine

H_TeXMeX_H

Maybe it's a matter of taste. But, I agree Slackware fonts are way better than Window$ fonts, IMO (I find them much more readable)

uselpa

For me it's just the other way round - I get headaches with standard Linux anti-aliased rendered fonts, the same goes for Mac fonts or Cleartype rendering. Seems like my mind is only happy with the classic Windows-type rendering (byte-code enabled, aliased). And if I hadn't found a way to customize Slackware (or any Linux distro) to render fonts exactly like described in my Howto, I wouldn't have switched to Linux.

Daedra's Howto should include descriptions for both styles - everybody can choose what pleases his eyes most.

gargamel

Things to mention:

- It depends on your monitor which font or type of rendering looks good, much more than on the operating system; what's good for a tube might just be wrong for LCD.
- Readability and fanciness sometimes conflict with each other. The best fonts available are still the ones that come with TeX and LaTeX, when readability is the priority (this is for screen *and* DVI/print view).
- Sometimes a font that looks very nice on paper isn't readable on screen, at all, and a font good for the screen isn't acceptable in print.

Eg: I use monospaced fonts in my shell, switch off anti-aliasing on my old laptop, but in my desktop it's on. When I have to read long text on screen, I usually use programs like antiword, instead of reading the text in OOo or MS Word directly. But for printout I prefer fonts like the classic Times Roman (not: Times New Roman!), which is economic (many words fit into a relatively small space) and very readable, for longer documents; of course that's what it was designed to be: Printing newspapers at low cost, but not compromising readability. For letters Helvetica is a good choice, IMHO.
Sometimes, when I have to exchange documents with some pitiful Windows user, who just can't afford OOo, I use Microsoft fonts in OOo. To make them look good wasn't automatic, however, but now they are OK. (Although Times Roman in TeX is unparalleled, IMHO).

gargamel

Daedra

That is very true, I guess with all these post I should say that I never intended to say that the default font rendering in slackware was bad, in fact I think slackware has the best out of the box rendering of any current distribution. I just see a lot of posts all over different message boards about how can people render font's like mac/win and a lot of responses I read basically in a nutshell said you couldn't and with this post I just wanted to show that you in fact could.

soldan

i think an up to date HowTo would be a good idea

Swift&Smart

XavierP said:
XavierP,your tutorial http://brendan.sdf-eu.org/articles/a...sing_slack.php is great!I used many other tutorial and followed the instruction but things just don't work.However,my font is identical with Windows (which I like,whatever you'all said) after followed the instructions from your tutorial link.So,I think a howto is not necessary because we can follow the above tutorial.

P.S. I do think a little bit more explanation is necessary regarding how things work behind when we instruct the user to do a step.For example,the reason that I tell you to issue fontdir command is....

XavierP

Glad it was helpful, the author of the how to is contactable and is always keen on feedback. Drop him a line to suggest the improvements.

kailun

I still prefer the way Windows handles fonts. From the original post, I am very happy that the first set (Windows and Slack 12-current with no AA and bytecode interpreter enabled) look identical - however, a lot of us (me included) use LCD screens and cleartype from MS inproves readabilty 10-fold (at least). From the OP's screen shots, the linux ones still look quite far off. The fonts on the Linux ones look slightly thicker (bolder) and shorter than the MS ones. If you look at the very last comparison, if you look at the middle column, where the article's head line reads, "New Year", the 'e' are especially different from the MS screenshot of the same line.

It does seem to be getting better though, which I am happy to see () I would truly appreciate a comprehensive guide - I'm still not happy with the way that my fonts look in Slackware.

Daedra

Yes, linux cleartype is not quite on par with windows but it very close trust me. I have also decided not to write the How-to because there didn't seem to be enough demand for it, and quite frankly I got a lot of people complaining it was a waste of time because they liked the default font rendering in slackware.