The fonts on my desktop are unusable....

Raptor Ramjet · 10-23-2004, 09:35 AM

Hello,

Well today I am once again rather disillusioned with Linux on my desktop because my fonts all look like utter shite. In a quest to get a usable desktop for day to day use I've been both playing with the font settings in KDEs control panel, plus trying to make sense of my xorg.conf file, but rather than improving matters the bloody thing is now unusable. For proof of this see a screenshot of my desktop at:

http://www.templeofdin.demon.co.uk/snapshot4.png

Following a default install of Slackware 10 I have installed the nVidia drivers and used Knoppix to probe my monitor settings (which I also checked against the manual) My xorg.conf file (with comments edited out) can also be seen at:

http://www.templeofdin.demon.co.uk/xorg.conf

As you can see from the snapshot the fonts look like they have been drawn with a marker pen on a piece of wet blotting paper which makes getting anything done impossible as I get eye strain after about 10 minutes.

So I would therefore be very, very grateful if anyone could tell me what the hell to do to get my desktop fonts looking even 80% as good as they do on my windows box ?

Try and try as I might I simply cannot get a Linux desktop on which I would be happy to do my day to day stuff and this is really, really getting me down. In fact my ongoing frustration with the poor quality of my Linux desktop is the only thing stopping me using Linux full time. (On this note then I readily admit my desktop themes/colours etc. are no good but why spend much time tweaking when basic font handling is knackered ?)

Finally to test that this isn't due to a hardware problem I have also established a small Windows 98 partition on the box. When using this the fonts are depressingly crisp and detailed and the display just sems brighter and better defined all round. My display hardware is:

Monitor: Iiyama Vision Master Pro 455
VGA Card: Asus VT700 (nVidia MX400)

Yours gloomily....

Azmeen · 10-23-2004, 09:52 AM

Delete these bits in your xorg.conf:

Code:

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "VESA Framebuffer"
    Driver      "vesa"
    #VideoRam    4096
    # Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
EndSection

As well as these:

Code:

Section "Screen"
    Identifier  "Screen 1"
    Device      "VESA Framebuffer"
    Monitor      "IIyama-Knoppix"
    DefaultDepth 24
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       8
        Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubsection
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       16
        Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubsection
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubsection
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       32
        Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubsection
EndSection

And feedback how things went.

uselpa · 10-23-2004, 09:53 AM

There's several things you can do, my recipe is:

- get good fonts, like those from Microsoft
- disable antialiasing wherever you can an enable the bytecode interpreter in freetype

The result can be seen here: http://www.homepages.lu/pu/extra/snapshot1.png , all with a slackware 10.

Regards,
-patrick

justin_p · 10-23-2004, 09:55 AM

install the freetype fonts from www.linuxpackages.net. also, need to go through the process of installing the ttf fonts. go to www.insyte.uni.cc under troubleshooting, scroll to the bottom. If you are still getting problem try sometihng like fedora or mandrake. fonts are much better by default and easier to administrer and set up.

jschiwal · 10-23-2004, 10:06 AM

You might want to use the font-control programs such as fc-list. I think you are using a fixed bitmapped font will only a few small sizes.

Raptor Ramjet · 10-24-2004, 04:50 AM

Well firstly thnks for all the advice !

But I've now removed the superflous crud from my xorg.conf (I thought I'd already done that

) I've installed the latest freetype 2, copied the true type fonts over from my Windoze box, updated the fonts cache, restarted X and tried out some (most !) of the TTF fonts etc. etc..

Now whilst there's a definite improvement I have to say that things still look pretty crap. There's just no sharpness to the display so whilst the fonts have now lost some of their smeariness it's still painful to use and I can feel my eyes disintegrating as I type (I'm on the box now which is an improvement at least !)

However in the meantime I was round at my mates after the pub last night and he's just installed SuSE 9.1 on his box and the display is much, much better than mine. The major difference in our kit being that his graphics card is a more modern 128 Mb nVidia model (not sure which chipset but I can find out)

So given that I'm using an "old" nVidia card with "only" 32 Mb and an MX400 chipset, a new 256 Mb card with an FX5200 chipset can be bought for about £ 50 (about $ 90 at current exchange rates) and that it's payday next week I may well try getting a new card and see if that makes a difference.

This being the case I'm very tempted to get a new graphics card ? and am therefore wondering is this is a better way to go ? Anyone with any recommendations on chipset etc ?

One thing's for sure though any new card will have an nVidia chipset simply because ATI don't even provide a decent Linux driver for their hardware.

So cheers again for the advice !

Cedrik · 10-24-2004, 06:02 AM

I don't think a new graphic card will improve your fonts.. Instead you may have to
use the good antialiased fonts like Luxi Sans (Or Arial if you installed microsoft fonts).

Also try:
look at /etc/gtk and copy a gtkrc file that suit your lang to your home directory as ~/.gtkrc

You may want to create or update :
/etc/fonts/local.conf

mine looks like :

<?xml version="1.0"?><!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<dir>/usr/local/share/fonts</dir>
<dir>/usr/share/fonts</dir>
<dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts</dir>
</fontconfig>

justin_p · 10-24-2004, 11:14 AM

maybe it's the anti-liasing that you don't like. that can be turned off as well. When i first came over to linux from windows the fonts' seemed weird. Now it's the best thing ever. After having to go to work all day, coming to use my home PC is a joy.

uselpa · 10-24-2004, 11:26 AM

I'd like to add a comment regarding SuSE. I agree that its fonts are better out of the box than Slackware's, but they are not perfect either. So whether you have Slackware or SuSE, IMHO you have to do some tweaking anyway if you want the best result.
Now my personal opinion is that it's easier to tweak Slackware than SuSE.
But anyway, neither the graphics card nor changing the distro will get the best result.

tobyl · 10-24-2004, 06:45 PM

The way I fix the perennial blurry AA fonts problem is as follows:

1. Get your slackware X11 as up to date as you want it, or leave it as it is.

2. Import your TT fonts. KDE's font installer is great for this if you have TT fonts locally.

Otherwise there are websites/friends that can provide the TT fonts, and you can copy to a suitable directory
e.g. /usr/local/share/fonts/TTF.

3. Make the font files are world readable. Go to each directory you have placed True Type fonts in
and from the command prompt run the command chmod 644 *.ttf *.TTF".

4. To make the fonts available to fontconfig enabled programs simply run
/usr/X11R6/bin/fc-cache

5. For X programs that are not fontconfig enabled you should also run the commands
/usr/X11R6/bin/mkfontscale
/usr/X11R6/bin/mkfontdir
from each directory that you installed True Type fonts in. (Get these commands in order)

6. Go to http://www.freetype.org/ and get the latest version of freetype2. Decompress with for example

tar -xvjf freetype-2.1.9.tar.bz2

now modify freetype-2.1.9/include/freetype/config/ftoption.h

so that the line (3/4 of the way down)

/* #define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER */

is uncommented and looks like

#define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER
and save.

enter the directory
cd freetype-2.1.9

configure and fix the prefix for slack:
./configure --prefix=/usr

'make', su to root and 'make install'

7. Reboot, and hopefully fonts will look good. Sorry it is a bit long-winded. This is riding a bit roughshod over the X11 package, (you can use checkinstall if you are familiar it), but it doesnt matter much, as a fresh install of X11 would restore to the previous state anyway.

Why is this necessary? Because Apple requires you to need a license to use the byte-code interpreter
(I will leave the conscience stuff to you)

If you already have Truetype fonts installed but they look bad, follow steps 1 & 6 and you should be done.
Try the freetype site if you want to dig further...

tobyl (also thanks to Rodrin)

uselpa · 10-25-2004, 11:00 AM

Regarding the last post, I would advise NOT to get the latest freetype, but to use the one currently installed. For Slack 10 stable, this would be 2.1.7. Then do the aforementionned changes.

The reason is that Mozilla for example used to die with freetype 2.1.8 or 9.

tobyl · 10-25-2004, 12:21 PM

Thanks uselpa, you sound like you speak from experience.

I too have experienced the 'dying' you mention (in firefox though), and it was indeed with freetype 2.1.8, although I discovered a workaround that solved the problem.

I have had no recurrence of the problem with version 2.1.9 however.

You are right to play safe though.

Edit: something I forgot to mention before, it is necessary to reinstall your nvidia driver
after messing with the freetype module, as glx stops working. This may well be true of other graphics card drivers too.