Blurry fonts after system reinstall

magoot · 03-09-2010, 03:21 AM

Hi!

I have a question about fonts in Xorg, i recently reinstalled my home computer and dist-upgraded to Debian testing. Then i copied some fonts, Verdana, Arial and so on from my work computer and placed them in /usr/share/fonts/windows (exactly as my work computer, which is also running Debian testing, however not dist-upgraded for a couple of months).

I noticed the fonts looked bad, so i made a simple web page that lists some strings with different fonts, and took screenshots of them on both computers (and also a buddy's windows 7 computer for comparison).

As you can see the fonts on my home computer looks really bad. And it's not just Firefox, but all interface text looks like this, except in rxvt or xterm, where it looks good on both computers.

My work computer is running:
xserver-xorg 1:7.3+18
xserver-xorg-core 2:1.4.2-10
xfce4 4.6.1.2

My home computer is running:
xserver-xorg 1:7.5+3
xserver-xorg-core 2:1.7.5-1
xfce4 4.6.1.3

Anyone know how to fix this?
Please let me know if you need any more info.

// MagooT

penguiniator · 03-09-2010, 11:34 AM

Step 1: search for "install fonts debian" on Google
Step 2: click a promising link, such as http://linuxandfriends.com/2009/07/2...ubuntu-debian/ (How to install fonts in Linux -- Ubuntu, Debian)

One other thing to check is the font settings in xfce. Make sure font smoothing is set up correctly. The link above will tell you that simply copying your fonts to a system font folder is not enough. That document will tell you more.

magoot · 03-09-2010, 11:51 AM

I have tried those steps in your link, run fc-cache -f -v as both root and regular user.
I have also tried creating the following ~/.fonts.conf

Code:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="autohint" >
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
   <const>none</const>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="hinting" >
   <bool>false</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
   <const>hintnone</const>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
</fontconfig>

After that i have run fc-cache again, restarted X, rebooted, still the same problem.
The fc-list command shows that Arial, Verdana and so on are installed.
In Xfce's settings manager antialiasing was already checked, unchecking that makes the fonts look a lot worse. However when i change the "Hinting" value, nothing seems to happen, i'm thinking that hinting is the problem... Question is how do i enable it, and why is it not suddenly enabled seeing as every time i have installed debian on various computers the fonts have always looked great out of the box.
Wonder if there are any changes in the latest versions of Xorg or Xfce that could cause this problem?

magoot · 03-10-2010, 04:35 PM

Made some progress with this issue. I ran the following as root:

cd /etc/fonts/conf.d
ln -s ../conf.avail/10-autohint.conf .
ln -s ../conf.avail/10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf
dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig

Then rebooted and started X, now the fonts look real sharp and nice

This seems to enable some of the same settings i tried in ~/.fonts.conf but it didn't work there (as i had read it should have).
The fonts are not exactly the same when browsing the web as before, but at least now they are sharp and comfortable to look at.

penguiniator · 03-10-2010, 04:52 PM

Also, if you are using Firefox, set gfx.use_text_smoothing_setting to true and maybe change the default fonts for serif, sans-serif, and monospace to something like Liberation Serif/Sans/Mono or your favorite font family.