can anyone explain to me why the fonts in linux are so jagged compared to windows, but the fonts in mozilla 1.6/7 look awesome, and they have a bunch of "font-name-iso-numbers" next to them like "adobe-helvetica -iso8859-1" but that firefox doesn't have those same numbers and the firefox fonts or the mdk 10 system fonts (i.e. dekstop, menus, title bars, etc) don't look good at all? Is there any way i can force kde/mdk 10 to use these adobe fonts, since i can't find them in the control center font options. thanks.

btw, the font in gimp 1.25 also looks great like mozilla. totem dvd player looks bad, same for konquerer, all of the dekstop, etc. any ideas on how i could improve the quality? thanks. i think my font engine my be incorrectly set for kde or something. thanks.

the Adobe fonts are X core fonts, which are part of the ancient X Font Server which is currently being weaned out by the FreeType system which allows for TrueType fonts to be displayed in X.

Right now, it sounds like you've got applications running a bit of both systems -- which is perfectly normal. However, forcing your apps to exclusively make use of the ancient core fonts system is not the answer. You should check some of your settings, notably the anti-aliasing -- this can be achieved by accessing the KDE Control Centre. Ensure that anti-aliasing is enabled for your fonts.

Y'see (some jargon coming up) in Linux, FreeType is typically compiled with the bytecode interpreter disabled -- meaning that fonts are given jagged edges so that when they're smoothed out with antialiasing, they look smooth and natural. In Windows, on the other hand, TrueType usually has the bytecode interpreter enabled, making the fonts look crisp and defined (as opposed to smooth and soft) but antialiased disabled. Basically, the rule of thumb is, you must have either a) the bytecode interpreter enabled + no antialisasing, or b) the bytecode interpreter disabled + antialiasing. And since I'm 99% sure that in your case the bytecode interpreter is disabled, you should enable antialiasing.

Hope that helps.

EDIT: Sounds like your Mozilla and GIMP are both built against GTK version 1.x (I betcha you downloaded Mozilla from mozilla.org, and didn't get it from a mandrake package, am I right?) -- GTK 1.x predates FreeType and hence uses the X Core Fonts and thus the Adobe ones (of which, only Helvetica size 12 looks nice---and quite nice, I might add).

hi, yup...i download mozilla from mozilla.org. One prob w/ mozilla is that when it displays any non-helvectica page (i.e. courier...the text sometimes gets messed up w/ random letters looking like they're bolded). i'm a total newbie here but i liked the way the windows fonts/mozilla/gimp 1.25 looked...nice and crisp w/o anti-aliasing. so, is there a way i can set that to the default for all the fonts on the computer? i've never been a fan of anti-aliasing as i keep wanting to squint to make out the fuzzy text on my 15" xga lcd laptop. basically, any way to use nice crisp fonts for all may apps/desktop w/o anti-aliasing would be much appreciated (even if i have to revert to the old system). thanks.

Well what I would do (and have done) is rebuild the RPM of freetype, with the bytecode interpreter enabled -- but, it's not always an easy task, especially if you're a n00b.

What I'd do instead, is open the KDE control centre, and select the font "Helvetica" size 12 (or 10, but don't stray too much) for everything (they're not listed in KDE as adobe-helvetica-medium-etc.) and then enable antialiasing, just so that in the event that another font is displayed, it doesn't look like garbage and even if you have to squint a bit, at least it'll look pretty. The antialiasing effects will not apply to the Helvetica font, since it is not a TrueType font and thus does not support antialiasing.

As for Mozilla, I'd suggest switching to the GTK2+Xft build (the GTK1 may be deprecated at some time -- it already has been for Firefox) and do the same thing in Mozilla that you did in the KDE control centre -- change all your fonts to Helvetica and Times for serif fonts, and tell it not to use any other fonts but yours (there's an option, just don't remember what it's called).

Hope that helps.

btw, my AIM name is PoprocksCk -- if you want to talk there it might be easier and faster than sending messages back and forth here

thanks for the quick response! well, i tried out the helvetica thing but it still looks jagged after settings the font to the default as helvetica.

let's go for the major surgery! i'm up for it if it's best in the long run. i know how to compile stuff w/ ./configure, make, make install from a tar.gz file. if it's a matter of changing a line of code, i'd be up for it. thanks. only thing i'm not familar w/ is where all the crazy directories to put the stuff would be (all the /usr/bin/, etc. stuff). thanks.

Well, first things first, fetch the SRPM for it. I'm not too familiar with mandrake, but I'm sure there is a urpmi command or something to fetch the SRPM for freetype. After that, enabling the bytecode interpreter (BCI) differs depending on the distribution. In the one I use, Ark Linux, there's a line near that top of the SPEC file that says "enable_bytecode_interpreter=0" and all you have to do is change the 0 to a 1, save, and build. But for Mandrake it might be different.

If you have AIM please add me (PoprocksCk) because sending messages here can be a little inefficient when it's just the two of us communicating.