xfce-mcs-manager for better fonts

arubin · 01-22-2008, 05:18 AM

I saw it suggetsted on a tips page that running xfce-mcs-manager would give better looking gtk2 applications in kde

Certainly audacity for instance looks better but I am not sure that I like the way firefox looks as a result.
What are the opinions of the font gurus on this?

Su-Shee · 01-22-2008, 05:56 AM

Those managers usally set the subpixel hinting style, antialiasing and other options belonging to freetype/fontconfig.

This can be easily archieved by configuring the file (.)fonts.conf - globally in /etc or locally in your home dir where stuff like

Code:

 <edit mode="assign" name="hinting" >
   <bool>true</bool>
 </edit>
 <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
   <const>hintfull</const>
 </edit>

is set. This affects _everything_ using Freetype/Fontconfig.

Another way to configure GTK-application settings specifically would be the ~/.gtkrc.mine - there you add stuff like this:

Code:

gtk-font-name="Bitstream Vera Sans 8"
gtk-xft-antialias = 1 
gtk-xft-hinting=1     
gtk-xft-hintstyle=full 
gtk-xft-rgba=rgb 
gtk-xft-dpi=98304
gtk-icon-theme-name="Iris"

Su-Shee · 01-22-2008, 05:58 AM

So my opinion would be: "Noone needs to run the xfce-whatever-manager".

arubin · 01-22-2008, 06:16 AM

So even though I have subpixel hinting style, antialiasing set in kde control centre this does not effect everything and I should be making these changes in fonts.conf

Su-Shee · 01-22-2008, 06:24 AM

Try it, it's just a file to be loaded - possibly kde writes .fonts.conf either. I don't know for sure, but the gnome font blahblah manager does and several others do so it's a good chance kde also does...

And don't forget the gtk-specific setting.

At last, you can enable/disable several things in the source of freetype and add patches to cairo, xft and freetype.

Under Linux, several font rendering options are disabled due to patent issues of Mac/Microsoft.

arubin · 01-22-2008, 06:34 AM

Yes I know about that and am running a bit-enabled, hinting enabled-freetype.

Woodsman · 01-22-2008, 12:38 PM

I have long recompiled the freetype package with the ByteCode Interpreter and sub pixeling enabled. I use only True Type fonts and always have been satisfied with the font display, with both KDE and Xfce. I also manually tweak my font.conf and local.conf files.

With that said, is adding the same tweaks to ~/.gtkrc necessary. Do GTK apps ignore fonts.conf?

I have read in other LQ threads about patching cairo and libXft. However, I must have missed the big picture somewhere because I never found revised SlackBuild scripts to use those patches. Second, there is no SlackBuild script for libXft, only cairo and freetype. I would appreciate some clarification about these latter two patches.

I'm using Slackware 12.0.

arubin · 01-22-2008, 01:45 PM

Have a look here. Never tried them myself.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...20#post2829720