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It'd also be nice if we had our own pool of decent-looking fonts to choose from. Don't get me wrong, the fonts we have are decent, but things just feel better with the right fonts.
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I'd like to be able to disable anti-aliasing for certain sizes of fonts. A lot of the fonts that I use on a day to day basis in Linux tend to look very blurry to me. A nice sharp Tahoma or something metrically equivalent would be nice. I think I saw this in KDE once but I haven't seen it in Gnome... or at least, if it is, it's not in a GUI.
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exosyst
wrote on the 28 Feb 08 at 18:07
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In reply to `decent-looking fonts` what about the liberation fonts from RedHat? Maybe canonical/ubuntu could offer some other fonts but in lieu of that there are some nice free fonts out there. I think it's more a case of the kerning and subpixel rendering that seem to be off by default. Not a nice thing, they can end up looking more blurry than MacOS fonts
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AndrewC
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 01:47
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Red Hat's Liberation fonts look really, really nice compared to Ubuntu's default fonts and as far as I know there would be no legal problems with including them. I think it's a good idea.
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@jasonwjones:
I'd like to be able to disable anti-aliasing for certain sizes of fonts.
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Yep, this is very important, especially with CRT displays where antialiasing just makes small fonts look blurry. You can do it by editing the file:
/etc/fonts/local.conf (google it)
But I agree, a GUI option to do it would be fantastic.
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About 60% of people prefer antialiased fonts, because they look smoother. The other 40% (myself included) hate them because they look blurry, and out-of focus. Most people prefer sub-pixel rendering to be OFF, because it causes colour-fringing artifacts.
Some fonts are designed to be antialiased. These include most of the "Linux" fonts, such as the Bitstream and Liberation ones. Such fonts are not usually very well hinted, and look awful if antialiasing is off.
Other fonts are designed to be "hinted" (using the freetype bytecode itnerpreter), and should not be antialiased. These include MS Tahoma and the other corefonts.
Mixing and matching always produces a worse result than either extreme.
In my view (as a person who prefers clarity to smoothness), virtually everything should be 8pt Tahoma, (or Terminus, for monospace), with hinting enabled. Subpixel rendering should be off. Antialiasing should be off for normal fonts, but on above 15 pt.
This takes some work to get right - both KDE and Gnome control centers, also separately for Openoffice, firefox, thunderbird, gnumeric, konsole and kwrite. GTK1 applications are still weird. Could we have a global pref for this?
Richard
(email me if you'd like my help on settings)
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Can someone explain what is missing from the current GUI font config tool in Gutsy under "Appearance"? I feel like it already allows you to configure all the things you guys are asking about.
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Roderik
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 07:28
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I don't really like the unaliassed look, and i don't really like the aliassed look in ubuntu. Compared to a mac there is still something missing, but i can't put my fingers on it.
For now i settled for this config: http://www.sharpfonts.com/ with alle fotns on tahoma and the monospaced from liberation
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samnes
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 07:40
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There seems to be font rendering in linux general as mentioned in this paper:http://antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/
I hope someone capable will note these if already haven't.
And while at it installing should be at least as snappy as in KDE 4.Graphic design would also be easier if one could sort fonts easier according the license and such but I guess this is something I need to beg from author of gnome specimen.
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rduke15
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 07:45
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I completely agree with RichardNeill's comment. It is extremely hard to get sharp, not anti-aliased, not jagged, fonts.
In a default install, the only easy options I have are:
- blurry fonts with ot without (horrible) colour-fringing artifacts.
or
- jagged fonts (at least some of them)
This is the number one problem for me in Linux. I watch at the screen all day long. I need it sharp and clean.
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mrB
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 09:03
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For my LCD Ubuntu has the best default font rendering of all the distribution I've tried (20+).
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Jan-Nik
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 20:58
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I think the default font should be changed to Liberation because DejaVu's hinting is just bad.
Here's a comparison:
http://watteimdocht.de/jan-nik/liberationdejavu.png
You can see that Liberation's native hinting (the newest version of course) is just as good as fonts like Tahoma.
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Liberation has been blocked for Ubuntu inclusion because they added couple words into the GPL license clause that it has. It has been misenterpreted as limiting the GPL and incompatible by those who can not read law text. There is no problem however in front of the three freedoms so the tiny modification should be just fine.
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If it's just a misinterpretation shouldn't the inclusion be reconsidered ? I'd prefer the original liberation fonts, than with a meaningless modification just to change their name/license. It seems more straightforward that way, and it discourages similar misunderstandings.
All in all, +1 for the liberation fonts in ubuntu. Best ones I've tried.
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I also completely agree with RichardNeill's comment.
With just a note: I do not know anybody (family, at work) that likes font smoothing, but they all use corefonts which were designed for hinting (btw Vista blurs everything now and is quite the most awful font experience I've seen so far, so let's not blur everything either please).
Hinted fonts are awfull when smoothed, and maybe not hinted fonts could usable with smoothing (I don't like them personally). This implies settings can be done font by font, so defaults should fixed to get hinted fonts not smoothed and others preconfigured at once at the user choice.
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Another +1 for the Liberation fonts. I use them on my Linux boxes for the default screen fonts. The default fonts are just too fat and take up too much screen space.
It would also be nice to rid Ubuntu of the 50 or so fonts that are exactly the same...and the other 50 arabic fonts that no English-speaking person needs.
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The only problem I have is that fonts are slightly bigger from what they should be, like one point bigger. After changing the size this doesn't really bother me at all, I don't see a lot of problems with rendering either.
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6205
wrote on the 5 Mar 08 at 07:46
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sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config ??? what are you talking about ??? Ubuntu's default fonts are beautiful, better than those ugly, distorted Liberation fonts or any other ones from any other platforms...(i believe they are DejaVu Sans 10pts.)
Only thing what am i always enabling is subpixel hinting, nothing else is necesary.
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pilat
wrote on the 5 Mar 08 at 11:44
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I would suggest picking up the best hinting/aliasing properties for different fonts.
For example, I'm using msttcorefonts, and I have antialiasing OFF for Tahoma
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pilat
wrote on the 5 Mar 08 at 11:47
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sorry.. angle bracket again..
...
For example, I'm using msttcorefonts, and I have antialiasing OFF for Tahoma less than 8pt and Courier+Times less than 12pt. Also, I have now hinting enabled, but that wasn't so from the very beginning.
Now all seems good, concerning the fonts rendering, but what that was a hell, when I was complete newbie, and did not even know from what to start from (most of us even don't realize what fontconfig is).
Sure, DejaVu and Bitstream could also look really clear, if to pick good "initial" settings for them.
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janc
wrote on the 5 Mar 08 at 20:07
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The Liberation fonts are based on another font's glyphs, but approximately squeezed into the width that the equivalent glyphs in Arial/TNR use. The Arial/TNR fonts themselves were also based on another font's glyphs, but approximately squeezed into the width that the equivalent glyphs in Helvetica/Times use. I hope I don't have to explain why this is buggy & ugly?
I'd rather we use original fonts...
Bytecode hinting is a problem due to patents owned by Microsoft, so I think it can't be enabled by default. If it can be enabled selectively, it might maybe be useful to enable it for some fonts (e.g. the Microsoft Core Fonts).
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For decent looking fonts, go to www.dafont.com and look up fonts like Geo Sans Light, Typo 3, and New Cicle. All of those are great and free (GNU GPL I think)
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jsereno
wrote on the 11 May 08 at 10:08
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First thing I do with any Ubuntu install is change all the Sans fonts over to UnDotum - looks much cleaner and more professional.
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I personally like sans...maybe it's just me?
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Japanese fonts need to be improved. They sometimes look very ugly.
Others are ok for me.
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We need a consistent font display management. Today, not only GTK and QT applications do have to be configured separately, but also Firefox and Openoffice.org use different mechanisms when displaying fonts. I haven't been able yet to get identical font display in all applications I use (though I almost got it done “by hand” using ~/.fonts.conf – only Openoffice.org won't cooperate). A normal desktop user would like to have it under control in one place.
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