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Paul.G
Titel:   BeitragVerfasst am: 14.06.2006, 23:51 Uhr



Anmeldung: 12. Jun 2006
Beiträge: 16

drb,

Thanks for the instructions, I will definitely try them as soon as I've used hubi's a bit. I'm very impressed with the dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config and how it improves all fonts. If fonts can be thicker, even and sharp all at once, that is excellent.

Best,
Paul
 
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JimC
Titel: Re: Fonts appearance.  BeitragVerfasst am: 04.07.2006, 19:02 Uhr



Anmeldung: 16. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 219

Paul.G hat folgendes geschrieben::
One major distro that enables the BCI by default is Suse:
http://en.opensuse.org/Optimal_Use_of_M ... op_on_SuSE
- the font rendering is excellent but Suse is too bloated, slow and takes too long to install.


OK -- that explains why Suse looks so polished.

But, I never did get all of the media stuff working correctly in browsers with it, even trying to follow "Hacking Open Suse" articles (I'm relatively Linux illiterate).

Rendering of fonts is probably the biggest reason I haven't switched to Linux yet.

I've spent a lot of time playing with font solutions in the past. But, I never did get fonts to look as nice as they render under Windows with any Linux distro (with Suse coming the closest so far). So, the longest I've ever used a Linux distro was about 3 days (that was one of the Kanotix 2004 release candidates), before I just couldn't stand looking at the screens in Firefox anymore.

My graphics card could have something to do with it, too.

You guys can ignore my comments, as I'm basically "bookmarking" this thread for the next time I install Kanotix to give these solutions a try. lol

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Jim C.
 
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Paul.G
Titel: News and Summary...  BeitragVerfasst am: 26.07.2006, 23:48 Uhr



Anmeldung: 12. Jun 2006
Beiträge: 16

Interesting news on the font front....

According to this changelog:

http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/p ... /changelog
Debian is from now on turning the BCI on as standard.

I discovered Debian in the past have had the BCI enabled in non-US repositories. I'm pretty sure therefore Kanotix actually does have the BCI enabled but the 'dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config' activates it. I have tried updating Kanotix to the latest BCI-activated 2.2.1.2 Freetype and there is no difference I can tell.

There is a bug (which can be fixed with font/gtk package updates), with the GTK2 environment (including firefox) that some text does not appear if anti-aliasing is off. KDE applications work perfectly, though.

SUMMARY FOR BEGINNERS:

As mentioned before I now have very good fonts. Here's a step by step of how I did it after a clean hard disk install of Kanotix RC4:

Log in as root.

Open Konsole and type 'knxcc'. Choose your resolution, probably 1024x768 for a CRT. Choose dpi and set to 96.

Install 'gtk2-engines-gtk-qt' using Start>System>Adept. This puts an entry on Control Center>Appearance&Themes> to make GTK environment fonts the same as KDE. Choose and set this option.

Go to Control Center>System Administration>Font installer. Choose 'Add Fonts' and point to your C:\Windows\Fonts folder (on a CD, USB flash drive, hard drive or via network to a windows computer.) That way you can get the Tahoma font which is not part of the 'msttcorefonts' package from Start/KDE Menu>System>Adept. You want at least Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana, Tahoma.

Run fix-fonts from Start>Kanotix>Utilities. Restart.

Open Konsole and type: dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config . Answer: native - automatic - no - to the three prompts.

Go to Start>Control Center>Appearance&Themes>Fonts choose Tahoma (or Verdana) 8 or 9 for everything except 'fixed width'. Leave 'Use anti-aliasing..' ticked but choose 'Configure' and set 'Exclude range from 7.0 to 11.0. Untick 'Use sub-pixel hinting'.

There are font preference settings in Firefox (Edit>Pref>Content>fonts>Advanced). I use Arial size 12 as default for 'Sans Serif' and Times New Roman for 'serif'. Allow pages to choose their own fonts is ticked.

As far as I know, OpenOffice is in a font rendering world of its own - if you leave anti-aliasing on with Tahoma for the app and use Arial for documents it is bearable. Go to Tools>Options> 'View' and also 'Fonts'


There is a distro based on Kanotix called Dream Linux that does all the above things for you. Also it's XFCE themes/decorations like 'Piranha' and 'Today' and others are just great. I fixed the GTK font problem (with AA off) here also by using Synaptic to upgrade various font and GTK related packages, it now works well with AA off and just hinting on.
 
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hubi
Titel: Re: News and Summary...  BeitragVerfasst am: 27.07.2006, 00:45 Uhr



Anmeldung: 22. Jan 2006
Beiträge: 1296
Wohnort: Budapest
Paul.G hat folgendes geschrieben::

Open Konsole and type: dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config . Answer: native - automatic - no - to the three prompts.

Leave 'Use anti-aliasing..' ticked but choose 'Configure' and set 'Exclude range from 7.0 to 11.0. Untick 'Use sub-pixel hinting'.


In new days you can even do: native - automatic - yes, and the TTFs stay pretty, and fonts like Helvetica are useable as well. That's really a progress.

I exclude anti-aliasing from 1.0 to 17.0, looks great on all three boxes.

About BCI: I also did not realise any change, although: on the HP fonts are crispyer, and I do not think, it's a placebo. The other two boxes have great screens, so they are perfect anyway.

Open-Office is in a terrible mess with freetype 2.2. Only anti-aliased it's readable.

Thanks about the anti-aliasing tip for gtk-apps. I'll try that one out, on my Sony I experience those missing letters.

Greetings
hubi

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Paul.G
Titel: GTK font bug  BeitragVerfasst am: 27.07.2006, 09:23 Uhr



Anmeldung: 12. Jun 2006
Beiträge: 16

Hubi,

Yes, the anti-alias exclude 'to' size is not at all fixed in stone, anything from 11-17 then.

Thanks for the tip on the 'yes' response to the third option on the '...fontconfig..' procedure.

Also, I'm not sure what I did to fix the missing text font rendering bug in Firefox etc. In the XFCE desktop of Kanotix-based DreamLinux it was even worse with font smearing and completely unreadable without anti-aliasing, until I did the updates.

I went to Synaptic (and Adept on Kanotix) and as far as I recall I chose 'reinstall' for libfreetype (Freetype). I think I upgraded something called 'defoma' and also looked for GTK... and updated any likely font related candidates. Basically, I searched for 'font' and/or 'render' and sorted by the column that indicates already installed and then updated or reinstalled.

If you find the specific update that fixes it please let us know. Or, if I find time I might do a clean install again and do the updates one by one until I find out exactly. Hopefully future Kanotix releases will be up to date and make this unnecessary.

By the way, for anyone who wants to experiment, Mac truetype fonts are available here: http://www.osx-e.com/downloads/misc/macfonts.html

The proprietorial mega-corps have ill gotten billions to spend and making things pretty for mass marketing is a priority. I don't see why some Linux designers can't come up with a font hinting or font rendering method that blows these all away though..... I see this as the last technological nut to crack before Linux can make it big time.
 
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Swynndla
Titel: RE: GTK font bug  BeitragVerfasst am: 13.08.2006, 00:07 Uhr



Anmeldung: 05. Dez 2005
Beiträge: 414
Wohnort: Auckland, New Zealand
It just goes to show, different settings suit different setups ... for me it all looks very blocky (after a dist-upgrade) until I unticked "'Exclude range" !

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h2
Titel: RE: GTK font bug  BeitragVerfasst am: 13.08.2006, 18:49 Uhr



Anmeldung: 12. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 1005

Zitat:
Install 'gtk2-engines-gtk-qt'


I would strongly advise anyone reading this thread NOT to follow this advice, I had massive problems with that program, and would never use it again, it totally destabilized my system's gtk apps, especially firefox, and would make kde fail in odd and extremely annoying ways.

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New: rdiff-backup script
 
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markb
Titel: Re: RE: GTK font bug  BeitragVerfasst am: 14.08.2006, 00:02 Uhr



Anmeldung: 09. Aug 2004
Beiträge: 121
Wohnort: Brisbane Australia
h2 hat folgendes geschrieben::
Zitat:
Install 'gtk2-engines-gtk-qt'


I would strongly advise anyone reading this thread NOT to follow this advice, I had massive problems with that program, and would never use it again, it totally destabilized my system's gtk apps, especially firefox, and would make kde fail in odd and extremely annoying ways.

That's odd h2? I've always installed gtk2-engines-gtk-qt and it has worked great for me (over many versions of Kanotix and updating constantly). GTK apps look much better using gtk2-engines-gtk-qt than they do natively. I would recommend that the default settings be used however: "Use KDE fonts" and "Use another style: Industrial" as I have seen odd rendering without these settings. Never seen any effect on KDE itself however and certainly never seen any stability issues.
 
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h2
Titel: RE: Re: RE: GTK font bug  BeitragVerfasst am: 14.08.2006, 00:31 Uhr



Anmeldung: 12. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 1005

I'm not the only person to have noticed this issue, it only manifests with certain user actions, and it may have finally gotten fixed, but the disruption it caused me was not trivial, it was not easy to figure out, and it cost me several weeks of debugging time and headaches, only to find out in the end that most of the kanotix team at that point did not recommend using that program because of the various known, and unfixed, bugs it has.

Each to his own, I'm never using it again, I don't care if my window bars look identical to each other, it has no functional benefit to me, and that library caused me such immense headaches that had I not figured it out, I probably would have gone back to windows, to be honest.

The issues it causes make kde fail completely, x restart is the only solution. I was able to reproduce the issues on 3 machines, at will, so it wasn't a fluke. I do not use bad software if I don't need to, or if I can avoid it.

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titan
Titel: Re: RE: GTK font bug  BeitragVerfasst am: 14.08.2006, 08:44 Uhr



Anmeldung: 07. Mai 2005
Beiträge: 526
Wohnort: Waliser Märze
markb hat folgendes geschrieben::

GTK apps look much better using gtk2-engines-gtk-qt than they do natively. I would recommend that the default settings be used however: "Use KDE fonts" .


I have used the gtk2 engine without problems for some time but removed it when I have had a problem to see if it is the cause and have discovered that gtk applications retain the qt font even with the gtk2-qt engine removed. So now on a new installation I install the Gtk2-qt engine use my kde default font (ms sans comic) then purge remove gtk2-qt engine and I still have my chosen font in Firefox, synaptic etc

Ian
 
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piper
Titel: RE: Re: RE: GTK font bug  BeitragVerfasst am: 14.08.2006, 19:19 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 03. Mai 2005
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I too will not use "gtk2-engines-gtk-qt" it actually makes my fonts worse looking.

I only use freesans or tahoma both in bold and really never had a problem.

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jesseman
Titel: RE: Re: RE: GTK font bug  BeitragVerfasst am: 15.08.2006, 10:34 Uhr



Anmeldung: 01. Feb 2006
Beiträge: 37
Wohnort: Summerville, SC
Thanks PaulG for the step by step! It worked perfectly for me!
 
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Paul.G
Titel: 'gtk2-engines-gtk-qt' problem  BeitragVerfasst am: 15.08.2006, 23:02 Uhr



Anmeldung: 12. Jun 2006
Beiträge: 16

The instructions are based on a clean install of Kanotix Easter RC4. In my tests I have followed the process several times without problem including the 'gtk2-engines-gtk-qt' install.

Maybe the difference is the use of the latest Kanotix RC4? Or as updates and bug fixes are constantly being released, maybe a recent gtk package update solved the problem?

As far as I know, that package actually just creates a text file somewhere with font settings. I found I had to go into the Control Center entry, make a change and apply it before any effect was noticed. Once that is done, even if the package is removed it probably will leave the text file with the new settings.
 
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