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Author Topic: [EN] desktop appearance, hinting fonts etc.  (Read 10248 times)

farinet

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[EN] desktop appearance, hinting fonts etc.
« on: 2013/07/25, 16:34:41 »
I installed a firestarter razorqt to an old HP Pavilion and with this setup this machine got a second life: it's amazingly fast! (For what i can compare seems even faster than a crunchbang waldorf setup on the same machine. In any case, very very snappy).

Now, i tweaked this setup, substituting the combo openbox/razor-qt by fluxbox. So far, i'm fine with the setup, some tuning and tweaking still needed here and there.

But, i've one big question: Font rendering (hinting) is really poor. So, first i "ixquicked" for fontconfig and found this nice page (which is very technical and far beyond my linux knowledge ;) ).

I followed the example there (for local.conf) and indeed it's an enormous improvement for the font rendering. With one small disadvantage: Now the cursor block in the terminal window behaves somewhat strange (it's far away from the last letter typed in; i've no idea how to correct that).

Then, i discovered that the small utility lxappearance with the obconf plugin does a great job for fluxbox to. I do not really understand why and how, since it is made for the combo lxde/openbox, but anyway . . . :D (is that intentional or caused by a somehow mistaken setup?).

There, thanks to the obconf plugin, you can set the font hinting too. But i realize that in any case the settings in /etc/fontoconfig/local.conf have the precedence. And the example from the arch wiki page seems to set the hinting to full (from my lubuntu times, i remember the advised setting was light instead). Someone more knowledged than me would know how to change set in the local.conf file.

Actually, as a window theme i use waldorf (a slightly corrected theme regard gtk3, but i think that's uninfluent for a qt setup, isn't it?), and nouveKDEGray as icon theme. That's a nice & etshetical setup; only the mouseover contrast is a bit weak. How could that be changed?

Thanks in advance for any pointer!

swftech

  • Guest
RE: desktop appearance, hinting fonts etc.
« Reply #1 on: 2013/07/25, 19:00:02 »
I am also picky about fonts and in all my Debian distros I just add this .fonts.conf file in my user directory...
http://pastebin.com/6dfLRjqF

Log out and back in and you will notice a drastic improvement.

timc

  • Guest
RE: desktop appearance, hinting fonts etc.
« Reply #2 on: 2013/07/25, 19:20:31 »
Yes, awesome! Thanks, swftech

Tim

swftech

  • Guest
RE: desktop appearance, hinting fonts etc.
« Reply #3 on: 2013/07/25, 21:08:39 »
Your welcome Tim, makes a huge difference very easily :)

farinet

  • Guest
Re: RE: desktop appearance, hinting fonts etc.
« Reply #4 on: 2013/07/25, 22:20:01 »
Quote from: "swftech"
I am also picky about fonts and in all my Debian distros I just add this .fonts.conf file in my user directory...
http://pastebin.com/6dfLRjqF

Log out and back in and you will notice a drastic improvement.


As far as i see, the only difference to the settings i put in /etc/fonts/local.conf is you set autohint in your file to false. This statement isn't there in mine (which did an excellent positive effect as well)

What's the effect of autohint?

TIA!

PS. In my file in the edit line there is mode first and name second, in yours it's the other way around, but i think that doesn't have any effect, it's pretty much the same (?)

swftech

  • Guest
RE: Re: RE: desktop appearance, hinting fonts etc.
« Reply #5 on: 2013/07/26, 00:19:05 »
I think your right, no matter the order of mode and name it will do the same. As far as autohinting, some prefer it and some don't, I have always had better results with autohinting enabled. Here is a little more info about it and what it's for farinet...
https://makandracards.com/makandra/2605-improve-web-font-rendering-in-windows-by-autohinting-fonts

They say in the article that it works for Windows but not much effect for Linux, but in my experience it makes a good bit of difference. Can't explain why, it just does :)

farinet

  • Guest
RE: Re: RE: desktop appearance, hinting fonts etc.
« Reply #6 on: 2013/07/26, 07:02:52 »
Thanks for the link, that's interesting.

I hope i'm not annoying: In your fontconfig file autohinting is set to false while you say in the previous post you're getting better results with autohinting enabled.

Now, probably autohinting in this two cases refers to different things. Your statement would be logical if (in the font config file) autohinting refers to the capability of the font itself to hint. So disabling that would contribute to let make the job the system itself (and would result in better rendering, following what the article says). Am i thinking correctly?

I'd like to understand, at least the big outlines . . . :D

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge!

swftech

  • Guest
RE: Re: RE: desktop appearance, hinting fonts etc.
« Reply #7 on: 2013/07/26, 18:56:20 »
My fault farinet, I confused you because I got my hinting and autohint mixed up. I do have autohint disabled (set to false).

Offline spacepenguin

  • User
  • Posts: 862
    • spacepenguin.de
Re: RE: desktop appearance, hinting fonts etc.
« Reply #8 on: 2013/07/28, 22:26:22 »
Quote from: "swftech"
I am also picky about fonts and in all my Debian distros I just add this .fonts.conf file in my user directory...
http://pastebin.com/6dfLRjqF

Log out and back in and you will notice a drastic improvement.


I gave it a try - but the fonts got blurry and too thick after that (especially in icedove, a pain to look at, I had the feeling my glasses are not sufficient anymore). I deleted the file and now my fonts are nice and crisp again, just with the font settings in systemsettings (anti-aliasing activated, hinting RGB medium, font DejaVu Sans).
Susan | Hardware: SysProfile
Music-Profile: http://www.last.fm/de/user/spacepengu

farinet

  • Guest
RE: Re: RE: desktop appearance, hinting fonts etc.
« Reply #9 on: 2013/07/29, 08:30:08 »
By chance, i realized that setting autohint=false makes appear either in qtconfig > Settings > fonts or in lxappearance several font families (Liberation and Ubuntu among others) always in italic. Deleting that statement from /etc/fonts/local.conf turned all normal.