[Bug 220568] Re: firefox font changed to narrower, less readable font

[Michael Blakeley]

This problem is still in intrepid, and seems tricky to resolve
(http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=299697 is somewhat
relevant).

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-804242.html also suggests an
interesting approach, using FONTCONFIG_FILE and a firefox-specific font
configuration. I gave up before getting it to work, but this seems like
a somewhat elegant way to reconcile the demands of different
applications. Perhaps the firefox packagers could look into something
like this?

Even if you don't personally care about matching Helvetica's metrics,
customizing this behavior via $HOME/.fonts.conf is difficult because 30
-metric-aliases.conf is loaded before $HOME/.fonts.conf. That seems
broken to me, but here's a hack to work around that issue
("assign_replace") that works well enough for me. If there's a better
way, I'd love to know about it.

Paste this XML into a new $HOME/.fonts.conf, or integrate it with your
existing one. I chose to use msttcorefonts - you can choose fonts from
DejaVu etc if you prefer.

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
 <!-- http://forums.bsdnexus.com/viewtopic.php?pid=12222 -->
 <!-- assign_replace overrides /etc/fonts/conf.d/30-metric-aliases.conf -->
 <match target="pattern">
   <test name="family">
     <string>Helvetica</string>
   </test>
   <edit name="family" mode="assign_replace">
     <string>Arial</string>
   </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="pattern">
   <test qual="any" name="family">
     <string>Times</string>
   </test>
   <edit name="family" mode="assign_replace">
     <string>Times New Roman</string>
   </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="pattern">
   <test qual="any" name="family">
     <string>Courier</string>
   </test>
   <edit name="family" mode="assign_replace">
     <string>Courier New</string>
   </edit>
 </match>
</fontconfig>

-- 
firefox font changed to narrower, less readable font
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/220568
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