Horrid fonts in Feisty

[Robert Spanjaard]

On Wed, 02 May 2007 18:23:46 +0300, Marius Gedminas wrote:

>> > Err, the really, *really* big difference is that I'm using good, well 
>> > hinted fonts, Arial, Verdana, or Tohama (sp?).  Any of which outdo the 
>> > freely available Linux fonts out of the water.
>> 
>> Any chance for a screenshot? I've always thought that the default fonts
>> on my Ubuntu desktop look great. Ive been suprised to hear that some
>> people might prefer the way fonts are rendered in Windows.
> 
> Verdana with subpixel rendering on my Ubuntu box looked better than
> whatever-the-font-was-used on Windows on the same box.  That was years
> ago, when I last booted into Windows.  I admit it took a while paying
> with gnome-font-settings and dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig to get things
> just right.
> 
> Here's a screenshot:
> http://mg.pov.lt/xcompmgr-shadows.png
> 
> vim and xterm use 10pt Andale Mono.  The menu bar on top uses 10pt
> Verdana.


There was only one thing that took me a while: realising that the fonts
looked much better _without_ hinting (IMO, ofcourse). Especially bold
fonts, which tend to get thicker in vertical lines only with hinting.
Without hinting, horizontal lines (and curves) get bold as well.
You do need a high-DPI screen to do this (both are about 128 DPI),
otherwise it might seem a bit blurry.

notebook, LCD, 7.04: http://www.arumes.com/temp/ia-f_and_e.png
desktop, CRT, 6.06: http://www.arumes.com/temp/desktop.jpg
desktop with full hinting: http://www.arumes.com/temp/desktoph.jpg

The notebook uses standard available fonts (FreeMono/Serif/Sans).
On the desktop, I'm using Sans and Lucida Console in GNOME, and Verdana
(not visible in this shot) in Pan. Verdana because it renders more
readable at this particular size, and Lucida Console because I don't like
the dot in the zero in Bitstream Vera and other sans-serif mono fonts.

-- 
Regards, Robert                                      http://www.arumes.com