Gutsy Kubuntu font problems

[Anand Buddhdev]

On Friday 19 October 2007 15:07:41 Felix Miata wrote:

Hi Felix,

> On 2007/10/19 12:33 (GMT+0200) Anand Buddhdev apparently typed:
> > I'd been happily using Kubuntu Feisty Fawn (7.04) until yesterday, and
> > then I upgraded :( Here's the problem.
> >
> > I have an Nvidia card, and an Acer 19" flat screen running at 1280x1024.
>
> This combination's actual DPI is 86.3.

That's correct.

> It used to be that the X server DPI was used by everything, which would
> fall back to 75 DPI if none of the auto-determining mechanisms worked. Then

[snip]

Wow. That was a rather eye-opener. I had no idea there was so much disparity 
in the font and DPI areas.

> > I therefore attempted to fix
> > the DPI by applying the following settings in xorg.conf
> >
> > in the driver section:
> >
> > Option "UseEdidDpi" "False"
>
> IIUC, UseEdidDpi doesn't work if using the generic nv driver. For the
> generic driver it's possible	'Option	"NoDDC"'	will do what you need.
>
> > Option "DPI" "96 x 96"
>
> I wasn't aware this existed. Where did you find it?

This works with the binary Nvidia driver, which is what I'm using.

> > I restarted X, and xdpyinfo shows that my DPI is now 96x96. However, the
> > font situation did not change.
>
> The DPI reported by xdpyinfo is no longer a reliable way to determine the
> DPI used by everything in your DTE. 'xrdb -query | grep dpi' will tell if
> Xft.dpi is set, and most modern apps will prefer its setting to the generic
> X setting. You can customize Firefox by going into about:config and
> changing layout.display.dpi from -1 to 0 and then visit
> http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/dpi-screen-window.html to see what most apps
> find the working DPI to be. Without first changing layout.display.dpi to 0
> on your 86 DPI display Firefox will almost certainly report 96.

This is also another eye-opener. Almost all the searches I did via Google on 
on mailing lists and forums talk about using xdpyinfo to determine what the 
DPI setting is. I didn't know that it could be different from that reported 
by xrdb.

You know, it may be very helpful if you wrote up all this into an FAQ that can 
be published on the Ubuntu website in a prominent place. I am sure that like 
myself, many people are tearing out their hair over font issues.

> You probably have four choices here:
>
> 1-Stick with Feisty until Hardy is released
> 2-Try using Liberation Sans instead of DejaVu Sans
> 3-Try different anti-alias configurations. They often affect size somewhat.
> 4-Dig into the bowels of Gutsy to ensure everywhere that can control DPI is
> set to the same setting, either 96 if that's what you prefer, or any other
> DPI that manages to get the results you're after

Your suggestions are very useful starting points. I did try a few different 
things, such as anti-alias settings, and different fonts, without any 
success. I did not try the more complex suggestions of digging into the 
bowels of Gutsy, as you so amusingly describe it. It's not that I can't, but 
rather, at the moment, I don't have time. I have many things to do with my 
desktop, and I'd like it to just work, so for the time being, I have taken 
the step of returning to an up to date Feisty desktop that I know works. I 
will wait until 8.04 to see how it behaves. Perhaps the transition issues 
will have been sorted out by then.

Many thanks again for your very useful response.

Anand