Ugly fonts

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by stefan1975

euhm well actually i didnt upload a screenshot yet, .

lol ! I'm bad. ... I was look at marcoslai's 1st screen shot.

Its funny, I recorded my font settings, and then played around with a whole bunch of different fonts, and in the end, by the time the dust settled, I pretty much was back where I started. ... and still happy.




I do note that the fonts in firefox can be completely different from what one experiences elsewhere on the deskstop.

[RedDwarf]

Originally Posted by oldcpu

I do note that the fonts in firefox can be completely different from what one experiences elsewhere on the deskstop.

Well, your Firefox screenshot shows that:
- Your GTK and QT background colors are really different (mine are also somehow different... a bug in qtcurve, I suppose, but not *so* different).
- The font in the interface is different from the one in the web render (compare the 'B' from "Bookmarks" with the one from "Breaking"). I didn't look in the CSS (I'm not a web dev), but I don't think the forum is forcing any specific font.

I suppose that's the "consistency" problem dcengija complains about. Have you customized it?

Originally Posted by davideoli

by putting this in the xorg.conf file (in the section "Device")

  Option   "UseEdidDpi" "false"
  Option   "DPI" "96 x 96"

I'm using Gnome with an nVidia card.

Up to where I know Gnome already forces a fixed DPI... but IMHO that's wrong. The DPI is a real value... I think even Microsoft corrected this wrong behavior with Windows Vista.
I want fonts in a size I can read them, nothing more. I don't want fonts to be bigger if I use a bigger monitor (or smaller, so I can't read them, with a higher resolution).

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by RedDwarf

Well, your Firefox screenshot shows that:
- Your GTK and QT background colors are really different (mine are also somehow different... a bug in qtcurve, I suppose, but not *so* different).
- The font in the interface is different from the one in the web render (compare the 'B' from "Bookmarks" with the one from "Breaking"). I didn't look in the CSS (I'm not a web dev), but I don't think the forum is forcing any specific font.

This was especially true in my first screen shot. After playing around with my fonts, I do not believe my second screen shot (which IS different from the 1st) has this affect to the same extent.

Originally Posted by RedDwarf

I suppose that's the "consistency" problem dcengija complains about. Have you customized it?

Often when I read threads such as these, I play around with my fonts to see if I can understand what the complaints are, ... and typically I'll end up with a similar configuration, and still happy with my fonts.

I do note I often need to pull out a magnifying glass to look at the fonts, to see the difference. Perhaps my relatively poor eyesight is one reason why I'm not so particular/fussy about fonts.

Originally Posted by RedDwarf

Up to where I know Gnome already forces a fixed DPI... but IMHO that's wrong. The DPI is a real value... I think even Microsoft corrected this wrong behavior with Windows Vista.

My screen resolution dpi was 86x86 by default. So out of curiosity, I did change from the default sax2 setup dimensions value (on my PC) from 376x301 to 337x269. That changed the reported screen resolution dpi to 96x96. Although I confess that after having done that, I don't see any difference. I'm not saying there is not a difference, ... its just that my eyesight (and perhaps my attitude toward fonts) is such that I don't notice a difference.

Originally Posted by RedDwarf

I want fonts in a size I can read them, nothing more. I don't want fonts to be bigger if I use a bigger monitor (or smaller, so I can't read them, with a higher resolution).

Indeed ! Me too, although I find the font size that I need to read, is typically much larger than many other users.

[caf4926]

I had to mess with mine on this install of 11.1 - Whereas 11.0 was perfect from the start. This is in kde4.2 beta. Kde3 is set the same and looks good.


By caf4926 at 2008-12-24

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by caf4926

I had to mess with mine on this install of 11.1 - Whereas 11.0 was perfect from the start. This is in kde4.2 beta. Kde3 is set the same and looks good.

Do you like those kde4.2 beta fonts? I confess, if I encountered those I would likely do a quick change of the desktop style, and add necessary fonts as needed to alter to a different appearance. IMHO it goes to show the subjectivity of all this.

[caf4926]

I guess it's true. Everyone to his own. And I have to say, it looks great and way better than the default gave me.
I'd have to look back through the thread to see what font settings you were quoting, but mine are Liberation sans, pretty much system wide.

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by caf4926

I guess it's true. Everyone to his own. And I have to say, it looks great and way better than the default gave me.
I'd have to look back through the thread to see what font settings you were quoting, but mine are Liberation sans, pretty much system wide.

Interesting. I closed the thread, and reopened the thread, and this time the image provided by imageshack looks better. Did you change/edit the URL in your initial post? This second time around, your fonts do not look much different from mine.

[caf4926]

I did edit the post but not the image, and very quickly too, just removed some crud from the bottom of the code giving a link back to imageshack.

[RedDwarf]

Originally Posted by RedDwarf

- Your GTK and QT background colors are really different

It seems related to https://bugzilla.novell.com/462488.

[dcengija]

Greetings to all,

I just wanted to inform you (at least those of you who are interested in this topic :-) about my findings regarding this issue.

Unfortunatelly, I find that OpenSUSE 11.1 is not ready for prime-time, at least for my needs. Fonts are just part of the problem, and the one I could live with. But to stay on-topic, this is what I did, to have semi-decent results:

* Installed MS fonts from Vista partition. WinXP will also work.
* For KDE4 simply choose e.g. Trebuchet. Turn on anti-aliasing, as described in previous posts, choose smaller fonts - depends on screen resolution.
* The same must be performed for KDE3 apps, within KDE3 control center
* For OpenOffice, choose Tools>Options>View and change scaling, to e.g. 85%

I couldn't manage to make gtk apps look nice as KDE3/4 ones, though. Tried with gnome-control-center (trick from 10.3) but had some problems.

Regarding default fonts, and if they look nice or not, take a look at the recent Mandriva release.

Anyway, with a bunch of pretty annoying problems (nvidia, bluetooth...) I guess I'll wait with 11.1 at least a month or so and give it a try then.

Thank you all for your kind comments, this is why I like openSUSE at the first place.

Cheers,
Davor