a lot of websites are built with the font specified as “Helvetica/Arial”
When Opensuse/Firefox come across a page with this specification it loads “Nimbus Sans L”
Now, I think this is a pretty ugly font - at least on my system.
I have both Helvetica and Arial installed.
Without removing the option to allow web-pages to specify the fonts in firefox - what I want to know is if there is a system wide setting that can be change so whenever “Helvetica/Arial” is specified (either Firefox or Thunderbird) it loads one of those fonts rather than “Nimbus Sans L”?
Globally font can be changed, but not sure the way you want it…like for some specific application.
You can change the system fonts to Arial etc, which is in desktop configuration.
So why not change the Firefox/thunderbird fonts?
farcusnz wrote:
> I have both Helvetica and Arial installed.
> I want to know is if there is a system wide setting that
> can be change so whenever “Helvetica/Arial” is specified (either Firefox
> or Thunderbird) it loads one of those fonts rather than “Nimbus Sans L”?
i think since you have Helvetica and Arial loaded the question is: Why
can’t firefox/thunderbird just load them when specified? (that is, you
shouldn’t have to do something system wide to make it happen, it
should be automatic…i think)
that is a question i can’t answer, but can confirm that something is
going wrong in firefox…see here:
however, xlsfonts (in a terminal) show LOTS of various Helvetica fonts
are available to the system…oh no, i just checked and OpenOffice.org doesn’t offer any Helvetica either…
and i have NO idea why xlsfonts apparently ‘thinks’ Helvetica are
loaded but firefox and OO.o (and probably others) can’t find/use them…
I think you have misundersstood what I am asking.
I don’t want to specify the font in firefox. I want to let the webpage specify the font.
Because most linux distros don’t ship with Helvetica or Arial (although Opensuse does now ship with Arial) they map a web page that specifies “Helvetica/Arial” to instead use the linux font “Numbus Sans L”
As explained. I have both Helvetica and Arial installed so I want my desktop to load either one of those fonts instead of Nimbus Sans L.
I cannot achieve this by either specifying a font in firefox (as then every web page will use exactly the same font) or through the KDE4 font configuration utility.
I believe, but could be mistaken - it is something to do with Arial and Helvetica being TTF fonts rather than X11 fonts. I had previously read somewhere that something needed to be changed in X11 for apps like firefox to load TTF fonts on the fly over the preferred x11 font.
I should clarify here - that if a web page specifies “Arial” then I have no problems.
It is only when Helvetica is brought into the equation - as many web page creation tools - and also apps like thunderbird - let you specify a dual font with the option “Helvetica / Arial”
Only when this option has been used to create do I have my problem.
I am almost sure that this will not help you, but at least I have the same idea as palladium has: FF does not know much about the system wide installed fonts.
I have fonts installed (that provide non Latin characters) that show up correctly in Konqueror, but FF shows open squares (for character not found in any of the available fonts). And vv. FF shows characters I have in none of my installed fonts. Also I have web pages where both have a font containing the needed characters, but they use a different ones and FF uses one with errors (that is why I found out).
To me it seems that system fonts and FF fonts are two different things and that would fit into your observation.
hcvv wrote:
> To me it seems that system fonts and FF fonts are two different things
amazing…could it be that ff has its own fonts…or…or what?
but, wait: i just looked at http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/font/fontlist.htm in firefox,
konqueror, opera and IE4Linux and none of them showed any
Helvetica…though this command:
xlsfonts | grep -i helvet*
returns more line than i want to count…
is it possible my helvetica fonts are not installed “correctly”?
On Sat, 05 Dec 2009 08:16:01 +0000, farcusnz wrote:
> a lot of websites are built with the font specified as “Helvetica/Arial”
>
> When Opensuse/Firefox come across a page with this specification it
> loads “Nimbus Sans L”
>
> Now, I think this is a pretty ugly font - at least on my system. I have
> both Helvetica and Arial installed. Without removing the option to allow
> web-pages to specify the fonts in firefox - what I want to know is if
> there is a system wide setting that can be change so whenever
> “Helvetica/Arial” is specified (either Firefox or Thunderbird) it loads
> one of those fonts rather than “Nimbus Sans L”?
But I dunno how to disable/remove that alias or just make an alias for
these fonts to get mapped into the true Arial or Helvetica fonts and not
to Nimbus Sans L :-?
I have the same as you palladium, but all the helvetica are not in the first positions of those lines. Do not know what that means.
Also when I use my KDE desktoop configuration tool (still KDE 3.5) and then System Management and then Font installation and then switch to root there, I see the same list as the website fontlist (did not read all of them ).
OTOH That website seems to use a flash application. I do not know what that appication does. It says it shows the fonts installed on the system. That would mean it shows in both Konqui and FF and in the KDE list the same data. But it does NOT say that it shows the fonts used by FF from somewhere inernaly FF.
BTW
xlsfonts | grep -i helvet*
is not what you want. The * let the shell try to expand it with conforming filenames in whatever directory you are. Do when you would have by accident the files helvettergram and helvetia-capital in the durtectory the shell would try to execute
xlsfonts | grep -i helvettergram helvetia-capital
which is OK, but then grep thinks that *helvettergram *is the string to use for the grep and *helvetia-capital *is the file to search in (ignoring the piped stdin). This will not give what you want I think.
xlsfonts | grep -i 'helvet*'
will let the shell keep off his fingers and you will get what you want. But the * is still not very usefull as grep does already check for the string *helvet anywhere in the lines. a grep string of helvet does NOT mean that the lines must START with helvet and then may have more characters to be chosen.
hcvv wrote:
> I have the same as you palladium, but all the helvetica are not in the
> first positions of those lines. Do not know what that means.
you know, that could be what is going on…because…wait, no because
none of my (for example) arial begins with arial in the first postion,
yet the fontlist shows them…
> Also when I use my KDE desktoop configuration tool (still KDE 3.5) and
> then System Management and then Font installation and then switch to
> root there, I see the same list as the website fontlist (did not read
> all of them ).
me too </aol> (also on KDE3.5) but did check them all…the lists are
the same here…
> OTOH That website seems to use a flash application. I do not know what
> that appication does. It says it shows the fonts installed on the
> system. That would mean it shows in both Konqui and FF and in the KDE
> list the same data. But it does NOT say that it shows the fonts used by
> FF from somewhere inernaly FF.
you know, i never ever got the idea that FF had it own fonts…it
seems it is just not seeing all the font…hmmmm, but then neither is
KDE’s config tool…why?
maybe like ‘farcusnz’ asks, there is a system wide setting that needs
to be changed to allow them to be seen and used by FF, KDE, OO.o etc
etc etc… hmmmm, i just remembered: i installed the MS fonts with
YaST, so they should be findable and usable…huh?
> BTW Code:
> xlsfonts | grep -i helvet*
> is not what you want.
thanks for that…i think i knew it at one time, but forgot…(and
probably will again, sigh)
This page pertains to an openSUSE user, Felix Miata (you can find him
mainly in the opensuse mailing lists). He is an expert for anything
regarding X server and font configuration.
>> But I dunno how to disable/remove that alias
>
> what we need is a font guru!
found a workaround that at least suits what I am after.
Can get Firefox to load helvetica by installing a postscript version of the font. All works as it should if installing this version - ttf fonts don’t work.
But th best option I found was to just delete Nimbus Sans L. Doing this forces Firefox to load Arial - an altogether nicer font.
On Sun, 06 Dec 2009 02:56:01 +0000, farcusnz wrote:
> found a workaround that at least suits what I am after.
>
> Can get Firefox to load helvetica by installing a postscript version of
> the font. All works as it should if installing this version - ttf fonts
> don’t work.
>
> But th best option I found was to just delete Nimbus Sans L. Doing this
> forces Firefox to load Arial - an altogether nicer font.
I just have tried to move away the Nimbus Sans L from “/usr/share/
ghostscript/fonts” (all the files starting with “n” have been moved to
another directory) but now it keeps rendering Helvetica (which is also
badly rendered in my system).
By removing Helvetica, in addition to Nimbus Sans L, which is under “/usr/
share/fonts/75dpi” it renders another font which is not Arial either, but
at least is far best that the original one.
On Sun, 06 Dec 2009 12:27:05 +0000, Camaleón wrote:
> On Sun, 06 Dec 2009 02:56:01 +0000, farcusnz wrote:
>
>> found a workaround that at least suits what I am after.
>>
>> Can get Firefox to load helvetica by installing a postscript version of
>> the font. All works as it should if installing this version - ttf fonts
>> don’t work.
>>
>> But th best option I found was to just delete Nimbus Sans L. Doing this
>> forces Firefox to load Arial - an altogether nicer font.
>
> I just have tried to move away the Nimbus Sans L from “/usr/share/
> ghostscript/fonts” (all the files starting with “n” have been moved to
> another directory) but now it keeps rendering Helvetica (which is also
> badly rendered in my system).
>
> By removing Helvetica, in addition to Nimbus Sans L, which is under
> “/usr/ share/fonts/75dpi” it renders another font which is not Arial
> either, but at least is far best that the original one.
>
> Thanks for your findings, it helped a lot!
I found (by means of Ubuntu bugzilla [1]) another by-pass -that works
very well- to get rid of this ugly font family.
Just create a file “~/.fonts.conf” with this content:
>
>noelamac;2086079 Wrote:
>>
>> I found (by means of Ubuntu bugzilla [1]) another by-pass -that works
>> very well- to get rid of this ugly font family.
>>
>> Just create a file “~/.fonts.conf” with this content:
>>
>> <?xml version=“1.0”?>
>> <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM “fonts.dtd”>
>> <fontconfig>
>> <alias binding=“same”>
>> <family>Helvetica</family>
>> <prefer><family>Arial</family></prefer>
>> </alias>
>> </fontconfig>
>>
>> And restart X server.
>>
>> That’s all. Now Helvetica font family aliases into Arial.
>>
>> [1]
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/+source/fontconfig/+bug/41411
>>
>> Greetings,
>>
>> –
>> Camaleón
>
>Nice one.
>Thanks for that. This is quite handy as I assume it would work for any
>font substitution.
On a font by font basis probably, personally i would like to eliminate
most sans serif fonts. I would also like to block low readability fonts
this way.
).