Improve font rendering

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1

Hello,

Do you do anything additional to improve font rendering apart from the yast setting and enable edge smoothing in kde preferences?

Thank you.

2

You might try this https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/520645-What-is-currently-the-best-correct-way-to-get-subpixel-rendering-on-openSUSE-Tumbleweed
That thread is about Tumbleweed, but the packages by gldickens3 are available for Leap 42.2 too.

3

Hello jonatanpm,

Give this a try:

FYI,

Gordon

4

Hello,

As soon as I can test the repo of gldickens3, if I want to reverse the changes, how do I?

Thank you.

5

Before doing your changes, copy /etc/fonts/local.conf e.g to /etc/fonts/local.conf_backup; then add the required changes to /etc/fonts/local.conf as per the instructions on gdickens3’s site and switch the relevant packages to those in the site.

To revert the changes, install back the relevant packages from the main Leap 42.2 OSS repo and copy /etc/fonts/local.conf_backup back to /etc/fonts/local.conf.
You should logout/login after changing the font configuration.

6

This is BY FAR the best solution for fonts on openSUSE since I started using it (2011). The defaults with slight hinting do the trick mostly, but the ‘lcddefault’ settings couldn’t be set in YaST, this repo does the trick. Notice to everyone: perform the .fonts.conf check that is stated in the repo instructions, as gldickens3 provided, or the fonts won’t look nice.

Way to go gldickens3, hope you maintain it for releases to come. Best wishes and many thanks for fixing this problem for me.

7

Hello holden87,

Thanks for the comments on the repo!

Enjoy!

Gordon

8

Nice work!

9

Thanks! Glad that you like the repo!

Gordon

10

I don’t normally bother doing too much with font rendering on my laptop, but I can see a tangible improvement having followed the advice provided.

11

Hi Gordon,

I tried to install the two packages from your repo and changing the config, but after logout and login again I just get a black screen with an error message saying sth. like:
“Could not start kdeinit5. Please check with your system administrator.”

I then did a rollback and tried again, but no luck, same result.
That is strange, because the other day I think it worked, but now that I did a fresh install of TW, i can’t get it to work anymore.

Do you have any idea why this happens / what to do about it?

Thx for your help,
Robert

12

Hello Buddelpudding,

Sorry that you are having these problems, however, I don’t think that it has anything to do with my font repo. I have never seen or heard of anything like what you are reporting at least as it relates to the repo. That being said, I would never rule out anything so I just don’t know. I wish that I could offer a solution but I don’t have any idea what has gone wrong on your installation.

Gordon

13

FWIW, here’s a couple of similar threads where incompatible font packages seem to have caused issues like you describe…

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=221729
https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=289&t=138332

Do you have a working internet connection? You could try disabling the repo, and then running ‘zypper dup’ via a VT or perhaps login with IceWM desktop session instead and do it from there.

14

Hello deano_ferrari,

Thanks for your post which does sound possible as being the cause be the problem. Buddelpudding, please revert to the stock OpenSUSE fontconfig and freetype2 packages as deano_ferrari described to see if that fixes your problem.

However, keep in mind that my font repo is compiled specifically for OpenSUSE Leap 42.1, Leap 42.2 and Tumbleweed using the OpenSUSE build service and which should resolve any dependency or compatibility problems therein. However, anything is possible…

Thanks again,

Gordon

15

Hello guys, thank you for your replies.

My system is currently working fine, because I made a rollback with snapper after it broke.
I then tried again, but after installing the two relevant packages, adjustig the config-file and rebooting, I got the same error.

Then I manually switched back two the packages from the official repos, which cured the error.

So I am sure that there is at least some relation between this repo and the bug.
My openSUSE TW install is pretty fresh, too, and I only have the official repos, packman and libdvdcss added to my system.

To be honest, I don’t really know if the threads deano posted should tell me any more than i already tried.

Thanks again,
Robert

16

Hello Buddelpudding,

Thanks for your post and the information. It appears that the problem is a freetype2/harfbuzz compatibility issue that resulted from a harfbuzz package update. However, I need to do more research before I can say for sure. I does appear that this is only an issue with Tumbleweed and that Leap 42.1 and Leap 42.2 are not affected. I currently do not have a Tumbleweed installation to test with, however, I plan to set one up shortly, run some tests and see if I can reproduce this problem.

Thanks again for reporting this.

Gordon

17

I finally sorted this Tumbleweed freetype2/harfbuzz compatibility problem out. I have generated a freetype-2.7.1 version of my repo for Tumbleweed users here:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/gldickens3:/Advanced/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/

I have tested this repo with the current version of Tumbleweed and it appears to work nicely without any problems and the font rendering is great.

Ubuntu continues to use freetype-2.6.3 but that version of freetype2 is incompatible with Tumbleweed’s harfbuzz version and hence the implementation of freetype-2.7.1. Additional information is available here:

https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/home:gldickens3

FYI,

Gordon

18

Had the same issue, thanks for the fix.

I run Teamviewer for remote access for my work. The fonts were terrible until I found your repo.

Great work!

Thanks,
Michael

19

Dear Gordon,

thanks so much for providing this solution, you’re awesome!
Fonts do look much better now. The only thing that I find strange is that some of the smaller fonts now seem smaller than before. E.g. the title-names of my tabs in Vivaldi are a bit hard to read now, maybe because the new rendering uses more horizontal space, so the size needs to be a step smaller? Anyway, this is probably beyond the scope of your work here, so thx again.

Best regards,
Robert

20

Together with Packman and dvd this repo (mine is Leap 42.2) is a must have for openSUSE. Thanks for the work and keep up the good work, Gordon!