I’ve upgraded from openSUSE 11.1 to 11.2 last week.
Historically, I had KDE installed first on a clean new installation of 11.0. Then I added Gnome (because at the time KDE4 was too buggy). I’m still having both Gnome and KDE installed now, but mainly use Gnome as desktop. I had the MS truetype fonts installed and working on my 11.1 installation before upgrading.
After upgrading, the first font problem I spotted was that now FireFox have some ‘ugly’ fonts on a rendered web page (by ugly I mean ‘washed’, ‘blured’). First think in mind: I had lost some of my old fonts, and probably the MS TT fonts.
However, ‘fetchmsttfonts’ (11.2-6.6.12) and ‘pullin-msttf-fonts’ (11.2-6.6.7) were installed, and I could see the MS fonts in /usr/share/fonts/truetype
Checking with KDE Font Installer, all the fonts seemed to be listed, including the MS fonts, but none was shown in the preview column. Right-clicking on any font to select Font Viewer produced an error “cannot read the font”
(???)
From Yast, I removed the fetchmsttfonts and pullin-msttf-fonts packages. That removed the MS fonts from /usr/share/fonts/truetype but then, in KDE Font Installer, all the fonts were still listed, including the MS fonts, with none of them previewed.
My guess is that the fonts I had under openSUSE 11.1 are still there somewhere. But where ? And why can’t KDE Font Installer open them ?
But that’s not all: With ‘qtconfig’ started from a root console, I can select any font listed (and also the MS fonts), and it render fine in the preview gadget.
My guess is that there is a font configuration conflict somewhere between Gnome and KDE. At this point, I have no clue on how to track that problem.
You could get firefox to force a font onto a website if you need it.
In firefox go to edit> preferences then go to “contents” and go to the “advanced” located in the “fonts and colors” section, in the advanced settings you could turn off the “allow pages to use their own fonts” option
I did this myself, works wonders.
Thanks, but that’s just an interim solution for those ‘ugly’ web pages in FireFox; it does not solve the system wide fonts issue.
I still don’t know why FireFox can’t make use of the Arial font as it used to do under openSUSE 11.1, and why KDE Font Installer can’t render any font at all.
So far, getting fonts right in FireFox is my main worry, but I fear I might face fonts problem with other applications sooner or later.
I would like to start the KDE Font Installer from console, in hope to see some verbose output and understand what is happening. What is the command name for it ?
With the fetchmsttfonts and pullin-msttf-fonts packages uninstalled, I can still, eg., select the Arial font in gnome-panel -> Appearance -> Fonts
(Those MS fonts are most probably the ones I had under openSUSE 11.1 before upgrading.)
Where does gnome-panel find this font as there is no Arial.ttf in
/usr/share/fonts/truetype ?
After searching for “arial” on the whole filesystem, I finally found that the “ghost” MS fonts were in
/usr/local/share/fonts
The Arial font is in
/usr/local/share/fonts/a/arial.ttf
I ran
su -
nautilus
and right-click on arial.ttf → Open with Font Viewer (Gnome)
All is ok, the font is previewed fine.
Right-click on arial.ttf again → Open with KDE Font Viewer
and again, I got the usual “Cannot read the font” error, and in the console, the following messages appeared:
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/libkdeinit4_klauncher.so
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/libkdeinit4_kded4.so
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/libkdeinit4_kbuildsycoca4.so
kbuildsycoca4 running...
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/libkdeinit4_kconf_update.so
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/kde4/kio_fonts.so
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/bin/knotify4
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/libkdeinit4_kbuildsycoca4.so
<unknown program name>(4985)/ KStartupInfo::createNewStartupId: creating: "Linux1;1258915365;305378;4985_TIME0" : "unnamed app"
kbuildsycoca4 running...
kioslave: ####### CRASH ###### protocol = fonts pid = 4995 signal = 11
So, a bug in KDE4 ?
As for the problem of the “washed” fonts in FireFox, I tried to force the use of the Verdana, then the Arial font, but the font still have a blured, washed look.
So I’m now thinking that the problem is not due to some missing fonts, but the way they are rendered (badly scaled ? hinting ?)
Yes. That is from this KDE System Settings panel that I reach the KDE Font Installer. Usually, I open it from the desktop.
From console, I found no option to have more verbose/debug output. I can see the same “kioslave: ####### CRASH ###### protocol = fonts pid = 4995 signal = 11” as reported in comment #5.
From Look & feel -> Appearance -> Fonts, I can select any fonts, and it is previewed right.
But from Administration -> Font Installer (and -> Font Viewer) failed to read/preview any font.