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I updated to fedora 22 last days and under most desktops ( kde/gnome/gnome3 ) all terminals have a very very ugly font setting. It is nearly impossible to use some text base editors in this terminals because of the poor rendering of the fonts.

I read a lot of configuring fonts but nothing seems to happen.

As a first: Yes, I know that the complete directory structure has changed for fontconfig. And yes, I did not get any results if I place some config files elsewhere.

Is there any hint which content I can place in which directory to get the rendering for terminal applications off? And maybe, which steps must be done to get the fonts updated. I know that fc-cache must be called in earlier times, but now?

And yes, I read the stuff written here on this topic, but this all seems outdated because of the changed directory structure.

What I did:

In: /etc/fonts/fonts.conf I found

<!-- the following element will be removed in the future -->
<dir>~/.fonts</dir>

So I tried to place a file in: ~/.fonts/fonts.conf

The content is:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
    <!-- turn off antialiasing -->
    <match target="font">
        <edit name="antialias" mode="assign"> <bool>false</bool></edit>
    </match>

    <match target="font">
        <edit mode="assign" name="hinting">
            <bool>false</bool>
        </edit>
    </match>
</fontconfig>

After that I run: 

fc-cache

And I used strace to look for the reading of my file. I only catch this line:

  stat("/home/krud/.fonts/fonts.conf", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0664, st_size=177, ...}) = 0

Then I looked for other directories:

  access("/home/krud/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf", R_OK) = 0

But in a short: I can not see any result in any application! ( firefox/gnome-terminal)

EDIT:

I also used font-tweaks-tool from gnome and I selected the font in the tweaks tool. Also no change! It seems that there are a parallel world on my system?

Update:

I looked for freetype-freeworld and it was already installed. All fonts are rendered with RGB-antialiasing which is looks terrible for my eyes. So I tried to remove freetype-freeworld. After that, I can select grayscale for antialiasing and also can modify the settings for hinting with the gnome-tweak-tool. Now my terminal font is acceptable and the fonts for e.g. firefox and other apps are readable enough. As a result the installation of freetype-freeworld was the reason that I couldn't change the settings for the fonts. I could not discover what is the reason behind that problem, but I can work now :-) It is interesting that some people like freetype-freeworld and someone write it is giving poor results.

My setup is now: Anti-Aliasing "grayscale" with hinting "full". In hope that others find it helpful...

If someone is able to give a full picture which config files, tools, renderer and so on are working on actual linux desktops it would be great to get this knowledge somewhere!

Klaus
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  • Have you tried installing `tweak-tool` and changing the simple settings there? Or `fonts-tweak-tool` for more sophisticated (per-font) settings? – mattdm Jun 08 '15 at 14:49
  • @mattdm: Thanks for the hint. I tried it out but nothing changes. Seems that there are to many possible ways to config the apps, fonts, desktops and what else. I can't see any logic here and there is no documentation?! – Klaus Jun 09 '15 at 07:46
  • The font renderer in fedora is somewhat crippled . I installed freettype-freeworld (which is a better renderer) and turned on sub pixel aliasing. Its a massive improvement IMI – Journeyman Geek Jun 09 '15 at 08:04
  • @ Journeyman Geek: OK, after installing: How can I activate it? How can I see which renderer is active? – Klaus Jun 09 '15 at 08:31
  • @JourneymanGeek This is a puzzle to me. Since the patents are expired, the bytecode interpreter is available in the _main_ Fedora freetype package. I'm not sure exactly what freetype-freeworld is doing, but I think it's just enabling that by default rather than not. Why not by default? It looks _worse_ with many fonts, despite the commonly-repeated wisdom — hence, font-tweak-tool which lets you play with this per-font. – mattdm Jun 09 '15 at 08:49
  • Klaus, turning on and off anti-aliasing should be _instantly_ noticeable in the terminal. Well, almost instantly — you'll need to do something to cause the window to be redrawn (covering and uncovering it, even partially, should do). But if you're not seeing _any change at all_, something is weird. Can you post screenshots? – mattdm Jun 09 '15 at 08:51
  • klaus - to be honest, I don't remember. I was planning to post an answer once I got home and could consult my boomarks. @mattdm: Well, I set this up with F20, and I've been upgrading since. *Something* works since its waaay better than it was default. – Journeyman Geek Jun 09 '15 at 08:52
  • @JourneymanGeek What fonts are you using? (And for that matter, same question for Klaus.) – mattdm Jun 09 '15 at 08:54
  • The default ones mostly. I think I may have corefonts and the adobe source/source code fonts installed as well. – Journeyman Geek Jun 09 '15 at 09:02
  • @JourneymanGeek Could you try removing it, restarting your X session (just to be sure) and playing with the various tweak tool settings, to see if you can recreate the look you like? – mattdm Jun 09 '15 at 09:09
  • Puzzle answered: the freetype-freeworld package _does_ enable sub-pixel antialiasing (which gives you better shapes at the expense of color fringing). However, _this_ question is, apparently, looking to disable antialiasing entirely — or at least, that's what it asks. I suspect really what's wanted is tweaks to the hinting, which can be done with the default libs now. – mattdm Jun 09 '15 at 16:56
  • I removed `freetype-freeworld` and got much better results. The biggest change was that I can now switch from rgb to grayscale anti-aliasing. It looks much sharper on my terminal. See my last Update on my question... – Klaus Jun 10 '15 at 07:20
  • The /etc/fonts/local.conf file can take effect if you prefer manually editing the configuration files. I ever tweaked Fedora ( http://systutorials.com/5472/ ) and am satisfied with the rendering. Hope the tips help. – ericzma Dec 10 '15 at 03:37

0 Answers0