[Bug 251157] New: Fonts are not clearly readable
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 Summary: Fonts are not clearly readable Product: openSUSE 10.3 Version: Alpha 1plus Platform: Other OS/Version: Other Status: NEW Severity: Normal Priority: P5 - None Component: GNOME AssignedTo: bnc-team-gnome@forge.provo.novell.com ReportedBy: mboman@novell.com QAContact: qa@suse.de In openSUSE 10.3, the fonts used by GNOME (especially visible on the Desktop and in a terminal window) are not sharp and clear. Compare this to what the font looks like in SLED10SP1B4 where they are very nice and readable. With openSUSE 10.3, I have this issue on both my laptops LCD screen and on my Desktop LCD screens. But when running SLED10SP1B4 on the same machines, they are perfectly readable. I compared the DPI and font settings between openSUSE 10.3 and SLED10SP1B4 and they are all the same so not sure why it differs. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 mboman@novell.com changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Severity|Normal |Blocker -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 jpr@novell.com changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CC| |mfabian@novell.com ------- Comment #1 from jpr@novell.com 2007-04-24 16:36 MST ------- Screenshot? Everything looks ok to me on factory. Maybe the hinting issue? -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #2 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-24 17:22 MST ------- Yes, two screen shots for comparison please. If you have a ~/.fonts.conf file, please attach that as well. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #3 from mboman@novell.com 2007-04-24 18:08 MST ------- Sorry guys, the screenshots should have been attached with the creation of this bug. Not sure what happened. I don't have a ~/.fonts.conf file on either SLED or 10.3. The fonts are equally bad on both my laptop and my desktop machine. Both are using LCD monitors. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #4 from mboman@novell.com 2007-04-24 18:09 MST ------- Created an attachment (id=133917) --> (https://bugzilla.novell.com/attachment.cgi?id=133917&action=view) 10.3A3 screenshot -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #5 from mboman@novell.com 2007-04-24 18:09 MST ------- Created an attachment (id=133918) --> (https://bugzilla.novell.com/attachment.cgi?id=133918&action=view) SLED10SP1RC2 screenshot -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #6 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-24 19:16 MST ------- The fonts in the "Application Browser", the Desktop icons, the menu of the gnome-terminal and the window titles seems to be "Albany AMT" in both cases (i.e. the "agfa-fonts" package is installed, right?). The fonts in the SLED10SP1RC2 are far more blurred I like the crisp, high contrast fonts in the 10.3A3 screenshot much better. The difference seems to be the use of the autohinter versus the bytecode interpreter. In SLES10/SLED10/10.1, the autohinter was used by default for all fonts. Since openSUSE 10.2, the autohinter is switched off by default for most fonts to make use of the byte code instructions. You can see that by comparing /etc/fonts/suse-hinting.conf in both versions. Using the autohinter for high quality fonts like the agfa-fonts or the DejaVu fonts which have very good byte code instructions is a waste. It discards all the effort which went into the byte code to achieve a very clear, non-blurred, high contrast rendering. If you want to use the autohinter, just create a ~/.fonts.conf with the following contents: <?xml version="1.0"?> <fontconfig> <match target="font" > <edit mode="assign" name="autohint" > <bool>false</bool> </edit> </match> </fontconfig> -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #7 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-24 19:21 MST ------- The font *in* the gnome-terminal is a completely different font and therefore difficult to compare. In the SLED10SP1RC2 screenshot it looks like "Cumberland AMT". I'm not sure what we see in the 10.3A3 screen shot. Is this "DejaVu Sans Mono" in "Bold"?? Looks ugly. I think the non-bold version is better. There's another thing in the 10.3A3 screen shot of gnome-terminal which I don't understand. The first prompt and the second prompt look very different. How is that possible? -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #8 from mboman@novell.com 2007-04-24 19:52 MST ------- In reply to comment#6; Yes, the agfa-fonts are installed. Not sure how to explain this... The font is not readable unless you look straight at it. If you look at it a bit from the side, you can no longer say that it is sharp and crisp. It looks to me as if the font is simply to "thin". Also, I tried to create the .fonts.conf but it did not make a difference (at least not visible to me):-/ In reply to comment#7; Good catch! Didn't even notice that myself. Tried to reproduce it just now but without success. Even looked at the history and run all the commands from history but didn't get that "problem" again. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #9 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-24 20:11 MST -------
Also, I tried to create the .fonts.conf but it did not make a difference (at least not visible to me):-/
That *must* make a huge difference. Something must have gone wrong. You can also see the difference with ftdiff -r 96 -s 12 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/albw.ttf or with ftview -r 96 12 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/albw.ttf and then use the 'f' key to toggle between the byte code interpreter and the autohinter. (ftdiff is only available in freetype >= 2.3.4, i.e. only in STABLE, not in 10.2 or SLES10. ftview is available in SLES10 as well). -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #10 from mboman@novell.com 2007-04-25 00:25 MST ------- Ok, so i tried the ftdiff and it looks pretty good. When mentioning Desktop below, I am talking about the icon text that's on the Desktop. I can see what my problem is now as well... It's the "shadow" on the font used on the Desktop. A tried to set the background to all black and to all white and it's it's really bad. So, played a bit more and this is what happens; 1. Change smoothing to NONE, will make the font look really good on the Desktop, but terrible in the App browser. 2. Change smoothing back to greyscale or to subpixel makes it look good in the App browser, but bad on the Desktop. Is there a way to make the font "thicker" on the Desktop (and only for the Desktop) -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #11 from mboman@novell.com 2007-04-25 00:31 MST ------- BTW; In reply to comment#7; The terminal font for both SLED and 10.3 is Monospace 10/Regular. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 mfabian@novell.com changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CC| |coolo@novell.com ------- Comment #12 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-25 03:16 MST ------- "monospace" is just a generic alias which expands to the "best" monospace font for your locale. You can check which font this is by executing fc-match monospace on the command line. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #13 from mboman@novell.com 2007-04-25 03:23 MST ------- You are scaring me... How is it possible to know this much about fonts? :-) On my 10.3, monospace expands to DejaVuSansMono.ttf On my SLED, it expands to cumbwr__.ttf But anyway... Is it possible to have the font on the Desktop a little bit thicker? Or get rid of the "shade" (drop shadow or what ever it's called) -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #14 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-25 05:44 MST ------- Magnus Bowman> Is there a way to make the font "thicker" on the Magnus Bowman> Desktop (and only for the Desktop) In KDE: kcontrol -> Appearance & Themes -> Fonts -> Desktop There you can choose a special font for the Desktop icons. I guess something like this must be possible in Gnome as well, but I Magnus Bowman> haven't found it yet. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #15 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-25 05:49 MST ------- I think I have found it: execute "gnome-font-properties", then change the "desktop" font. Seems to influence only the desktop icons. Choosing "Albany AMT" "Bold" there makes it considerably thicker than the default. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #16 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-25 05:51 MST ------- Choosing "Sans" "Bold" is the same because "fc-match sans" matches "Albany AMT" on your system. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #17 from jpr@novell.com 2007-04-25 06:21 MST ------- Ok, I think this is definitely not a blocker - Mike we should revisit the whole fonts.conf thing soon and see if we can solve it for 10.3. I can put someone on this within a few weeks. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 jpr@novell.com changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Severity|Blocker |Major -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #18 from mboman@novell.com 2007-04-25 15:13 MST ------- Mike, yeah it is not a problem changing the font. What I hope to achieve with this bug-report is to change the default as we ship it. JP: Sounds good to me. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #19 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-26 07:03 MST ------- Magnus> Mike, Magnus> yeah it is not a problem changing the font. What I hope to Magnus> achieve with this bug-report is to change the default as we Magnus> ship it. That is a matter of taste though. I like the non-bold desktop icons much better. If we would make bold the default for the desktop icons, I'm sure we will get new bugreports because of that. In my opinion, the non-bold fonts are usually much better readable in "normal" sizes. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #20 from mboman@novell.com 2007-04-26 16:12 MST ------- Mike, I honestly can't believe that we are seeing the same thing when it comes to what we currently are shipping. When it comes to using Bold for the Desktop font, I agree that it is not what we want. I *do* want something in between though. Is that possible to achieve somehow or would I have to change font? -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #21 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-27 03:04 MST ------- mboman> I honestly can't believe that we are seeing the same thing mboman> when it comes to what we currently are shipping. Well, I looked at your screenshot and in my opinion the fonts under the desktop icons are perfect in your screenshot. And I think we both are looking at the screen shot using an LCD monitor. The fonts are designed to look like that. mboman> When it comes to using Bold for the Desktop font, I agree that mboman> it is not what we want. mboman> I *do* want something in between though. Is that possible to mboman> achieve somehow or would I have to change font? The autohinter=true setting I wrote in comment #6 might suite your preferences better. But I certainly don't want to make that the default either, most people like the byte code rendering much better (me included). Rendering with autohinting was the default until SuSE Linux 10.1. One reason I changed it was that the developers of the DejaVu fonts had told me that it is stupid not to use the byte code interpreter when they have invested hours of work per glyphs to make the fonts render very sharp, keeping the legs of an 'm' symmetrical, etc. ... Not using the byte code interpreter throws all this work away. I think they are right. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #22 from mboman@novell.com 2007-04-27 03:16 MST ------- I'm attaching a quick drawing. On these pages, the circle to the left is illustrating my eye, the A and B on the left side are icons with text beneath them. Now, on the first page, where I look straight at the icon/text A, I have no problems at all with the current font/hinting/thickness etc. But, on the second page, where I look at the icon/text B, I am almost unable to read the text. This is because the text (in white) is to thing, and the shadow (or whatever it's called) in black, melts in with the background. If the font would have been thicker (ie, if I make it bold) I can read this perfectly without having to concentrate. That's because it's not to thing. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #23 from mboman@novell.com 2007-04-27 03:18 MST ------- Created an attachment (id=135664) --> (https://bugzilla.novell.com/attachment.cgi?id=135664&action=view) Drawing :-) -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #24 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-27 04:29 MST ------- Even when viewd from extreme angles worse than in Slide 2 in bug-251157_oooDraw.odg, it still looks reasonably OK for me. With reasonably OK I mean that it is as least as good readable for me as the texts in the Application Browser, if not better. Everything degrades when viewing an LCD display from extreme angles, the colours change, it gets darker, ... -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #25 from mboman@novell.com 2007-04-27 04:52 MST ------- You mind attaching a screenshot? -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #26 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-27 06:56 MST ------- I'm looking at *your* screen shot and I think that's OK. It doesn't matter how *my* desktop looks like when *your* screen shot displayed on my monitor looks OK. It doesn't make any sense to make a screen shot of your screen shot displayed on my monitor. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #27 from mboman@novell.com 2007-04-27 08:24 MST ------- No, I was after a normal screenshot from your screen. Not a screenshot from you looking at my screenshot. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #28 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-27 08:51 MST ------- I'm normally using KDE. But I'll start a Gnome session later and make a screenshot. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #29 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-27 09:28 MST ------- Created an attachment (id=135934) --> (https://bugzilla.novell.com/attachment.cgi?id=135934&action=view) my-gnome-desktop.png screen shot of my Gnome desktop. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #30 from mfabian@novell.com 2007-04-27 09:30 MST ------- If you compare the string "mfabian" below the desktop icon at the top left of my screen shot with the string "mboman" in your screen shot with "xmag", you will see that these are rendered exactly the same, pixel for pixel. As expected. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157 ------- Comment #31 from mboman@novell.com 2007-04-27 17:58 MST ------- I installed KDE to have a look what you do in there... You use Sans, size 11 on the Desktop. It's work very well. I changed it to size 10 and voila, it looks crap, same as in GNOME. So I have a suggestion; Either change the default size to 10 in KDE in change the default size to 12 in GNOME (Using size 11 in GNOME does not have make a big change in the font size as it does in KDE) -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=251157#c32
JP Rosevear
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