Feature changed by: Carlos Bessa (CJPB) Feature #317952, revision 4 - Title: Change default font to liberation sans + Title: Change default font openSUSE Distribution: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Carlos Bessa (cjpb) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: The default font for openSUSE is Sans Serif pt9. Frankly, it's not a good looking font. It's too horizontally spaced and looks flattened. This is actually something that really does not bother me as it's probably the first thing I change after installation (using openSUSE since 10.3). However, I often try live cds from other distros just out of curiosity and development releases from openSUSE as well. And every time I do that I wonder why openSUSE doesn't look at elegant/polished as the others by default... and it's just the font. And whether we find it important or not, aesthetics will make a big impression on a new user who is running a livecd of doing a test install. I don't want to switch to some weird, exotic font just for personal preference. I propose the default font to be changed to Liberation Sans. Looks much nicer, elegant and I find it very easy on the eyes. I've took 2 screenshots to illustrate the differences: https://plus.google.com/photos/107904119870484573131/albums/6065712696460612... best regards, Carlos Bessa Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: Looks better. Causes a better impression on new users. Discussion: #1: Stanislav Baiduzhyi (baiduzhyi) (2014-10-03 11:13:20) Oh no please don't do that. Liberation fonts are badly antialiased and badly hinted. The best way to fix the fonts would be to invent some possibility to ship freetype with subpixel antialiasing enabled, and use it where necessary. Carlos, I understand the issue and I've been fighting with fonts for some time, so here are my findings, hopefully you'll find them useful: Here are couple of RPM packages, that is freetype with subpixel support enabled, if you're using LCD display it will make your fonts look way way better: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7j7XkcAA4-MU21tR2cwS1FPT3c&usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7j7XkcAA4-MU21tR2cwS1FPT3c&usp=sharing) Unfortunately that is patented technology, so openSUSE cannot ship it with the distribution not to upset US government, or something like that. In addition, the font you've mentioned, "Sans Serif", it is not a font but alias to some other font. I do not know which font is the default, but I found the way to change it. You'll see file named '00-custom- prefer.conf', open it, it is a standard XML file and you can tune your preferences however you like it, adding or moving different font families up or down. So setting "Sans Serif" to "Liberation smthng" is just a matter of adding liberation on top of sans-serif preferences. Afterwards copy that file into /etc/fonts/conf.d, and say "Ta-da" after reboot. Also you may be interested in file 99-custom-hinting.conf, that's simplified hinting-antialiasing configuration. Change dpi from 82 to whatever yor real display dpi is, then experiment a bit with hintstyle, my favourite is hintslight but on some monitors it doesn't look good, hintmedium looks better. Also I would recomment you to try "DejaVu Sans Condensed" but it badly supported for some reason, so to use it you have to delete non- condensed one, go to /usr/share/fonts/truetype and delete all DejaVuSans-*.ttf without word "Condensed" in it. It will give you much narrower font, similarly to liberation, but with better shaped glyphs. So I agree that openSUSE default fonts do not looks good, but Liberation is one of the ugliest fonts out there, even ubuntu and droid fonts are better. Please do not enforce your personal preferences onto other users. I would better suggest you change this request to: * add UI for those family preferences to YaST (they say work is already in progress for this). * split DejaVu fonts rpm into multiple rpms, Mono, Sans, SansCondensed, Serif, SerifCondensed, because most of UI libraries cannot use Condensed one if normal is present, or so it seems. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/317952

Feature changed by: Karl Cheng (qantas94heavy) Feature #317952, revision 6 Title: Change default font - openSUSE Distribution: Unconfirmed + openSUSE Distribution: Done Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Carlos Bessa (cjpb) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: The default font for openSUSE is Sans Serif pt9. Frankly, it's not a good looking font. It's too horizontally spaced and looks flattened. This is actually something that really does not bother me as it's probably the first thing I change after installation (using openSUSE since 10.3). However, I often try live cds from other distros just out of curiosity and development releases from openSUSE as well. And every time I do that I wonder why openSUSE doesn't look at elegant/polished as the others by default... and it's just the font. And whether we find it important or not, aesthetics will make a big impression on a new user who is running a livecd of doing a test install. I don't want to switch to some weird, exotic font just for personal preference. I propose the default font to be changed to Liberation Sans. Looks much nicer, elegant and I find it very easy on the eyes. I've took 2 screenshots to illustrate the differences: https://plus.google.com/photos/107904119870484573131/albums/6065712696460612... best regards, Carlos Bessa Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: Looks better. Causes a better impression on new users. Discussion: #1: Stanislav Baiduzhyi (baiduzhyi) (2014-10-03 11:13:20) Oh no please don't do that. Liberation fonts are badly antialiased and badly hinted. The best way to fix the fonts would be to invent some possibility to ship freetype with subpixel antialiasing enabled, and use it where necessary. Carlos, I understand the issue and I've been fighting with fonts for some time, so here are my findings, hopefully you'll find them useful: Here are couple of RPM packages, that is freetype with subpixel support enabled, if you're using LCD display it will make your fonts look way way better: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7j7XkcAA4-MU21tR2cwS1FPT3c&usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7j7XkcAA4-MU21tR2cwS1FPT3c&usp=sharing) Unfortunately that is patented technology, so openSUSE cannot ship it with the distribution not to upset US government, or something like that. In addition, the font you've mentioned, "Sans Serif", it is not a font but alias to some other font. I do not know which font is the default, but I found the way to change it. You'll see file named '00-custom- prefer.conf', open it, it is a standard XML file and you can tune your preferences however you like it, adding or moving different font families up or down. So setting "Sans Serif" to "Liberation smthng" is just a matter of adding liberation on top of sans-serif preferences. Afterwards copy that file into /etc/fonts/conf.d, and say "Ta-da" after reboot. Also you may be interested in file 99-custom-hinting.conf, that's simplified hinting-antialiasing configuration. Change dpi from 82 to whatever yor real display dpi is, then experiment a bit with hintstyle, my favourite is hintslight but on some monitors it doesn't look good, hintmedium looks better. Also I would recomment you to try "DejaVu Sans Condensed" but it badly supported for some reason, so to use it you have to delete non- condensed one, go to /usr/share/fonts/truetype and delete all DejaVuSans-*.ttf without word "Condensed" in it. It will give you much narrower font, similarly to liberation, but with better shaped glyphs. So I agree that openSUSE default fonts do not looks good, but Liberation is one of the ugliest fonts out there, even ubuntu and droid fonts are better. Please do not enforce your personal preferences onto other users. I would better suggest you change this request to: * add UI for those family preferences to YaST (they say work is already in progress for this). * split DejaVu fonts rpm into multiple rpms, Mono, Sans, SansCondensed, Serif, SerifCondensed, because most of UI libraries cannot use Condensed one if normal is present, or so it seems. #2: Carlos Bessa (cjpb) (2014-10-03 20:18:20) (reply to #1) Hi Stanislav! I just picked Liberation Sans because it looks better than the default one. Not because I find it perfect or the best. I don't know much about fonts, I just change the default in KDE system settings and enable anti-aliasing, subpixel-rendering and hinting... frankly it looks fine to me. So my point here is not to make the change to Liberation Sans, just to change it to something that looks better. I've read about the freetype/subpixel and understand it's a legal problem but I also think it's a different issue. My only goal with this feature request is to change the default font to something that looks better. I've changed the title accordingly. I also like Droid Sans but personally I actually don't find it much different than Liberation Sans. + #3: Karl Cheng (qantas94heavy) (2016-11-16 08:09:16) + Plasma 5 on openSUSE now uses Noto Sans as the default font. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/317952