[opensuse-support] Font fun
Hi, I'm pretty familiar with openSUSE and I can solve many issues when I install new versions. What I will never understand is font configuration though. Neither I do fully understand how to configure it nor the default seems sane. I've been using Leap 42.x now for its lifetime and upgraded to Leap 15.0 today just to see that some applications have very strange and ugly fonts (imagine fonts like from my the early days of PCs). Especially this was about monospace this time and I was able to change the configuration via YaST2's new module (btw, where does it apply the configuration? I couldn't find it in /etc/fonts.) But first I had to look up on my old installation (thank god it's still around in another partition) which font I've used for the past years. Therefore I was able to apply the same. Still my feedback somehow is: openSUSE's default font selection is inconsistent and strange/suboptimal in every other version or I do something wrong in a subtle way. Anyone has a useful pointer how to get nice fonts within openSUSE Leap 15.0? Thanks, Wolfgang -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-support+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-support+owner@opensuse.org
Op zondag 3 juni 2018 23:12:01 CEST schreef Wolfgang Rosenauer:
Hi,
I'm pretty familiar with openSUSE and I can solve many issues when I install new versions.
What I will never understand is font configuration though.
Neither I do fully understand how to configure it nor the default seems sane. I've been using Leap 42.x now for its lifetime and upgraded to Leap 15.0 today just to see that some applications have very strange and ugly fonts (imagine fonts like from my the early days of PCs).
Especially this was about monospace this time and I was able to change the configuration via YaST2's new module (btw, where does it apply the configuration? I couldn't find it in /etc/fonts.)
But first I had to look up on my old installation (thank god it's still around in another partition) which font I've used for the past years. Therefore I was able to apply the same.
Still my feedback somehow is: openSUSE's default font selection is inconsistent and strange/suboptimal in every other version or I do something wrong in a subtle way.
Anyone has a useful pointer how to get nice fonts within openSUSE Leap 15.0?
Thanks, Wolfgang Which desktop are we talking about? In your 42.3 install, did you use default fonts, or self-picked ones? Which apps are suffering from the issue? GTK apps on KDE? Could it be you have some deprecated theme active?
-- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-support+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-support+owner@opensuse.org
On 04/06/18 07:10, Knurpht @ openSUSE wrote:
Op zondag 3 juni 2018 23:12:01 CEST schreef Wolfgang Rosenauer:
Hi,
I'm pretty familiar with openSUSE and I can solve many issues when I install new versions.
What I will never understand is font configuration though.
Neither I do fully understand how to configure it nor the default seems sane. I've been using Leap 42.x now for its lifetime and upgraded to Leap 15.0 today just to see that some applications have very strange and ugly fonts (imagine fonts like from my the early days of PCs).
Especially this was about monospace this time and I was able to change the configuration via YaST2's new module (btw, where does it apply the configuration? I couldn't find it in /etc/fonts.)
But first I had to look up on my old installation (thank god it's still around in another partition) which font I've used for the past years. Therefore I was able to apply the same.
Still my feedback somehow is: openSUSE's default font selection is inconsistent and strange/suboptimal in every other version or I do something wrong in a subtle way.
Anyone has a useful pointer how to get nice fonts within openSUSE Leap 15.0?
Thanks, Wolfgang Which desktop are we talking about? In your 42.3 install, did you use default fonts, or self-picked ones? Which apps are suffering from the issue? GTK apps on KDE? Could it be you have some deprecated theme active?
Yeah someone went to lots of effort to make sure that by default everything is using the same default font, Roboto from memory. What has likely happened is that at some point your config for certain apps probably all using the same toolkit (ie gtk or Qt/KDE etc) was updated to use a specific font. In the upgrade from 42.3 to 15.0 that font may have been removed which is now leading the toolkit to fallback to something ugly instead. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Hi, Am 04.06.2018 um 05:24 schrieb Simon Lees:
On 04/06/18 07:10, Knurpht @ openSUSE wrote:
Still my feedback somehow is: openSUSE's default font selection is inconsistent and strange/suboptimal in every other version or I do something wrong in a subtle way.
Anyone has a useful pointer how to get nice fonts within openSUSE Leap 15.0?
Which desktop are we talking about?
in this case Xfce
In your 42.3 install, did you use default fonts, or self-picked ones?
I think I haven't changed anything back then.
Which apps are suffering from the issue? GTK apps on KDE?
As this time mainly monospace was affected mainly Thunderbird and any terminal was unreadable. I have to add that I always install MS TT fonts via fetchmsttfonts since I have to work with documents using those heavily. It seems most of them are automatically preferred for the normal desktop? Monospace was selecting "Courier New" on 15.0 which was an extremely bad selection.
Yeah someone went to lots of effort to make sure that by default everything is using the same default font, Roboto from memory. What has likely happened is that at some point your config for certain apps probably all using the same toolkit (ie gtk or Qt/KDE etc) was updated to use a specific font. In the upgrade from 42.3 to 15.0 that font may have been removed which is now leading the toolkit to fallback to something ugly instead.
On 42.3 I had SourceCodePro Regular as monospace font (don't remember I selected it myself) and now it was "Courier New" while the former was/is also installed. Wolfgang -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-support+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-support+owner@opensuse.org
Moin, On Mon, 04 Jun 2018, 09:02:07 +0200, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote:
Hi,
Am 04.06.2018 um 05:24 schrieb Simon Lees:
On 04/06/18 07:10, Knurpht @ openSUSE wrote:
Still my feedback somehow is: openSUSE's default font selection is inconsistent and strange/suboptimal in every other version or I do something wrong in a subtle way.
Anyone has a useful pointer how to get nice fonts within openSUSE Leap 15.0?
Which desktop are we talking about?
in this case Xfce
same here.
In your 42.3 install, did you use default fonts, or self-picked ones?
I think I haven't changed anything back then.
Which apps are suffering from the issue? GTK apps on KDE?
As this time mainly monospace was affected mainly Thunderbird and any terminal was unreadable.
I have to add that I always install MS TT fonts via fetchmsttfonts since I have to work with documents using those heavily.
Yep, same here, too. For me it's KDE apps which don't honour what I have defined as the standard font in the UI. XFCE and GTK applications use my default font ("Droid Sans"), but KDE applications always fall back to "Arial" and also choose to even use a smaller size. This didn't happen in 42.3.
It seems most of them are automatically preferred for the normal desktop? Monospace was selecting "Courier New" on 15.0 which was an extremely bad selection.
Yeah someone went to lots of effort to make sure that by default everything is using the same default font, Roboto from memory. What has likely happened is that at some point your config for certain apps probably all using the same toolkit (ie gtk or Qt/KDE etc) was updated to use a specific font. In the upgrade from 42.3 to 15.0 that font may have been removed which is now leading the toolkit to fallback to something ugly instead.
On 42.3 I had SourceCodePro Regular as monospace font (don't remember I selected it myself) and now it was "Courier New" while the former was/is also installed.
Wolfgang
Cheers. l8er manfred
Wolfgang Rosenauer composed on 2018-06-03 23:12 (UTC+0200):
I'm pretty familiar with openSUSE and I can solve many issues when I install new versions.
What I will never understand is font configuration though.
Neither I do fully understand how to configure it...
I suspect few do or ever will. I acquired enough grasp to get by on too many moons ago to remember. I globally configure the three basic fallback fonts via /etc/fonts/conf.d/5#-post-user.conf. My two most recent incarnations are 2 & 5 years old: http://fm.no-ip.com/Share/Linux/57-post-user.conf2012 9.5kb http://fm.no-ip.com/Share/Linux/57-post-user.conf2016 1.5kb Simply move to or insert your favorite of each type at the top of each of the three alias lists (serif, sans-serif, monospace). I never did decide if any particular number was best to use. In 42.3 it's 57, but I've used 55, 56, 58 & 59 as well over the years. The installed fonts nearest the tops of these lists are what desktop settings and web browsers will use any time generics are specified, thus what I get in desktop and e.g. Mozilla app UI. HTH :-) -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-support+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-support+owner@opensuse.org
Am 04.06.2018 um 05:58 schrieb Felix Miata:
Simply move to or insert your favorite of each type at the top of each of the three alias lists (serif, sans-serif, monospace). I never did decide if any particular number was best to use. In 42.3 it's 57, but I've used 55, 56, 58 & 59 as well over the years. The installed fonts nearest the tops of these lists are what desktop settings and web browsers will use any time generics are specified, thus what I get in desktop and e.g. Mozilla app UI.
My main point is: I don't want to run through hundreds of fonts to get something usable on nowadays systems but I would hope that the openSUSE defaults are not hurting my eyes. While everyone might have a slightly different taste there is a big gap between taste and readability. Wolfgang -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-support+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-support+owner@opensuse.org
Le 04/06/2018 à 09:04, Wolfgang Rosenauer a écrit :
My main point is: I don't want to run through hundreds of fonts to get something usable (...)
of course. I didn't notice if it was a fresh install or an update, I wait a bit my self before making the jump :-) thanks jdd -- http://dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-support+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-support+owner@opensuse.org
Wolfgang Rosenauer composed on 2018-06-04 09:04 (UTC+0200):
Felix Miata composed:
Simply move to or insert your favorite of each type at the top of each of the three alias lists (serif, sans-serif, monospace). I never did decide if any particular number was best to use. In 42.3 it's 57, but I've used 55, 56, 58 & 59 as well over the years. The installed fonts nearest the tops of these lists are what desktop settings and web browsers will use any time generics are specified, thus what I get in desktop and e.g. Mozilla app UI.
My main point is: I don't want to run through hundreds of fonts to get something usable on nowadays systems but I would hope that the openSUSE defaults are not hurting my eyes. While everyone might have a slightly different taste there is a big gap between taste and readability.
One only needs select as little as once. I did it 10, 12, maybe 15 years ago, saved them in 57-post-user.conf, and pretty much forget about them in app UI, suffering only the often inanely poor quality choices imposed by web site artists. Font quality problems are almost entirely the result of low display density. Once display density is high enough, fonts are entirely a matter of taste; the quality differs immaterially from text in books and magazines. And it doesn't take that much increase to get good quality. Even 120 DPI is a huge effective increase over the ancient 96 reference. Quality increases as a function of squares, so 96 DPI -> 120 DPI (+25% nominal) equates to a 56.25% real increase; to 144 DPI, +125%. We had 768 vertical resolution 3 decades ago (1024x768 IBM XGA). That kind of "quality" in new hardware (e.g. 1366x768 on 15" laptop) should have been extinct over a decade ago. Unfortunately, it's still not. -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-support+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-support+owner@opensuse.org
participants (6)
-
Felix Miata -
jdd＠dodin.org -
Knurpht ＠ openSUSE -
Manfred Hollstein -
Simon Lees -
Wolfgang Rosenauer