Getting Beautiful Fonts in Gentoo

kev009

Hello all,

I just wrote a guide for enabling some common fontconfig tricks and making Gentoo typography look nicer than the defaults.

http://www.kev009.com/wp/2009/12/getting-beautiful-fonts-in-gentoo-linux/

Regards,
Kevin
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ppurka · Advocate Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 3256

Good guide!

Additionally, the following might also help if you put it in your ~/.fonts.conf:

kev009 · Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 5:07 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the tip. I've included my ~/.fonts.conf on the page.
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StinkingMonkey · Apprentice Joined: 24 May 2003 Posts: 183 Location: UK

thank you , noticeable difference particularly in my terminal , i can now read the bold parts

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mikegpitt · Advocate Joined: 22 May 2004 Posts: 3224

Nice guide! Personally, I've been quite happy with the fonts on my machines, but that is probably because I do some of the things you suggest. I will need to try the remaining suggestions to see if it impacts my configuration.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 6:30 pm Post subject:

Moved from Desktop Environments to Documentation, Tips & Tricks.

As its not a support question
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luispa · Guru Joined: 17 Mar 2006 Posts: 359 Location: España

Thank you, good guide !

Luis

John R. Graham · Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 9:35 pm Post subject:

The type1 (or type1-fonts, which is what I think you meant) USE flag no longer exists, but that's just a nit. Fabulous guide.

- John
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mack1 · Guru Joined: 18 Mar 2006 Posts: 315

Thanks, nice guide

!

luqas · Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 12:37 am Post subject:

Thanks kev. Nice guide and bookmarked.

mjf55 · Guru Joined: 25 Aug 2007 Posts: 372

Just found this guide. Very Nice job Kevin. now my fonts look great
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depontius · Advocate Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3530

People have generously provided "~/.fonts.conf" files. Is /etc/fonts/fonts.conf an equivalent for a site-wide deployment? (actually "/etc/fonts/fonts.d/51-local.conf"?) I'd rather put this in there than update everyone's (in the family on a home machine) account.
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bobspencer123 · Guru Joined: 19 Dec 2005 Posts: 544

Thank's for the nice guide I will definitely give these a try tonite when I get home. I also found very amusing (and informative) your "Godwin's Law" response to Pedro on your blog

... Kinda made my day.
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d2_racing · Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 8:12 pm Post subject:

I'm gonna test that for sure.

gregool · Guru Joined: 26 Nov 2007 Posts: 336 Location: Lille

[borat_voice ] very good [/borat_voice]

Nuggs · n00b Joined: 14 May 2010 Posts: 2

Sweet, thanks for this!

XQZS · n00b Joined: 20 Oct 2013 Posts: 56

Good.
But in http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Fontconfig, autohint is sugested to be disable:

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Thank you!

manueltorrez · n00b Joined: 20 May 2014 Posts: 10

nice work....
thanx...

dmnc · n00b Joined: 03 Jun 2014 Posts: 2

Enabling 70-no-bitmaps.conf solve the issue in the Chromium (v.36) but breaks my terminal where I'm using 'Fixed' font. So better to have ugly web ...
Any clue please?

screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/sty8q

dmnc · n00b Joined: 03 Jun 2014 Posts: 2

defer- · Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2014 8:31 pm Post subject:

I always liked the default rendering with eselect fontconfig configured to my taste

EDIT:

This is how i got very sharp and nice fonts:
1. Disable everything you dont absolutely need from eselect fontconfig.
2. Restart X.

My settings:

Vicfred · n00b Joined: 17 Nov 2009 Posts: 10

very nice also your blog looks fine :wink:

jmg36 · n00b Joined: 15 Jul 2014 Posts: 1

Got fonts to look proper in Chromium using the following eselect fontconfig setup on a dual Dell 19" display (2560x1024):

$ equery l chromium
* Searching for chromium ...
[IP-] [ ] www-client/chromium-36.0.1985.103:0

$ eselect fontconfig list
Available fontconfig .conf files (* is enabled):
[1] 10-autohint.conf *
[2] 10-no-sub-pixel.conf
[3] 10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf
[4] 10-sub-pixel-bgr.conf
[5] 10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf *
[6] 10-sub-pixel-vbgr.conf
[7] 10-sub-pixel-vrgb.conf
[8] 10-unhinted.conf
[9] 11-lcdfilter-default.conf *
[10] 11-lcdfilter-legacy.conf
[11] 11-lcdfilter-light.conf
[12] 20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans.conf *
[13] 20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans-mono.conf *
[14] 20-unhint-small-dejavu-serif.conf *
[15] 20-unhint-small-vera.conf *
[16] 25-ttf-arphic-ukai-render.conf *
[17] 25-ttf-arphic-uming-bitmaps.conf
[18] 25-ttf-arphic-uming-render.conf *
[19] 25-unhint-nonlatin.conf *
[20] 30-metric-aliases.conf *
[21] 30-urw-aliases.conf *
[22] 35-ttf-arphic-ukai-aliases.conf *
[23] 35-ttf-arphic-uming-aliases.conf *
[24] 40-nonlatin.conf *
[25] 41-ttf-arphic-ukai.conf *
[26] 41-ttf-arphic-uming.conf *
[27] 42-luxi-mono.conf *
[28] 44-wqy-zenhei.conf *
[29] 45-latin.conf *
[30] 49-sansserif.conf *
[31] 50-user.conf *
[32] 51-local.conf *
[33] 57-dejavu-sans.conf *
[34] 57-dejavu-sans-mono.conf *
[35] 57-dejavu-serif.conf *
[36] 59-google-droid-sans.conf *
[37] 59-google-droid-sans-mono.conf *
[38] 59-google-droid-serif.conf *
[39] 60-latin.conf *
[40] 64-ttf-arphic-uming.conf *
[41] 65-fonts-persian.conf *
[42] 65-khmer.conf *
[43] 65-nonlatin.conf *
[44] 66-ja-ipafonts.conf *
[45] 66-lohit-assamese.conf *
[46] 66-lohit-bengali.conf *
[47] 66-lohit-gujarati.conf *
[48] 66-lohit-hindi.conf *
[49] 66-lohit-kannada.conf *
[50] 66-lohit-kashmiri@devanagari.conf *
[51] 66-lohit-konkani.conf *
[52] 66-lohit-maithili.conf *
[53] 66-lohit-marathi.conf *
[54] 66-lohit-oriya.conf *
[55] 66-lohit-punjabi.conf *
[56] 66-lohit-sindhi@devanagari.conf *
[57] 66-lohit-tamil.conf *
[58] 66-lohit-telugu.conf *
[59] 66-wqy-zenhei-sharp.conf *
[60] 66-wqy-zenhei-sharp-no13px.conf *
[61] 67-lohit-malayalam.conf *
[62] 67-lohit-nepali.conf *
[63] 69-unifont.conf *
[64] 70-no-bitmaps.conf *
[65] 70-yes-bitmaps.conf
[66] 75-ttf-arphic-ukai-select.conf *
[67] 80-delicious.conf *
[68] 90-synthetic.conf *
[69] 90-ttf-arphic-ukai-embolden.conf *
[70] 90-ttf-arphic-uming-embolden.conf *
[71] 99pdftoopvp.conf *

Massimo B. · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2015 10:42 am Post subject:

Hi thanks for that hints.
I came here because after moving my physical Gentoo desktop (Xfce) into a VMware fonts in Firefox became bad... I never thought about eselect fontconfig and just enabled the DejaVu fonts in Xfce and Firefox.
I also enabled anti-aliasing and hinting, but in the VM that did not help.

What exactly does eselect fontconfig do? Why not enabling everyhing there? Is this providing the fonts to be actually selectable from the Gtk-Apps? What happens if I'm using DejaVu Sans without enabling
[26] 57-dejavu-sans.conf?

btw. for terminals I always preferred the media-fonts/terminus-font, for X and also consolefonts.
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