Re: Fw: How to have sharp fonts?

[Craig]

great response,  I've been on this path for a while as well.

People with low vision have an argument that Linux fonts are generally
worse, by default, than ios/android/windows counterparts.  In most
cases it's the increased dpi/density that helps offset the blurry fonts.
Perhaps somebody can recommend a monitor that actually gets above
100dpi?

I take a hybrid approach, and disable antialiasing for "small" fonts,
and start antialiasing at about 17 points or higher.  This is 
extraordinarily
difficult on most linux desktops, on all apps.

~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf should have something like this,


<test name="pixelsize"qual="any"compare="less_eq">
<double>17</double>
</test>
<edit mode="assign"name="antialias">
<bool>false</bool>
</edit>


Mozilla apps like firefox and thunderbird will ignore this, so consider
their own configuration options:

browser.display.auto_quality_min_font_size   14
gfx.text.disable-aa                        false


Chrome/Brave seem to use their own rendering engine, which
is better, but they do try to honor the above fontconfig values.

In addition, linux uses flatpacks/snaps and increasingly different
packaging/containers, which happily ignores your settings, and
uses their own fonts making the problem even worse.

Font creators and packagers no longer take into account users
of non-antialised fonts, and the fonts are getting worse in this
regard..  For example "fonts-liberation2" are much worse than
the older "fonts-liberation"  when it comes to non-antialiasing,
so we have to remove the assuming fonts that render poorly with
antialiasing diabled.

I'm happy with my font situation now on ubuntu 22.04, but it took
several full-time days to get it this way spread over months.

in my experience,
-edfardos





On 2/27/23 08:22, Peter Grandi wrote:
> > > I have problem with all linux distros about fonts generally,
> > > fonts are very smooth or fuzzy and it hurts my eyes when i
> > > read more of the texts , [...] any patches to improve the
> > > fonts to be like windows, very sharp
> No need for patches.
>
> > Can someone help this guy, please?
> I am the right person here. I have the same problem but I don't
> think that MS-Windows is "very sharp" either. So the issue has
> several layers:
>
> * Color (subpixels) antialiasing may be enabled, which for me
>    gives a bit too much "fringing"/"fuzzyness" in both GNU/Linux
>    and MS-Windows.
>
> * Usually pure greyscale (pixel) antialasing is way better for
>    me, but it also depends on whether the background is dark or
>    light and whether the rendering library applies the right
>    gamma correction for that (thanks to Werner for mentioning
>    this some time ago).
>
> * For me it is much better to turn off antialiasing entirely and
>    rely on the autohinter (for PS fonts) or hints to get sharp
>    shapes in black-white mode. This depends critically on finding
>    well-hinted fonts and on the screen resolution.
>
> * It is usually fairly important to set the screen resolution
>    right "optically" (that is taking into account viewing
>    distance.
>
> * Displays with a linear resolution higher than 100DPI help a
>    lot. 27in 4k displays have nearlu 200DPI.
>
> The parameters related to the above are not part of FreeType but
> come in several additional layers depending on rendering and GUI
> framework.
>
> The desperate user should let us know the type of screen, the
> viewing distance, the type of fonts he prefers, and the GUI
> environment.
>
> In the meantime they can have a look at several articles and blog posts
> on the subject that I have written (one of my pet topics
> obviously):
>
> -http://www.sabi.co.uk/Notes/linuxFonts.html
> -http://www.sabi.co.uk/Cfg/Fontconfig/
> -http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/22-one.html?220305#220305
> -https://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/14-one.html?140228#140228
>
> Also:
>
> -http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/12-two.html#120225
> -http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/12-two.html#120206
> -http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/anno06-2nd.html#060509