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GUI Software Linux

Updated And Unified Font HOWTO 29

Posted by timothy from the glypical-user-interface dept.
avibrazil writes "A new Linux Font HOWTO was published with way more practical info for modern systems. The still-useful parts of the two former Font HOWTOs from TLDP were unified in this new one, to be a definitive one-stop-shop for Linux font solutions."
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Updated And Unified Font HOWTO More

Updated And Unified Font HOWTO

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  • Fonts will always confuse me on linux (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drakethegreat ( 832715 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @08:41PM (#11204846) Homepage
    The reason for this seems to root from the fact that gnome for example attempts to create standards across the system for applications to use in their framework and then applications try to allow you to modify the fonts in them seperately. Then you have multiple ways to adjust fonts system wide as well. I think that a lot of work is still needed with Linux and fonts. Its something (and one of the only things) that Windows and MacOS do better. Its still something that is easily tolerable.

  • The article in two words... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Maïdjeurtam ( 101190 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @08:56PM (#11204963) Homepage Journal
    ...install Microsoft core fonts or your desktop will look ugly.

    Of course, the legality of installing Microsoft fonts if you haven't a Windows license is doubtful.

    I'm surprised that there aren't successful attempts at designing MS compatible fonts. What would it take? It sure would help Free Software desktops if there was a free (speech) version of Arial, Verdana and friends available. Why wouldn't the open source model work for fonts design?

    • Re:The article in two words... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @09:36PM (#11205253)
      Of course, the legality of installing Microsoft fonts if you haven't a Windows license is doubtful.

      HPUX 11.0, and probably 11.11, come with the ubiquitous ms truetype fonts. They also come with a license that boils down to "distribute these however you want, as long as this license file is included." I believe the license that HP uses is one of the earliest that microsoft ever applied to those fonts, long before they realized that linux and XFree86 would ride along for free. If I were at work, I'd post the actual text of the license. But I'm not, so you'll just have to believe me. You should believe me, it is something I have double, triple and quadruple checked because everytime this discussion comes up about MS's license of those fonts I start to have doubts and go and re-read the HP license again.

      I think, to be on the safe side, next time I remember to look, I'm going to tar the whole thing up and archive it in case an "upgrade" from HP silently replaces that license file.
      • What kind of geek are you that you cant access a Unix machine from... anywhere?

      • Re:The article in two words... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Maïdjeurtam ( 101190 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @09:58PM (#11205413) Homepage Journal
        There is a MS Fonts repository at sourceforge [sourceforge.net], i.e. they redistribute the files under the old license, like the one you are describing. I believe that one of the usual fonts misses, though (Tahoma, IIRC), because it was released later, and so never with the gentle license.

        It's a good transition solution, but I really think that we (slashdotters) should launch a project aiming at redesigning Tahoma, Georgia, Verdana, Mono, Comic, Courier New, Impact, Arial, Arial Black, Lucida and Trebuchet. It wouldn't be exactly the same fonts, but their properties (size, spacing, kerning) and looks would be equivalents to those they clone, so that interchanging them with MS's ones wouldn't break any documents / web pages.

        Of course, those new fonts would be GPL'd.
        • Why GPL fonts? GPL is a very encumbering license. You could stick them just in free domain, or if the author wants to maintain credit, BSD.

          Ensuring all derivatives of the fonts and such are also GPL is just really, really silly. In fact talking about them with software licenses is already bad enough.

          You're a GPL zealot aren't you? :)
        • I really think that we (slashdotters) should launch a project aiming at redesigning Tahoma, Georgia, Verdana, Mono, Comic, Courier New, Impact, Arial, Arial Black, Lucida and Trebuchet. It wouldn't be exactly the same fonts, but their properties (size, spacing, kerning) and looks would be equivalents to those they clone, so that interchanging them with MS's ones wouldn't break any documents / web pages.

          *gasp*

          Didn't you read the HOWTO!?!? That would be wrong! That would be creating a "ripoff"! [tldp.org] We're al

        • Except not Comic. So far as Im concerned, taking an human life should be acceptable

          1. In war
          2. Defending yourself, or others
          3. Defending paticularaly valuable property
          4. The victim has ever used MS Comic Sans
    • I've had more success by *not* installing the MS Corefonts. Somehow the kerning gets totally messed up when I open documents that use Times New Roman such that a line of text will be scrunched up a quarter inch wide. So I made a copy of Bitstream Vera Serif as Times New Roman and haven't looked back since. The Bitstream Vera fonts are f'ing awesome and I use them for everything.

  • ...I think the way I made it work was (Score:4, Interesting)

    by acousticiris ( 656375 ) * on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @09:21PM (#11205159)
    $ emerge kde

    A few beers and one long period of REM later (ok...maybe two), KDE was installed ... I messed with the nice KDE control app to configure font smoothing... a few seconds later and my fonts looked fine. I'm a linux newb, ... but what's the big deal here? Everything looks fine...everything appears anti-aliased and pleasent to the eye. I know in other distros from years back that this wasn't the case...but it works now, and didn't take me any real effort to get it working... Is there some mystery here that I accidently stumbled upon, or is this just a problem that has been solved that someone feels necessary to write a really long HOWTO on? Or am I just an idiot? (I'm sure someone will reply with such an answer...this is Slashdot!)

    It does seem that if I *am* an idiot, that I shouldn't be expected to follow a 13 step program to fix it. 12 steps, and I wouldn't have been drinking the beer in the first place...I would have just had a couple of really long restful naps while Gentoo, emerge, the compilers, and whatever other magic occurs while those endless make screens flash up on my screen.

    • Re:...I think the way I made it work was (Score:4, Insightful)

      by setagllib ( 753300 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @11:06PM (#11205803)
      It's fatally exaggerated. Even without KDE's tools the worst you have to do in a sufficiently convenient distribution (Gentoo, for instance) is copy the fonts to the right directory and 'ttmkfdir', then xset fp rehash or restart the server. If the directory is specified in xorg.conf it's done.

      Unified smoothing is another story (but GTK2/Xft just do it for you by default) but not much harder. Still something I never bothered with because us old-fashioned developer types find that extended sessions of smoothed fonts messes with the mind. At the very least, my aMSN, aterm and nedit should never have any smoothing at all. Does KDE's option force all things to smooth or what?
      • I've found the smoothed Vera Sans Mono very pleasant and usable in both gvim and emacs (gentoo emacs-cvs) and you may also be interested in this [lowing.org] if you didn't see it already in the recent K5 article. Some of the fonts listed there are pretty good.
    • A few beers and one long period of REM later ... Or am I just an idiot?

      Depends if you meant REM [wikipedia.org] or R.E.M. [wikipedia.org].
  • There's no howto, it already works!

    Oh damn, there goes my karma.
    • ...Unless you are a professional typographer, in which case you will delete Comic Sans, and cure your strong aversion to Arial, by installing a decent cut of Helvetica instead.

      Take the Arial or Helvetica Quiz [iliveonyourvisits.com] to see if you can tell the difference.

    • I recently sent a simple business-card and letterhead job to a local print shop for a client. I saved my Mac QuarkXpress file with a nice and correct three-letter extension, and I converted each PostScript font from Mac to Windows (Adobe Avenir) and the idiots didn't know how to install the fonts on their stupid Windows PC. So they converted everything in the Xpress document to Arial and tried to convince my client that he really wanted it that way!

  • Relevant patents expire in 2009, 2012 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Andy_R ( 114137 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @09:27PM (#11205199) Homepage Journal
    Assuming that the US doesn't extend patents past 20 years, adopting the Apple method of hinting truetype fonts should be legal as of May 2009/2012

    Patent US5155805: Method and apparatus for moving control points in displaying digital typeface on raster output devices. Filed on May, 8 1989

    Patent US5159668: Method and apparatus for manipulating outlines in improving digital typeface on raster output devices. Filed on May, 8 1989

    Patent US5325479: Method and apparatus for moving control points in displaying digital typeface on raster output devices. Filed on May 28, 1992
  • From Section 3 [tldp.org]:

    The Microsoft Core Fonts [...]

    Some people say these fonts are free only for who have a Microsoft Windows license.

    Actually, according to Microsoft's licensing agreement, these fonts are only free for use with Microsoft Windows.

    It does not matter if you have a Windows license or not, as the fonts are only to be used within Windows itself.

    This was covered on Slashdot before, months or years ago in fact. Why won't the keepers of the new FAQ admit as much and let their readers decide what they

  • The default autohinter has gone a long way (Score:3, Informative)

    by abdulla ( 523920 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @10:36PM (#11205647)
    I just tried out the byte code interpreter rpm they have on the website and under gnome (without hinting turned off for the ranges they say, since I can't find the option). It looks a lot better with the autohinter. This is with both bitstream and microsoft fonts. If you're happy with the latest version of the autohinter, and want your fonts antialiased across the board, don't bother with the byte code interpreter.
  • All the following steps basically replaced the ones outlined in linuxdoc.org, i think...

    here's how i do it on my debian machine. few steps (why cant they just make it work out of the box), but really easy nevertheless.

    dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig
    then select whether you want crt/lcd rendering

    apt-get install msttcorefonts
    automatically downloads and installs microsoft truetype fonts

    "kcontrol trick"
    kde's control center -> sys admin -> font installer

    go into administrator mode (root). wait for you
  • Whatever font I try to use (incl. M$ fonts) I cannot get them kerned properly (tried OOo, KWord, AbiWord) in KDE. Where is the problem? Does such paits as To or VA show kerned in such apps for you?

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