updated nvidia, xorg-server, font rendering sux :( [SOLVED]

ExecutorElassus

Just got back from a trip, and updated the kernel (gentoo-sources-4.5.1), nvidia-drivers (364.15), and xorg-server (1.18.3). Now, when I start back into X (actually FVWM), fonts in a bunch of apps look terrible: audacious, libreoffice, the file-save dialog for Opera, mplayer, etc (but not the fonts that Opera renders itself, such as the context menu or this text-entry field).

So, what update caused font rendering to go so wonky? All the fonts are pixellated and ugly, to the point that unequal-weight fonts (like the otherwise excellent Linux Libertine) are completely unreadable in LibreOffice.

Thanks for the help,

EE
Update: this is only seeming to affect GTK apps: the font rendering in Qt apps (such as K3B or Dolphin) still looks fine. I vaguely think it has something to do with either mesa or cairo, but atm I can't update mesa (due to this bug). I'll try working around that and update some other stuff and see if it gets fixed.

Buffoon · Veteran Joined: 17 Jun 2015 Posts: 1369 Location: EU or US

I doubt mesa has anything to do with your problem in a nvidia system.

ExecutorElassus · Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2016 8:00 pm Post subject:

update: I remerged cairo, glib, gtk+:2 and gtk+:3. It did not help, and in fact, font rendering is even worse. Audacious looks like it's using some dot-matrix console font, and the fonts in LibreOffice are awful in the menus now as well (and the document itself is still damn near unreadable).

Any idea what might be causing this? It's an unholy mess. Should I try downgrading xorg-server, and see if that fixes it? Or nvidia-drivers?

EDIT: Here's another wrinkle: lxappearance allows me to set font hinting and antialiasing for gtk apps. However, the setting isn't being preserved. Why might that be?

Cheers,

EE

Buffoon · Veteran Joined: 17 Jun 2015 Posts: 1369 Location: EU or US

Maybe you should start with eselect fontconfig list

ExecutorElassus · Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2016 8:23 pm Post subject:

I get this:

ExecutorElassus · Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2016 6:07 pm Post subject:

Ah, I fixed it. Your comment put me on the path to looking into my fontconfig settings. Turns out I had kinda weak settings in my ~/.fonts.conf file, and also needed to enable some of the items in the eselect list. Now things look much better (and I also figured out that using a "weight=x" statement in my conkyrc file was being ignored and causing it to default to something stupid, so now I deleted all those and conky is more reliable as well).

Thanks for the help! Setting to [SOLVED]

EE