Prettier Fonts in KDE3

[metalhedd]

the default font for almost everything in KDE3 is Helvetica, and its is really ugly compared to some of the other fonts that ship with KDE. the first thing I Do after installing KDE Is to go to Control Center -> Look & Feel -> Fonts and change all instances of Helvetica to Arial, you should also do this in Konqueror's look and feel settings. the helvetica font that is installed doesn't anti-alias very well, this can be seen in the very first screen of the control center. the actual Words "Control Center" Look terrible even with anti aliasing enabled, but with Arial they look terrific. I thought my AA Was broken or something because certain pages would come up really jagged looking, switching to arial fixed everything and now my fonts look much better than they did in windows.

[delta407]

Alternatively, you can use True Type fonts, which are almost invariably better than the ones that ship with KDE. Microsoft has free fonts for download here, and even though it's Microsoft, it's not that evil because they hired other, non-Microsoft people to make 'em.
_________________
I don't believe in witty sigs.

[Naan Yaar]

Second that. I found that one font that is not part of the free font pack from Microsoft that is very good is "Tahoma", especially for menus, etc.. If you have a Windows install, you can filch it from there (breaking all kinds of EULAs, I am sure ) For web browsing, I find that Verdana is a pretty good general purpose font.

[delta407]

[trythil]

I find that Arial italic works very nicely for menubars and window titles.
Antialiased Arial italic is just, well, really cool-looking -- it makes the font stand out from the rest of the window, and the edges aren't eye-burning-aliased.

Though, I'll have to agree with delta407 here -- I really like Tahoma. Mmm...antialiased Tahoma. shiny

Anyway, you may also want to try Trebuchet MS. Yeah, you'll have to go through a Windows install for it (this is why I keep mine around ), but it's also rather easy on the eyes - very easy to discern each glyph.

http://www.fontfoundry.com has a great collection of fonts, some special-purpose, some clear enough to use in everyday work.

[metalhedd]

here's a great place to get a b unch of ttf fonts.. someone should write a little script to grab them all and extract them all.

http://freethemes.vol.at/fonts/zips/

[bjw]

Use a command line ftp application (I recommend lftp) and run:

lftp http://freethemes.vol.at/fonts

(when you connect, you can do a "ls" and see the directories)..

Then run (at the "lftp>" prompt):

mirror -c zips

....wait a bit and the "zips" directory - with all the fonts - will be mirror'd to your machine.

Not a script, but an easy to way to grab them

-bjw

[Mallrats]

I used to think downloading fonts to make your computer pretty was a woman thing, but after I saw some beautiful AA, I became a woman myself

[Ian Goldby]

[Nu-Bee_4VR]

[BarryJ]

I'm a big fan of the Bitstream Vera fonts that are in portage, just beautiful.

[nsahoo]

get the webFonts.sh script from this url and run it. It'll fetch many MS Fonts and install them for you.

[nsahoo]

another thumb up for Trebuchet MS, that is my default kde font now a days.

[GentooBox]

Warning:

I changed all my fonts in KDE 3.2 beta from Helvetica to Arial for some time ago, and then all went wrong.

konqueror menu looked funny with a 3line-menu like this:

Files bla bla
bla bla bla
help

if you have this problem, and you have a correction to it, then please tell it to me.

i tryed to restart X, but it still was there.
i even rebooted my box, and that dident even solve it.
_________________
Encrypt, lock up everything and duct tape the rest