Upgrade to Firefox 1.5 messed up default font (Solved)

[oneandoneis2]

I've read the gentoo wiki page on getting nice fonts, and I've played with all the firefox settings. So far, other than the "Display resolution" option, no change made to any of the font settings has made any difference to what actually shows up on the screen.

The problem isn't that FF doesn't display anti-aliased fonts. Every bit of text I can see on this forum, for instance, is anti-aliased.

It's the default font, the font it uses on a page that doesn't specify a font, that's causing me problems: No matter what settings I change, the default font remains un-aliased and, frankly, ugly..

Here's how fonts used to look on such a page with 1.0.8:
Screenshot 1

And here's how they look following the upgrade:
Screenshot 2

So: I didn't change any of the settings, and I didn't change the page's HTML. And yet the upgrade has made the default font go from smooth & nice to look at, to a nastily pixellated & quite hard to read appearance. And nothing I do seems to change it.

Oh, and Firefox 1.5 does use anti-aliased fonts on my laptop, running Ubuntu, on the same page, and that's with a copy of the same profile. So it can't be any of my user settings, presumably..

Any advice?

[pem]

Have a look here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-32 ... ml#3299215.
It has changed my browsing experience

[erikm]

I've read the gentoo wiki page on getting nice fonts, and I've played with all the firefox settings. So far, other than the "Display resolution" option, no change made to any of the font settings has made any difference to what actually shows up on the screen.

The problem isn't that FF doesn't display anti-aliased fonts. Every bit of text I can see on this forum, for instance, is anti-aliased.

It's the default font, the font it uses on a page that doesn't specify a font, that's causing me problems: No matter what settings I change, the default font remains un-aliased and, frankly, ugly..

Here's how fonts used to look on such a page with 1.0.8:
Screenshot 1

And here's how they look following the upgrade:
Screenshot 2

So: I didn't change any of the settings, and I didn't change the page's HTML. And yet the upgrade has made the default font go from smooth & nice to look at, to a nastily pixellated & quite hard to read appearance. And nothing I do seems to change it.

Oh, and Firefox 1.5 does use anti-aliased fonts on my laptop, running Ubuntu, on the same page, and that's with a copy of the same profile. So it can't be any of my user settings, presumably..

Any advice?

In your shoes, I'd try

Code: Select all

~# emerge ttf-bitstream-vera

or

Code: Select all

~# emerge corefonts

Also check which fontpaths come first in /etc/X11/xorg.conf .

[oneandoneis2]

Have a look here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-32 ... ml#3299215.
It has changed my browsing experience

Sadly, although most other fonts got changed by this, the firefox default remains resolutely un-aliased

In your shoes, I'd try
Code:
~# emerge ttf-bitstream-vera

or
Code:
~# emerge corefonts

Already got both, I'm afraid...

Thanks for the suggestions!

[oneandoneis2]

Just found something that makes me even more puzzled:

The page I notice this issue most on is a PHP page that I use to display my RSS feeds. So I went to the page, did a "View source", and then copied the source into a .html file.

The HTML file looks perfect: It's smoothly anti-aliased. But it's totally identical to the PHP page in every way: The only thing that has changed is the extension at the end of the filename.

???

[pem]

Well, I don't think that a page extension could mess up your fonts. Maybe there's different CSS coming along with the different extensions...

So the trick to get nice fonts is to look for the ones that are rendered like shit on your desktop. Whatever could be the application. So each time you run into a non-antiliased, you open up your ~/.fonts.conf and you try to alias the ugly font to a nicer font that looks like.

It's either that or you will have to remove the ugly fonts from your installed files. If you prefer this way, each time that an update is available, you will have to delete the ugly fonts by hand . Not very efficient, to say the least.

As an example, here's my ~/.fonts.conf. Just put it under your home and apply it by using the command 'fc-cache':

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<!-- /etc/fonts/local.conf file for local customizations -->
<fontconfig>
<!--
  Enable sub-pixel rendering
        <match target="font">
                <edit name="rgba" mode="assign"><const>rgb</const></edit>
                <edit name="antialias" mode="assign"><bool>true</bool></edit>
                <edit name="autohint" mode="assign"><bool>true</bool></edit>
                <edit name="hinting" mode="assign"><bool>true</bool></edit>
        </match>

-->
        <match target="pattern" name="family">
                <test name="family" qual="any">
                        <string>sans-serif</string>
                </test>
                <edit mode="assign" name="family">
                        <string>Bitstream Vera Serif</string>
                </edit>
        </match>
        <match target="pattern" name="family">
                <test name="family" qual="any">
                        <string>Helvetica</string>
                </test>
                <edit mode="assign" name="family">
                        <string>Bitstream Vera Sans</string>
                </edit>
        </match>
        <match target="pattern" name="family">
                <test name="family" qual="any">
                        <string>courier</string>
                </test>
                <edit mode="assign" name="family">
                        <string>Bitstream Vera Sans Mono</string>
                </edit>
        </match>
</fontconfig>

[oneandoneis2]

Well, I don't think that a page extension could mess up your fonts.

I find it very odd myself, but that does seem to be what's happening...

http://www.oneandoneis2.org/news.php is the PHP page that has no anti-aliasing, and http://www.oneandoneis2.org/news.html is a copy that looks fine. As far as I can tell, they should both render exactly the same. (The PHP page updates every half-hour, by the way, so it may well have different entries by the time you look at it...)

I've finally tracked down the ugly font that FF is presenting me with: It's Times. So I put an entry into .fonts.conf that replaced Times with Times New Roman, and restarted Firefox.

Voila! Non-ugly fonts!

Many thanks for the help, fonts are definitely not my strong point & I had no idea how to alias an ugly one to a nicer one. Hopefully this issue will never raise it's ugly head again