fontconfig-ultimate - improve font rendering without hassle

Message

fau · Post by **fau** » Wed Jun 11, 2014 9:37 pm

Hi,
Here is my attempt to bring fontconfig-ultimate project to Gentoo. Read more about it on author's homepage: http://bohoomil.com/ or below.
It's supposed to be hassle-free so I'll try to keep it short

Screenshots

They may look bad if your monitor doesn't have RGB subpixel layout. Test it here.

Motivation

Probably like most of you I've run into many problems with font rendering on Gentoo. Fontconfig / freetype updates used to break it fairly often and I cba to configure everything manually. Eventually I've decided to deal with it for good. In the process I ran into fontconfig-ultimate project, wrote an ebuild and lived happily ever after.
Looks great, doesn't noticeably change with updates and doesn't require me to maintain it.

Installation

If you want to preserve your current settings you can make a backup copy of /etc/fonts/conf.d
Code: Select all
```
$ cp -ar /etc/fonts/conf.d ~/
```
Emerge media-fonts/infinality-ultimate-meta and follow instructions.
Code: Select all
```
$ emerge infinality-ultimate-meta
```
1. Disable all rules but 52-infinality.conf using eselect fontconfig
2. Enable one of "ultimate" presets using eselect infinality
3. Select ultimate lcdfilter settings using eselect lcdfilter

Keep in mind that some web browsers have internal font rendering engine. Eg. so as to use freetype with firefox you need to compile it with system-cairo use-flag.

Some details after all

The package consists of:
1. A set of configuration files for fontconfig and lcdfilter fine tunning font rendering. Default fontconfig configuration is quite rough and specific fonts need some tweaks to look good. These are provided here.
2. A set of font replacement rules for generic font families (serif, sans, monospace, cursive, fantasy). ultimate-ms and ultimate-free presets use microsoft free internet fonts and their metric-compatible libre alternatives. fonts-extra use-flag installs replacements for even more font families.

All fonts are individually configured for best looks.
Keep in mind that specialized printing and rendering software (such as ghostscript, libreoffice, document viewers, some browsers) use their own fonts and rendering engines so they wont get affected unless compiled with special use-flags (system-cairo for firefox).

Let me know what you think. Please report bugs to me for now because Gentoo's version differs from original.

References

Homepage: http://bohoomil.com/
Git repository: https://github.com/bohoomil/fontconfig-ultimate
Arch wiki page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In ... le%2Bfonts
Gentoo bugzilla entry: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=494204

Perfect Gentleman · Post by **Perfect Gentleman** » Thu Jun 12, 2014 10:35 am

fau, it would be great to have ib-fonts collection in Gentoo also.

fau · Post by **fau** » Thu Jun 12, 2014 2:20 pm

Yes it would be cool - especially for non-latin scripts.
However there are some difficulties and I don't think it will happen unless a gentoo dev picks it up. Adding gazzilion font ebuilds to sunrise and maintaining them isn't an option now.
There are 138 fonts in ib-fonts and the total number of fonts in portage is 169 atm. This puts things into perspective

I'll work on adding some more fonts from portage as dependencies though. Now with pfl things will get easier.

This is why I asked if there was a standalone font manager. This would be the best solution for now.

edit: Keep in mind that all default fonts for five standard font families are pulled in as dependencies by fonts-free and fonts-ms use-flag. Some other fonts from ib-meta-extended-lt are pulled too if you enable fonts-extra use-flag.

Astronaut · Post by **Astronaut** » Sun Jul 13, 2014 1:19 am

Hello Fau! I've installed the overlay weeks ago, wasn't aware of this post.

Thanks a lot for your efforts, fonts are remarkably better now

shazeal · Post by **shazeal** » Sat Aug 16, 2014 10:12 pm

Great stuff, I was using the standard infinality settings before but they looked like a blurred mess compared to these settings!

Thanks!

spectromas · Post by **spectromas** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 2:28 am

Is there any chance you could update the 9999 build, it doesn't seem to work.

spectromas · Post by **spectromas** » Fri Dec 05, 2014 9:39 pm

I have fixed the 9999 ebuild, it was actually very simple. I think I have everything included and going where it should go:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B66bb ... XRURXVWVzg

I can see a massive difference with this version, the odd kerning that existed for some fonts has been fixed and everything just looks so much better. I also downloaded most of the infinality-bundle fonts and and I think they're helping.

I'm interested in making an ebuild of for the fonts bundle, one ebuild for the whole lot would be ok? When I downloaded and extracted them all they had a lot of unnecessary stuff with them, mainly for the Arch packages, any suggestions on the best way to cherry pick the fonts and nothing else?

yngwin · Post by **yngwin** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 7:37 am

If any of you want to help get this into the official Gentoo tree, please contact me, so we can work out details. And maybe you can help proxy-maintain (since my time is limited). Let's get the best possible font rendering into Gentoo!

gerard27 · Post by **gerard27** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 8:13 pm

Thanks fau.
Both Thunderbird and Firefox fonts are way better than before.

There's only one thing that hasn't improved:
Some characters are either blueish or redish.
This also occurs in text writers be it libreoffice,kate,kwrite or editra,even text in Gimp!
I wonder what could cause this.
Gerard.

Edit: The blueish and redish fonts I also had before.

Perfect Gentleman · Post by **Perfect Gentleman** » Tue Dec 30, 2014 1:56 pm

yngwin wrote:If any of you want to help get this into the official Gentoo tree, please contact me, so we can work out details. And maybe you can help proxy-maintain (since my time is limited). Let's get the best possible font rendering into Gentoo!

What should be done?

yngwin · Post by **yngwin** » Sat Jan 03, 2015 3:17 am

gerard82 wrote:There's only one thing that hasn't improved:
Some characters are either blueish or redish.
This also occurs in text writers be it libreoffice,kate,kwrite or editra,even text in Gimp!
I wonder what could cause this.
Gerard.

Edit: The blueish and redish fonts I also had before.

Try different sub-pixel settings. eselect fontconfig has several options for 10-sub-pixel-*. One of them should be correct for your display. (Tho I'm not sure at this point if that is overridden by infinality.)

Ant P. · Post by **Ant P.** » Sat Jan 03, 2015 10:04 pm

I looked into what infinality was doing once - it overrides just about everything in conf.d when it's enabled. Pollutes the environment too! (ick)

Massimo B. · Post by **Massimo B.** » Fri Feb 27, 2015 2:54 pm

Thanks for this hint, I will try this fontconfig, before I was following [topic=805623]this guide[/topic]. But some pages in firefox where improved, some others got worse..

What is a good setup for eselect infinality and lcdfilter? Looking at /etc/fonts/infinality/infinality.conf I see all are based on Arial, but Linux is using the DejaVu fonts which I prefer. So current I have set both to "linux".

And then how do I test that easily after switching? Do I need to restart X, the WM, or just an application?

Massimo B. · Post by **Massimo B.** » Thu Mar 05, 2015 4:04 pm

I have this setup, setting linux fonts and ubuntu lcd:

Code: Select all

# for mod in infinality lcdfilter;do eselect $mod show;done
Current style symlink:
  /etc/fonts/infinality/styles.conf.avail/linux
Current lcdfilter style symlink:
  /usr/share/eselect-lcdfilter/env.d/ubuntu

I'm still not content ans fonts are not sharp. Previously I preferred DejaVu fonts, now I try to find out what default Sans fonts are pointing to. This should be DejaVu as said here:

Code: Select all

# grep Linux /etc/fonts/infinality/infinality.conf 
		Linux           - subpixel AA, sans=DejaVu Sans

# grep family /etc/fonts/infinality/conf.d/20-aliases-default-linux.conf 
		<family>sans-serif</family>
			<family>DejaVu Sans</family>
		<family>serif</family>
			<family>Liberation Serif</family>
		<family>monospace</family>
			<family>Liberation Mono</family>

But switching the default font in Xfce between Sans and DejaVu (book or condensed) results in different fonts. So what font is Sans aliased here actually?
Then only DejaVu Sans book looks sharp, the condensed starts blurring, same for the Droid Fonts. Another sharp font I found after all the new font deps that came from fontconfig-ultimate, is Noto Sans.

Perfect Gentleman · Post by **Perfect Gentleman** » Sat Apr 04, 2015 6:59 am

any news, updates ?

alacheesu · Post by **alacheesu** » Sat Apr 04, 2015 2:51 pm

the ebuild is currently broken as app-admin/eselect-lcdfilter and app-admin/eselect-infinality have been moved from app-admin to app-eselect.

Perfect Gentleman · Post by **Perfect Gentleman** » Sat Apr 04, 2015 4:49 pm

i've beed using this ebuild (slightly corrected) since it was published here

Astronaut · Post by **Astronaut** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 11:30 am

The ebuild is working fine here! I think that with newer releases bohoomil is patching freetype too

https://github.com/bohoomil/fontconfig- ... e/releases

I'm satisfied with infinality, however on KDE, I had to increase the font size like in this pic, even though my dpi was set correctly

Perfect Gentleman · Post by **Perfect Gentleman** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 12:00 pm

Astronaut, could you post the used ebuild here?

Astronaut · Post by **Astronaut** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 12:28 pm

Yes here it is

https://bpaste.net/show/826525618c99

yoshi314 · Post by **yoshi314** » Wed Apr 15, 2015 9:29 am

gerard82 wrote:Thanks fau.
Both Thunderbird and Firefox fonts are way better than before.

There's only one thing that hasn't improved:
Some characters are either blueish or redish.
This also occurs in text writers be it libreoffice,kate,kwrite or editra,even text in Gimp!
I wonder what could cause this.
Gerard.

Edit: The blueish and redish fonts I also had before.

I believe you need to set different subpixel aliasing than typical. Check here to find out : http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/subpixel.php

Perfect Gentleman · Post by **Perfect Gentleman** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 4:44 pm

Astronaut,

Code: Select all

MY_PV=$(replace_version_separator 3 "-")

?

Astronaut · Post by **Astronaut** » Sun Apr 19, 2015 10:21 pm

Perfect Gentleman,

Sorry, that's because I omitted the ebuild name +version:

I used media-libs/fontconfig-ultimate-2.11.1.13

fau · Post by **fau** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 3:43 pm

Sorry guys, I'm gonna update the ebuild and contact yngwin soon. Please report critical breakages in the bugzilla entry (linked in the first post) next time, so I get notifications.

kernelOfTruth · Post by **kernelOfTruth** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 12:19 am

One small correction for the ebuild:

there's no media-fonts/libertine-ttf

but

media-fonts/libertine

Also the following thread might be useful:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-5 ... nguas.html

(setting linguas via /etc/portage/package.use)

Thank you very much for keeping it up-to-date