gtk, fonts, locales
For starts, I'm working on trying to fix the Ugly Font Syndrome that
people complain about in Debian. I recently got bit by this problem
after a dist-upgrade on Sid.
First, the locale for users doesn't seem to be set properly. THe locale
was C, even though it should have been en_US (iso8859-1). I found a
file /etc/environment that had nothing in it but
LANG=C
Changing that to be en_US, and logging back in, the locale command
reported that my locale was indeed en_US. What is that file's full
purpose? What determines what locale is the default? If I install the
locale package and generate only the en_US locale, shouldn't that become
the default?
Second, for gtk, there is no system gtkrc for en_US or iso8859-1 users.
I have no clue which gtkrc file is being loaded... how can I check
this? In any event, I made a new gtkrc file /etc/gtk/gtkrc.en_US, can
configured it to use the iso8859-1 fonts, and then things got a lot
prettier. ALthough a lot smaller. Why this fontset is smaller I have
no clue, and why iso8859-1 is more readable/clearer than, say,
iso8859-2, I also don't know. I don't even know where there is a -1 and
a -2 (could someone please help me out with that?). What I do know is
that things are a lot more readable if 8859-1 is set, and the point size
is set up a bit higher (I used 14 pt.).
Finally, there is a bug in gtkhtml and it's default font selection.
Even with my locale set, it defaults to the iso10646 fontset. This is a
known bug in gtkhtml, and not necessary debian's responsibility to fix.
However, I am curious as to why I have an iso10646 fontset. It
definitely isn't a fontset I want, and don't use. Why is it installed?
Should there perhaps be a different set of X font package for the
differnt locales (or at least geographic/cultural/linguistic regions) ?
I know that could get big, but I'm guessing thee is a big waste in disk
and download space for these? Or is the memory usage not that high for
each locale?
So what I want to know is why fontsets that *seem* to be for the same
set of language (iso8859-1 and the other iso8859-* ... why are there
different ones, and why are they of differing quality) ? Why is there
no gtkrc file for en_US/iso8859-1 ?
Also, during GNOME login, the splash screen displays status messages..
these are totally unreadble. What causes that? How can I figure out
which font is being used? Finally, in KDE the default font is very ugly
and nearly unreadble. Setting AA helped, but it should still be readble
without that. I have no clue how KDE/Qt works, so I'm not sure how to
debug its font problem on Debian, but if anyone wishes to give some
pointers, I'd be glad to look into it.
Thanks,
Sean Etc.
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