Re: terminal true type fonts
On Tue, Aug 22, 2006 at 05:45:33AM EDT, Jochen Schulz wrote:
[..]
>
> In my opinion, Bitstream on Linux beats them all. Only Tahoma on Windows
> (not shown) comes close for small font sizes. Verdana on Linux is quite
> ok, too. But it is too wide (and screen space is precious on my
> notebook) and it looks like there were "holes" in some lines (see the
> "x" character in verdana-linux).
I have some old screenshots exemplifying different problems I ran into
regarding fonts, terminals, CSS, unicode, .. in this directory:
http://www.geocities.com/cga9999/pic00/
One that uses verdana for everything is in the moz.png file.
Where proportional screen fonts are concerned this is about the best I
have been able to achieve ..
What I like about verdana 8pt is that it ends up looking a lot like my
preferred fixed-width font (terminus).
see im00.png
.. or any of the vim*.png files.
Another thing that I like is its "clean" look. On my display at least,
I never get this impression of "dribbling" that I have seen all too
often with the Vera fonts. A little as if you had a hair or some fluff
stuck in the nib of your fountain pen. The other thing that irritates
me with the Vera fonts -- especially with smaller sizes, is the fact
that in some renderings some glyphs look like they were drawn with
varying pressure applied. Some lines appear to be darker than others.
Maybe you could compare the rendering of 'File' (File menu) in my
mozilla screenshot with the rendering on your box .. it doesn't have to
be mozilla.. practically any gtk app will have it.
What I see is that with Vera sans the first 3 letters only have
horizontal/vertical lines so the rendering is ok. The 'e' on the other
hand looks blurred.
Here's an example:
http://www.ubuntu.com/include/img/openoffice.png
.. that may clarify the above.
Your rendering of the Vera fonts, BTW looks rather different from what
you usually see when you first fire up gnome etc. just after installing
(of on live CD's such as ubuntu's..) .. so I assume you must have done
quite a bit of tweaking.
> > Could be that "X" lets you do more in the way of tweaking than
> > Windows does (?)
>
> Yes, but I guess that's also due to some patents that have to be
> worked around.
I wish there was a good font book available. I've done quite a bit of
reading on fonts (and tweaking) but everything I have run into does not
really do much to clarify the issues.
Not sure there are many people who really understand them either. I
have read a few docs and often got the feeling that their authors were
just repeating stuff they had read elsewhere and that they didn't know
what they were talking about.
:-)
> And of course different people prefer different styles. Some people
> don't like the "blurred" looks at all and prefer bitmap style fonts.
>
Well .. I'm not sure where anyone ever got the idea that fonts should
look blurred. I mean if I buy a book from amazon and I get a "blurred"
copy.. I send it back right away. For stuff that you glance at it may
be ok, but where reading is concerned .. I wouldn't do it. Your eyes
would desperately (and automatically) try to focus thus causing
eyestrain etc.
> I myself have hesitated a long time to switch over to a terminal
> emulator which can use TrueType fonts. But for some time now, the
> Bitstream Monospace font looks really beautiful when you have
> configured X's DPI settings correctlyand found the right answers to
> 'dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config'. You can see a small portion of
> it in the bistream-linux screenshot, only at a different size which
> doesn't like so condensed.
You could take a look at the vim*.png files in the above directory.
I've found this terminus font a pleasure to work with.
>
> > But then I suppose it mostly depends on what you are looking for..
> > The way I have set up my fonts, Verdana 8 pts on my laptop with a
> > display capable of roughly 116 dpi and no AA looks good to me.
> > Larger fonts of course do not look so good.
>
> Yup, small fonts with AA tend to look less crisp. I am using Bitstream
> Sans at 8pt on a 14" 1024x768 flat panel and it works quite well. But
> I have noticed some people like even smaller fonts, so it stays a
> matter of taste.
>
> > What I don't like about Bitstream Vera is that some glyphs look like
> > someone messed up before the ink had time to dry.
>
> Does this also apply to
> <http://debris/~jrschulz/gfx/fonts/bitstream-linux.png>?
Sorry but I could not access this link for some reason.
Host not found.
Thanks
cga
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