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Re: Problem with Iceweasel and low-quality fonts



On 2012-05-27 11:06:18 +0000, Camaleón wrote:
> On Sun, 27 May 2012 03:55:30 +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > In the Iceweasel preferences, I have the "Allow pages to choose their
> > own fonts, instead of my selections above" option enabled. But the
> > quality of the fonts is sometimes very low, a bit like bitmap fonts,
> > without antialiasing.
> 
> Yes, I suffer for that every single day (for instance, "planet.gnome.org" 
> looks horrible with hinting enabled). I'm considering disabling that 
> option...

I had it disabled for several years, but now, some pages need their
own fonts (those using MathJax IIRC, for nice math fonts).

> > For instance on http://www.allocine.fr/ see what I get on the image I've
> > attached, for "A ne pas manquer". The FontFinder extension says:
> > 
> > Font
> > ===============================
> > font-family (stack): Tahoma,Lucida,Arial,sans-serif 
> > Font being rendered: Tahoma
> > font-size: 24px
> > 
> > $ fc-match Tahoma
> > Vera.ttf: "Bitstream Vera Sans" "Roman"
> > 
> > which is actually my default font. So, where does the problem come from?
> 
> So you are rendering B. Vera Sans instead the original Tahoma

No, Firefox doesn't render Bitstream Vera Sans, contrary to what
fc-match says. I don't know why. Seems to be a bug. As a workaround,
I've done something similar to your suggestion below:

<alias binding="same">
  <family>Tahoma</family>
  <prefer>
    <family>Bitstream Vera Sans</family>
  </prefer>
</alias>

and now the fonts are OK. You can see the difference on the attached
tahoma-vera.png file (top: Tahoma; bottom: Bitstream Vera Sans).

> but what's the problem you see? Is it about the font face or about
> the rendering (not being anti-aliased?)

Both, I would say. First a font face problem: fc-match says that
"Bitstream Vera Sans" is used, but this is not the case (without
the change above). Then a rendering problem, because a bitmap font
(without antialiasing) is used instead of a nice TrueType font.

> Look, this is how it renders in my Firefox 12 with Tahoma (truetype font) 
> installed:
> 
> http://picpaste.com/font_sample-Q03hEudo.png
> 
> Which I find it perfect, I mean, I like how it looks.

Well, I find it ugly (it's strange for a TrueType font -- or perhaps
you have disabled antialiasing?), but this is probably less visible
with a high screen resolution.

> > Note: I have a similar problem on some other pages, where the font is
> > Helvetica. But this time:
> > 
> > $ fc-match Helvetica
> > helvR12-ISO8859-1.pcf.gz: "Helvetica" "Regular"
> > 
> > which is a bitmap font. How can such bitmap fonts be disabled for the
> > web browsers (only)?
> 
> I don't see what's the problem you want to correct. When it comes to 
> fonts what's good or bad is very subjective and user-dependant...

I find a font with antialiasing of much better quality (possibly
except for small size, but this depends very much on the fonts;
for monospace, I tend to prefer bitmap fonts).

> Anyway... what I had to did once in Firefox to get some rendering looking 
> "good" was creating a file in my home directory "~/.fonts.conf" with this 
> inside:
> 
> <fontconfig>
> <alias binding="same">
> <family>Helvetica</family>
> <prefer>
> <family>Arial</family>
> </prefer>
> </alias>
> </fontconfig>

Thanks, this works. You can see the difference on the attached
helvetica-arial.png file (left: Helvetica; right: Arial).

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.net> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)

Attachment: helvetica-arial.png
Description: PNG image

Attachment: tahoma-vera.png
Description: PNG image


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