Re: Font rendering (was:Can't login to Xfce after reboot in Debian 7.5)

[Filip <filip@fbvnet.be>]

On Fri, 16 May 2014 00:29:22 +0600
Muntasim Ul Haque <tranjeeshan@inventati.org> wrote:


> Also, is there any better alternative to Infinality for Debian. I
> want better font rendering. The default font rendering is bad. Also
> changing the anti-aliasing and other doesn't make a big difference.
> 
> -Muntasim Ul Haque
> /
> /
> 
> 
> 
> 

Font rendering is all a matter of taste, and it also varies from monitor
to monitor. All I can say is my fonts don't look any worse on Debian
compared to other distributions.

I have customized the following ~/.fonts.conf and I'm happy with it.
I don't have the Microsoft fonts installed so I use appropriate font
substitutions:

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="rgba">
      <const>rgb</const>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="hinting">
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle">
      <const>hintslight</const>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <dir>~/.fonts</dir>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="antialias">
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="lcdfilter">
      <const>lcddefault</const>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="pattern" >
    <test name="family" qual="any" >
      <string>Helvetica</string>
    </test>
    <edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="same">
      <string>Liberation Sans</string>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="pattern">
    <test name="family" qual="any" >
      <string>Arial</string>
    </test>
    <edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="same">
      <string>Liberation Sans</string>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="pattern">
    <test name="family" qual="any" >
      <string>Times New Roman</string>
    </test>
    <edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="same">
      <string>Liberation Serif</string>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="pattern">
    <test name="family" qual="any" >
      <string>Georgia</string>
    </test>
    <edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="same">
      <string>DejaVu Serif</string>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="pattern">
    <test name="family" qual="any" >
      <string>Verdana</string>
    </test>
    <edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="same">
      <string>DejaVu Sans</string>
    </edit>
  </match>
</fontconfig>


Some, but not all applications use the X resources for Xft settings,
and seem to ignore .fonts.conf, so, set those too. ~/.Xresources gets
automatically read by the default X session scripts in /etc/X11, if your
setup is standard.

Xft.antialias:	1
Xft.autohint:	0
Xft.dpi:	96
Xft.hinting:	1
Xft.hintstyle:	hintslight
Xft.lcdfilter:	lcddefault
Xft.rgba:	rgb

If you use something like Gnome, it will bluntly overwrite the
X resources with settings of it's own though. KDE may do bad things
like that too.