Re: Sawfish and Openbox: was fastest linux distro

[Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com>]

On Sun, 01 Jun 2014 13:18:11 +0200
David Dušanić <ivanovnegro@gmail.com> wrote:

> 31.05.2014, 18:59, "Steve Litt" <slitt@troubleshooters.com>:
> > On Sat, 31 May 2014 08:51:13 -0400
> > Tony Baldwin <tony@tonybaldwin.info> wrote:
> >>  Sawfish and openbox, even metacity would fit in this last "just
> >>  manages windows" category, and, in fact, don't even include a
> >> panel, which I think JWM has by default.
> >
> > You're just the person I need to talk to, Tony. Right now I've
> > switched over from Xfce to Openbox, and like it. Except for one
> > thing: the fonts look a whole lot worse on Openbox, and I have very
> > bad vision, so this isn't aesthetics: It affects the speed at which
> > I work. Do you know of a way to make fonts on Openbox look like the
> > ones on Xfce?
> 
> I would make an .Xdefaults/.Xresources in your home folder with this
> e.g.:
> 
> Xft.autohint: 0
> Xft.antialias: 1
> Xft.hinting: true
> Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
> Xft.dpi: 96
> Xft.rgba: rgb
> Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
> 
> or install lxappearance to adjust fonts.  

Hi David,

Before I start asking a multitude of questions, thanks very much for
this information.

You mention making an .Xdefaults/.Xresources in my home directory. Can
I safely assume the slash meant either/or, rather than directory/file?
I already had a .Xdefaults, but it was a config file, not a directory.

I added your lines to the end of my .Xdefaults, and it kinda sorta
seemed to make things better, but it was so subtle this could be a
placebo effect. So I'm thinking, if I could use settings that make my
fonts look like ugly, unmitigated garbage, then at least I know that
changing these values is doing something. Once I know that, I can
experiment to get the very best look. What could I do to the lines you
quote to make my fonts look very ugly, as a test?

Can I safely assume that if I change "Xft:dpi 96" to "Xft:dpi 48", my
fonts are going to get noticibly bigger if this thing's working? That
would be another test.

Why did you set Xft:hintstyle to "hintlight" instead of "hintmassively"
or whatever the hintiest setting could be?

Can you think of any Xft settings I could make to make my letters look
bolder, without using a bold font? My main concern is that the letters
are thin and reedy.

By the way, for the purposes of Openbox on my machine, lxappearance
doesn't work because whatever you set it to isn't persistent. That's
OK, I'd rather have something I could input from Vim anyway.

Thanks so much for the information,

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
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