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How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

Graphical Environments, Managers, Multimedia & Desktop questions.
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tpprynn
Posts: 132
Joined: 2011-04-11 18:09

How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#1 Post by tpprynn »

My patience is running out with Windows 8 and in the last week I've finally got true broadband as opposed to the mobile broadband I'd relied on for four years. I'm considering Debian again, in particular to build up from the minimal CD. I'm hoping that the font rendering has finally been attended to as I was never successful at the elaborate tweaks it took to get a slight improvement before. If I remember right a patent expired making this no longer an issue? How is Debian 7 shaping up font-wise or has this kind of thing been deemed not important? (The last time I tried the Mint Debian live CD it was still pretty bad compared to Ubuntu 9.04/Mint 7 and onward.)

Thanks.

confuseling
Posts: 2121
Joined: 2009-10-21 01:03

Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#2 Post by confuseling »

Double blind controlled surveys pulled directly out of my bottom indicate that over 67% of Debian users don't care at all about the fonts.

If you search this forum you'll find pages and pages of discussion about this issue. Some people swear blind that the fonts are completely unreadable, some people swear blind that they can't tell the difference even pixel peeping at screenshots.

In conclusion, sorry, but it's such a subjective thing that you'll never be able to tell if it's good enough for you without trying it - or if you know specifically which patents / commits you're interested in, reading the changelogs.

This thread is destined to go around in circles and end up nowhere...
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dasein
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Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#3 Post by dasein »

confuseling wrote:This thread is destined to go around in circles and end up nowhere...
Not if we don't feed this particular troll. As you so correctly point out, there is plenty of existing forum content to peruse/experiment with/etc.

Posts like this one are designed to stir up pointless crap. The smart move is to let it die from sheer neglect.

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heminder
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Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#4 Post by heminder »

I let KDE handle all the bling, including fonts. Everything is looking nice to me.

Randicus
Posts: 2663
Joined: 2011-05-08 09:11

Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#5 Post by Randicus »

tpprynn wrote:How is Debian 7 shaping up font-wise
It is worse than ever. It is so bad, a person needs to be dyslexic to read the letters. Do not waste your time. You will either need to learn to be patient with Windows or install Ubuntu and enjoy the beautiful graphics that only Canonical can supply.

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Willynux
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Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#6 Post by Willynux »

Looks like font is a sensitive topic

AnInkedSoul
Posts: 461
Joined: 2010-06-11 05:05

Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#7 Post by AnInkedSoul »

Same as before. They are sharp, crisp and look great compared to those fuzzy headache inducing fonts other distros seem to have.

confuseling
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Joined: 2009-10-21 01:03

Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#8 Post by confuseling »

If by sensitive you mean dull, and constantly pointlessly rehearsed because people can't bring themselves to search for and then read the old threads, then yes, it is very sensitive.
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Magnusmaster
Posts: 168
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Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#9 Post by Magnusmaster »

My patience is running out with Windows 8 and in the last week I've finally got true broadband as opposed to the mobile broadband I'd relied on for four years. I'm considering Debian again, in particular to build up from the minimal CD. I'm hoping that the font rendering has finally been attended to as I was never successful at the elaborate tweaks it took to get a slight improvement before. If I remember right a patent expired making this no longer an issue? How is Debian 7 shaping up font-wise or has this kind of thing been deemed not important? (The last time I tried the Mint Debian live CD it was still pretty bad compared to Ubuntu 9.04/Mint 7 and onward.)


I haven't noticed much change, though I don't find the font rendering that bad. The main problem is that fontconfig can't handle some fonts right and in those cases you have to manually configure them with a fonts.conf file, and some fonts (like the Ubuntu font, or the new Windows fonts like Calibri) don't work well with the native hinter.

mindflash
Posts: 23
Joined: 2011-08-29 20:25

Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#10 Post by mindflash »

Fonts, in GNOME at least, are not perfect out of the box. Maybe they look good in some screens, because resolution and PPI varies. But in my screens, Debian never had good fonts out of the box.

I managd to get my Wheezy to have fonts like Ubuntu. What I found out is that is does not have the "lcddefault" setting enabled by default, along with other changes that may influence it

I made this post http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 04#p469304 with a "tutorial" some time ago. Hope is helps someone.

You can get Debian to work as a desktop out of the box if you are not too demanding, but nowadays most people are used to nice looking desktops, we are not in the "Windows XP" days anymore when even GNOME 2 was great looking.

It's too bad that most of Debian community won't care about it, and the people associated with the maintenance of DE packages don't want to aknowledge that they could do basic steps to "ready them out" for a better desktop experience.

Debian already has a better installer, and now it could use better defaults for the DEs, it would really make it a lot easier for new people to stick with it. I expect the usual elitism to bash me on this one, but whatever, a guy gotta say what he gotta say.

Randicus
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Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#11 Post by Randicus »

mindflash wrote:You can get Debian to work as a desktop out of the box if you are not too demanding
:?
My goodness! A medium-length sentence generating such a large pile of manure.
but nowadays most people are used to nice looking desktops, we are not in the "Windows XP" days anymore when even GNOME 2 was great looking.
And just what precisely was bad with Gnome 2? I thought it looked quite nice. I guess there were not enough bells and whistles. A "nice" desktop is not what many people are "used to." Those people want to be entertained by a visually stimulating computer interface experience.

But only "elitists" can have a good experience with a nice interface that does not interfere with getting work done. Nice (somewhat pretty) and functional is not enough for everyone else. A GUI without fireworks, huge icons and beautiful fuzzy Ubuntu founts will just not appeal to most people. It is a good thing Ubuntu and its horde of faithful followers can show us troglodytes in the rest of the Linux universe how to properly do things. All hail Unity! The quintessential desktop experience!

cynwulf

Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#12 Post by cynwulf »

The last time I saw the really jagged fonts in Debian, I was running either etch or lenny - since squeeze there have been no font rendering problems which could not be easily solved by installing your chosen fonts, setting the font DPI, enabling the lcd subpixel rendering thingie and adjusting the hinting level.

Randicus
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Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#13 Post by Randicus »

Do not confuse the issue with facts. That will start an argument.

AnInkedSoul
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Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#14 Post by AnInkedSoul »

cynwulf wrote:The last time I saw the really jagged fonts in Debian, I was running either etch or lenny - since squeeze there have been no font rendering problems which could not be easily solved by installing your chosen fonts, setting the font DPI, enabling the lcd subpixel rendering thingie and adjusting the hinting level.
when ubuntu decides something that half those fanbois do not care for then that half flocks to debian screaming about how debian is so much better since it doesnt make those stupid decisions....then they expect debian to make a stupid decision like catering to the half that want fuzzy fonts....

it never ends...

mindflash
Posts: 23
Joined: 2011-08-29 20:25

Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#15 Post by mindflash »

Randicus wrote:
mindflash wrote:You can get Debian to work as a desktop out of the box if you are not too demanding
:?
My goodness! A medium-length sentence generating such a large pile of manure.
but nowadays most people are used to nice looking desktops, we are not in the "Windows XP" days anymore when even GNOME 2 was great looking.
And just what precisely was bad with Gnome 2? I thought it looked quite nice. I guess there were not enough bells and whistles. A "nice" desktop is not what many people are "used to." Those people want to be entertained by a visually stimulating computer interface experience.

But only "elitists" can have a good experience with a nice interface that does not interfere with getting work done. Nice (somewhat pretty) and functional is not enough for everyone else. A GUI without fireworks, huge icons and beautiful fuzzy Ubuntu founts will just not appeal to most people. It is a good thing Ubuntu and its horde of faithful followers can show us troglodytes in the rest of the Linux universe how to properly do things. All hail Unity! The quintessential desktop experience!
Most people in the world don't use computers to have work done, nor find a better looking screen getting in the way of anything. Abviously you suffer of the same case of the other elitists in most distros, they build something that tries to attend their needs, not to become the GNU system we always dreamed of, the operating system that would free the users.

If you fail to understand that regular people have different needs than you, you fail to understand how important it is that people can look at Debian and say "oh my god, that is so much better than Windows 8, where do I sign?". Unless you confess your elitism saying that these people don't matter, only the hardcore users that get work done in cryptic envinronments that only make sense to them.

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buntunub
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Joined: 2011-02-11 05:23

Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#16 Post by buntunub »

Image

Looks good to me.

mindflash
Posts: 23
Joined: 2011-08-29 20:25

Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#17 Post by mindflash »

cynwulf wrote:The last time I saw the really jagged fonts in Debian, I was running either etch or lenny - since squeeze there have been no font rendering problems which could not be easily solved by installing your chosen fonts, setting the font DPI, enabling the lcd subpixel rendering thingie and adjusting the hinting level.
I have tinkered with this a lot sinze Squeeze and I was never satisfied with fonts, until Wheezy came out with updated packages that deal with font rendering, and I enabled the "lcddefault" thing. I can understand that your hardware might work well with things like they currently are, but you gotta agree that "my experience" is not "everyone's experience". There are multiples users reporting insatisfaction with this, some failing to find a fix. I have found a fix that look good to me, but it is hard to get distro developers to listen when all we get from the community are replies from the people that want to know it better by denying any problem that don't apply to them.

Please, don't work against free software by doing this, no one is asking Debian to become Ubuntu, we only want to make it work better for us, out of the box. It's not like you will be forced to have good fonts that don't look as bad as you like them, you obviously have knowledge to deteriorate fonts the way you like it, while the ignorant and casual users will be satisfied by not having to learn the fix like I did. Basically it is just a default that could be enabled by changing a configuration file that could be packed in GNOME. But obviously this isn't done because there is a lack of Debian developers interested in polishing it for the casual user that would be very happy to have a better out-of-the-box experience (aka "Microsoft Windows replacement").

But maybe in years things will change, I tested Sid the other day and I found out that plymouth is running by default (at least when building a live CD), things like that are the way to go, since advanced users that hate cosmetics can already do a netinstall and build everything the way they like it, while letting the regular people that use computers for leisure have a nice looking, easy to use and great operating system like Debian available to them.

confuseling
Posts: 2121
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Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#18 Post by confuseling »

The rhetoric might not be helping your case.

I doubt you'll find anyone who is against having nice fonts. I just doubt you'll get many people to agree on what nice fonts are, which is probably a significant part of why they change slowly in Debian.

I'm sure there's some room for improvement, and I'm also sure that it's such a subjective and confirmation bias-ridden thing that people will complain about it forever, irrespective of the defaults.

Considering how 'product' focused Gnome and Ubuntu have become relative to much of the rest of the open source world, I suspect if it was as problematic as people make it out to be, there would be some solid data demonstrating so. ABX, or simple blind preference tests - it's not like they're hard or expensive to do. I've never heard of them... maybe you have?
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PhilGil
Posts: 384
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Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#19 Post by PhilGil »

All Linux distros have to deal with allocating developer resources (which are always in short supply). Debian has chosen to devote fewer resources to esthetics than some other distros, and that's fine with me as I think the quality of Debian stable releases speaks for itself. In particular, devoting a lot of energy to something as subjective and hardware-dependent as font rendering is unwise.

That being said, I have been troubled by the font rendering in XFCE on one of my monitors (particularly on dark backgrounds). I could never find a setting that wasn't too fuzzy, too uneven, or too jagged. However, to my eyes, the font rendering in Gnome 3 is excellent. I think a lot has to do with Gnome 3's default font, which seems to display really nicely on my LCD monitors. Since switching my default XFCE font to Cantarell things have noticeably improved.

Randicus
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Re: How is 7 shaping up for font rendering?

#20 Post by Randicus »

mindflash wrote:Most people in the world don't use computers to have work done, nor find a better looking screen getting in the way of anything. Abviously you suffer of the same case of the other elitists in most distros
Using a word processor to get work done "abviously" makes me an elitist? I did not realise being an elitist is so easy. Knowing how to use apt-get update must make me a computer geek.

I have no idea who Hanna Montana is, but there is a distribution named after her that caters to the "normal" people you refer to who do not care how well their tools work, as long as the tools look pretty. You should try it. It is supposed to be awesomely pretty.

Before spewing elitism nonsense, you should look at your own statements. According to your post in the Kudos thread:
It is so nice to have something that is not bloated in any way and have documentation about fixes and configurations.
The internet is awash with people critisising those with such "elitist" views. Only elitists strive for no bloat and are willing to read documentation, while normal people want things to work out-of-the-box without having to read anything. And the bells and whistles that create the dazzling aesthetics that attract the attention of the mindless, requires the bloat elitists like you and I do not want.

So you are an elitist when it comes to important things like bloat and documentation, but not when it comes to non-existent problems like bad founts, which look the same on Debian as every other system. Very "interesting".

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