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The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)

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Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)

#61

Post by forrestthewoods »

carlosjobim wrote: post #55
forrestthewoods wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in favor of high pixel density screens I wish I could download an OS update that gave me a high pixel screen! But, uhhh, that’s not how it works.

Do yourself a favour and go out and purchase a high pixel screen. I don't understand why people who spend a good part of their days in front of a computer (or employ others to do it), but refuse to get quality hardware. Is it worth destroying your eyes, posture, and joints to save this money? Not to speak of just the personal pleasure of using good hardware. Restaurants spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars…

I’m currently running a 4K 32” monitor. What exact monitor do you recommend I buy for my Windows desktop?

Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)

#62

Post by eddythompson80 »

type0 wrote: post #40
not_a_bot_4sho wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose this is a subjective area. I would rank Windows on top, Mac as a close second, and Linux ... well, I love Linux for reasons other than UI.

it's not subjective if you use OLED screen

I have an OLED desktop monitor and have the same preference order as OP

Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)

#63

Post by ivape »

kstrauser wrote: post #56
ranger207 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well see Apple doesn't sell 1440p external monitors, so the answer is you should stop using that trash and move to one that brute forces the sharpness problem and costs way too much because it has an Apple logo on it

Cute, but irrelevant. I just searched Amazon for "4k monitor 27 inch" and there are any number of highly rated screens from recognizable brands for around $200. You don't have to splurge to get a 2160p monitor that a Mac will love.

Those monitors kind of suck. You can only get $200 if it's a crappy VA panel at 60hz. My 1440p monitor is a lot better, but apparently not supported by Mac for ideal rendering.

Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)

#64

Post by ndiddy »

> The traditional way of achieving this is through installing ttf-mscorefonts-installer or msttcorefonts. The msttcorefonts package looks like some Shenzhen basement knockoff that renders poorly and doesn’t support Unicode. I suspect that these fonts have gone through multiple iterations in every Windows release and that the versions available through the repositories must be from around Windows 95 days.

This is because these font files originate from a Microsoft initiative called "Core Fonts for the web" that ran between 1996 and 2002. Before web fonts became a thing, Microsoft wanted to make a set of broadly available fonts that web designers could assume everyone had on their computers. Because Microsoft cancelled the initiative, the redistributable versions of those fonts are stuck in time. They were last updated around 2000, and any updated versions with further improvements or added characters aren't freely redistributable.

Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)

#65

Post by initramfs »

ranger207 wrote: post #20
ivape wrote: post #13

I still don't know why MacOS can't render sharp text on 1440p external monitor.

Well see Apple doesn't sell 1440p external monitors, so the answer is you should stop using that trash and move to one that brute forces the sharpness problem and costs way too much because it has an Apple logo on it

actually they do (or did): https://www.backmarket.com/en-us/p/27-inch-monitor-2560-x-14...

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Apple-27-inch-Monitor-2560-x-1440...

Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)

#67

Post by bee_rider »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #58
nomel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first (and last) 1920x1080 monitor was 50lb CRT I picked up on the side of the road, in 2003. I haven't owned a smartphone with a screen resolution that low, in over 10 years. I think it's an amazing feat of marketing, by display companies, that people still put up with such low resolutions.

Hm... I am reading this on a 1600x900 screen of my T420s Frankenpad while sitting in dusk in a German campsite. I ordered the screen some 10 years ago off Alibaba or something, and it is exactly the resolution and brightness I need. I hope I will die before this Frankenpad, because contemporary laptops are awful in so many aspects. You know... as you age, you really can't read all those tiny characters anyway.

It sounds like you have a proper computer anyway, do you really care about non-fixed-width fonts? These are office suite and web browser fonts.

If something needed to be rendered in some particular way, it should have been a PDF. For everything else there’s vim.

Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)

#68

Post by Sunspark »

ndiddy wrote: post #64

> The traditional way of achieving this is through installing ttf-mscorefonts-installer or msttcorefonts. The msttcorefonts package looks like some Shenzhen basement knockoff that renders poorly and doesn’t support Unicode. I suspect that these fonts have gone through multiple iterations in every Windows release and that the versions available through the repositories must be from around Windows 95 days. This is beca…

This is OK for me because I use these with full (or medium) hinting and anti-aliasing off in some apps, and greyscale anti-aliasing in other apps with the v35 interpreter.

v40 with slight hinting and greyscale or subpixel works, but I don't tend to use the fonts that are meant to be used with slight hinting and later fonts can't handle anti-aliasing off at all.

You can easily do this on a per-app basis with flatpaks.. you can set an environment variable with flatseal, and you can drop a fontconfig folder with a custom fonts.conf in the flatpak's var directory.

Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)

#69

Post by perching_aix »

nomel wrote: post #50
vouaobrasil wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, subpixel rendering is absent from MacOS and makes it very difficult to using regular ol' 1920x1080 screens with modern MacOS. Yes, those Retina displays look nice, but it's a shame that lower res screens do not because they work perfectly fine except for the font rendering.

My first (and last) 1920x1080 monitor was 50lb CRT I picked up on the side of the road, in 2003. I haven't owned a smartphone with a screen resolution that low, in over 10 years. I think it's an amazing feat of marketing, by display companies, that people still put up with such low resolutions.

A Full HD CRT from the roadside in 2003? As if this was just a thing people had happen to them? Is this some elaborate joke I'm missing?

> I haven't owned a smartphone with a screen resolution that low

Smartphone in italics, because smartphones are known for their low pixel densities, right? What?

Did you own a smartphone at all in the past 10 years? Just double checking.

> I think it's an amazing feat of marketing, by display companies, that people still put up with such low resolutions.

And how did you reach that conclusion? Did you somehow miss display companies selling and pushing 1440p and 4K monitors left and right for more than a handful of years at this point, and yet the Steam Hardware Survey still bringing out 1080p monitors as the king month to month?

Sometimes I really do wonder if I live in a different world to others.

Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)

#70

Post by hnuser123456 »

lttlrck wrote: post #57
nomel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first (and last) 1920x1080 monitor was 50lb CRT I picked up on the side of the road, in 2003. I haven't owned a smartphone with a screen resolution that low, in over 10 years. I think it's an amazing feat of marketing, by display companies, that people still put up with such low resolutions.

It's still a perfectly serviceable resolution. Of course 16:19 pushed down display costs leading to the demise of 1920x1200 which is unforgivable ;-) Those 120 pixels were sorely missed.

You can still get 16:10, they're just classed as "business professional" models with matching price tag.
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