Fedora considering default font switch

[Posted July 5, 2006 by corbet]

The Fedora Project is thinking about switching to the DejaVu font family as the default font in Fedora Core. DejaVu is a derivative of the popular Bitstream Vera family, which has not seen any updates since 2003; a number of distributions are already using it. The Fedora developers are looking for feedback on the fonts and the proposed change. This is an opportunity for Fedora users to help shape the appearance of future Fedora releases, with no technical skills required.

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Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 5, 2006 19:27 UTC (Wed) by simosx (guest, #24338) [Link] (2 responses)

We have tried DejaVu on Fedora Core 6 Test 1 for the Greek language and it looks really good. DejaVu suits are needs.

Compare the following screenshots,

Standard Fedora Core 6 test1 (WITHOUT DejaVu):
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/Teams/Greek/Issues?act...
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/Teams/Greek/Issues?act...

Enhanced Fedora Core 6 test1 using Dejavu:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/Teams/Greek/Issues?act...

Even if you do not speak Greek, you can notice the difference :)

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 7, 2006 5:48 UTC (Fri) by tetromino (guest, #33846) [Link] (1 responses)

Yeah, but try Russian. Russian text in DejaVu looks fugly (specifically, I am thinking of the way they are doing "b", "d", "ts", and "sch").

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 7, 2006 10:44 UTC (Fri) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

This is probably due to the fact that DejaVu cyrillic was initially drawn by Balcanic designers, and the conventions for some cyrillic letters are not the same in Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe.

The offending glyphs are progressively being replaced by russian-looking ones, with the initial shapes being moved in a special OpenType area (so as soon as Pango supports locl the right variant will be used depending on the locale). If you tried a previous version of DejaVu 2.7 and 2.8 will probably have pleasing surprises for you.

Tracked as https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7452

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 5, 2006 19:46 UTC (Wed) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link] (12 responses)

The problem is, all these fonts are antialiased. Many computer users love antialiasing, because it creates smooth outlines for fonts. However, many people (myself included) find it really hard on the eyes: the fonts seem blurred and out of focus.

In my view, the best solution is to use a non-antialiased, but properly hinted font. The characters are distorted slightly so as to better lie over the pixel-grid. In practice, this means using freetype WITH the bytecode interpreter enabled, and then a font designed for non-antialiasing: the best of these is Microsoft Tahoma. Sadly, there are very few well-hinted (GPL) fonts. the 100dpi bitmap fonts (old-style X) are wonderful, but cannot be scaled or printed.

However, one can get really horrid results by antialiasing a properly hinted font, or by using the freetype autohinter.

Aside: I still like antialiasing above 15 point (making headings/graphics look smooth)

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 5, 2006 20:46 UTC (Wed) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (7 responses)

Huh? Aren't TT fonts pure vectors, and then the system takes care of the antialiasing, if it's desired?

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 5, 2006 21:01 UTC (Wed) by louie (guest, #3285) [Link] (5 responses)

Yeah, that's correct, which is a great example of why encouraging contribution by people who, uh, well, don't know what they are talking about might not be a great idea. Sorry, LWN, I'm totally in favor of getting more people involved, but one should also be encouraging people to contribute in ways appropriate to their levels of knowledge and skill. In this case, people who understand how fonts work and the specific i18n and aesthetic issues should be encouraged to get involved, not just anyone.

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 5, 2006 23:53 UTC (Wed) by allesfresser (guest, #216) [Link]

I think Mr. Neill was just using confusing language about antialiasing...I don't think he intends to say that the antialiasing is somehow encoded in the TrueType format, although some parts of his post could be understood that way if read in bad lighting. :-) Personally I prefer antialiasing to be enabled for all sizes, but that's possibly just me...

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 6, 2006 9:55 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

The feedback op is open to everyone.
There are just too many resolution/fontconfig settings combos for the font designers to detect all the small problems the font may have themselves.

Now good informed feedback is better than naive feedback, but too many informed people do not bother reporting the problems they know of at all (you see in blogs/articles DejaVu rendering of this word is bad, I hope they fix it someday - fine, report it and it'll be fixed)

Bad feedback is better than no feedback at all.

(Best feedback is : in application foo, with the following font settings, these glyphs are ugly/difficult to read/misplaced - see attached screenshot)

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 6, 2006 19:32 UTC (Thu) by jlma (guest, #38795) [Link]

A simple answer "it is not the font that is anti-aliased, but the
rendering engine, and you can always disable it" is useful for everyone.
People can learn with other people's mistakes, there is no need to
moderate for wrong posts.

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 7, 2006 21:38 UTC (Fri) by kamil (guest, #3802) [Link]

Sheez, louie, what a "constructive" comment! Did bashing that fella make you feel better?

While the wording in the post of Richard_J_Neill is slightly confusing, I actually agree with him: the current practise seems to be to use anti-aliasing to hide the poor quality of the fonts.

Best fonts, designed for screen usage, do not need anti-aliasing, because they are properly hinted; in fact, they lose sharpness with anti-aliasing enabled (yes, I do realize that on LCD screens the situation is not that clear).

Personally, for serious text work (text terminals and emacs) I still use good old-fashioned bitmap fonts because of their unmatched clarity at small pixel sizes. Using anti-aliased fonts in xterm constantly made me feel that I need stronger prescription glasses... For the rest (which mostly means web browsing) I do use anti-aliasing, since there are not enough good bitmaps available in all the sizes required for contemporary web pages.

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 10, 2006 15:45 UTC (Mon) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

Look, with a minimal bit of effort, it's easy to understand the GP poster's intention, though his wording could have been better. Anti-aliasing is a technical stop-gap measure to handle medium-quality or crap fonts. Good fonts (i.e., either outline fonts with proper hinting, or -- even better -- bitmap fonts that are optimized for the output device in question) get worse when anti-aliasing is used to render them.

And since you demand references, though you don't give them yourself: I'm involved in electronic typesetting and font display technologies since 1982. (I'm one of the TeX guys, and was the principal author of the DVI driver standard.)

Perhaps you could have tried to understand another poster, instead of flaming him. This is LWN, not /.

Best, Joachim

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 7, 2006 14:19 UTC (Fri) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

Yes and no. TT/T1/OT are all vector formats, but that doesn't mean the "system" should take care of antialiasing. The font should be properly hinted, so there should be no need for antialiasing. The sad reality is that quality of open source fonts is low, especially the hinting, which is also patent encumbered courtesy of Microsoft.

That's why users opts for antialiased fonts instead, because the hinting is crap. Normally you wouldn't do both, you use antialiasing only when the size is too great for hinting.

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 5, 2006 21:11 UTC (Wed) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link]

> The problem is, all these fonts are antialiased. Many computer users love
> antialiasing, because it creates smooth outlines for fonts. However, many
> people (myself included) find it really hard on the eyes: the fonts seem
> blurred and out of focus.

Then turn off anti-aliasing.

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 5, 2006 21:55 UTC (Wed) by simosx (guest, #24338) [Link] (1 responses)

The screenshots show FC6test1 with the default fontconfing settings.
If you think that antialiasing should be disabled for small sizes, push forward this change. It would be useful to see screenshots with different fonts (and sizes) with antialiasing enabled or disabled.
To do so, add in fontconfig a structure such as

<match target="font">
<test name="family">
<string>DejaVu Sans</string>
</test>
<test name="pixelsize" compare="less_eq"><int>11</int></test>
<edit name="antialias" mode="assign"><bool>false</bool></edit>
<edit name="hinting" mode="assign"><bool>true</bool></edit>
</match>

I would be happy to hear comments on the fonts themselves.

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 6, 2006 9:46 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

Based on the current feedback I think I'll do the AA-disable-for-small-sizes in the next Fedora Extras DejaVu package. It's the most common small complaint so far

Fedora considering default font switch

Posted Jul 6, 2006 9:43 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

1. Fedora does not ship the patent-encumbered bytecode interpreter so its rendering will rely on the fontconfig autohinter, not the font hints
2. However DejaVu is hinted for the most part (and hinting work is continuing on the remaining glyphs)
3. Lastly fontconfig enables you to disable antialiasing under some sizes if you wish to

Umlaute look weird

Posted Jul 6, 2006 22:21 UTC (Thu) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link] (2 responses)

Hm. Just enabled dejavu here on my debian system, and the Umlaute look weird:
äÄöÖüÜ specifically, the dots above them are somewhat off. Bitstream Vera is fine though. Strange.

Umlaute look weird

Posted Jul 7, 2006 8:03 UTC (Fri) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] (1 responses)

Zoom up to large font sizes and you'll see that the dots are circular and
perfectly positioned, so the problem is not in the vector fonts. For
some of the smaller sizes they do indeed look dreadful (off-centre), so I
suspect the hinting is poor or nonexistent.

Umlaute look weird

Posted Jul 7, 2006 10:07 UTC (Fri) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7453