switch off anti aliasing in fedora 22

4

I updated to fedora 22 last days and under most desktops ( kde/gnome/gnome3 ) all terminals have a very very ugly font setting. It is nearly impossible to use some text base editors in this terminals because of the poor rendering of the fonts.

I read a lot of configuring fonts but nothing seems to happen.

As a first: Yes, I know that the complete directory structure has changed for fontconfig. And yes, I did not get any results if I place some config files elsewhere.

Is there any hint which content I can place in which directory to get the rendering for terminal applications off? And maybe, which steps must be done to get the fonts updated. I know that fc-cache must be called in earlier times, but now?

And yes, I read the stuff written here on this topic, but this all seems outdated because of the changed directory structure.

What I did:

In: /etc/fonts/fonts.conf I found

<!-- the following element will be removed in the future -->
<dir>~/.fonts</dir>

So I tried to place a file in: ~/.fonts/fonts.conf

The content is:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
    <!-- turn off antialiasing -->
    <match target="font">
        <edit name="antialias" mode="assign"> <bool>false</bool></edit>
    </match>

    <match target="font">
        <edit mode="assign" name="hinting">
            <bool>false</bool>
        </edit>
    </match>
</fontconfig>

After that I run:

fc-cache

And I used strace to look for the reading of my file. I only catch this line:

  stat("/home/krud/.fonts/fonts.conf", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0664, st_size=177, ...}) = 0

Then I looked for other directories:

  access("/home/krud/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf", R_OK) = 0

But in a short: I can not see any result in any application! ( firefox/gnome-terminal)

EDIT:

I also used font-tweaks-tool from gnome and I selected the font in the tweaks tool. Also no change! It seems that there are a parallel world on my system?

Update:

I looked for freetype-freeworld and it was already installed. All fonts are rendered with RGB-antialiasing which is looks terrible for my eyes. So I tried to remove freetype-freeworld. After that, I can select grayscale for antialiasing and also can modify the settings for hinting with the gnome-tweak-tool. Now my terminal font is acceptable and the fonts for e.g. firefox and other apps are readable enough. As a result the installation of freetype-freeworld was the reason that I couldn't change the settings for the fonts. I could not discover what is the reason behind that problem, but I can work now :-) It is interesting that some people like freetype-freeworld and someone write it is giving poor results.

My setup is now: Anti-Aliasing "grayscale" with hinting "full". In hope that others find it helpful...

If someone is able to give a full picture which config files, tools, renderer and so on are working on actual linux desktops it would be great to get this knowledge somewhere!

Klaus

Posted 2015-06-08T11:04:01.550

Reputation: 161

Have you tried installing tweak-tool and changing the simple settings there? Or fonts-tweak-tool for more sophisticated (per-font) settings? – mattdm – 2015-06-08T14:49:49.310

@mattdm: Thanks for the hint. I tried it out but nothing changes. Seems that there are to many possible ways to config the apps, fonts, desktops and what else. I can't see any logic here and there is no documentation?! – Klaus – 2015-06-09T07:46:36.847

The font renderer in fedora is somewhat crippled . I installed freettype-freeworld (which is a better renderer) and turned on sub pixel aliasing. Its a massive improvement IMI – Journeyman Geek – 2015-06-09T08:04:13.687

@ Journeyman Geek: OK, after installing: How can I activate it? How can I see which renderer is active? – Klaus – 2015-06-09T08:31:18.433

@JourneymanGeek This is a puzzle to me. Since the patents are expired, the bytecode interpreter is available in the main Fedora freetype package. I'm not sure exactly what freetype-freeworld is doing, but I think it's just enabling that by default rather than not. Why not by default? It looks worse with many fonts, despite the commonly-repeated wisdom — hence, font-tweak-tool which lets you play with this per-font. – mattdm – 2015-06-09T08:49:50.830

Klaus, turning on and off anti-aliasing should be instantly noticeable in the terminal. Well, almost instantly — you'll need to do something to cause the window to be redrawn (covering and uncovering it, even partially, should do). But if you're not seeing any change at all, something is weird. Can you post screenshots? – mattdm – 2015-06-09T08:51:43.153

klaus - to be honest, I don't remember. I was planning to post an answer once I got home and could consult my boomarks. @mattdm: Well, I set this up with F20, and I've been upgrading since. Something works since its waaay better than it was default. – Journeyman Geek – 2015-06-09T08:52:27.773

@JourneymanGeek What fonts are you using? (And for that matter, same question for Klaus.) – mattdm – 2015-06-09T08:54:36.730

The default ones mostly. I think I may have corefonts and the adobe source/source code fonts installed as well. – Journeyman Geek – 2015-06-09T09:02:48.663

@JourneymanGeek Could you try removing it, restarting your X session (just to be sure) and playing with the various tweak tool settings, to see if you can recreate the look you like? – mattdm – 2015-06-09T09:09:44.893

Puzzle answered: the freetype-freeworld package does enable sub-pixel antialiasing (which gives you better shapes at the expense of color fringing). However, this question is, apparently, looking to disable antialiasing entirely — or at least, that's what it asks. I suspect really what's wanted is tweaks to the hinting, which can be done with the default libs now. – mattdm – 2015-06-09T16:56:44.580

I removed freetype-freeworld and got much better results. The biggest change was that I can now switch from rgb to grayscale anti-aliasing. It looks much sharper on my terminal. See my last Update on my question... – Klaus – 2015-06-10T07:20:21.077

The /etc/fonts/local.conf file can take effect if you prefer manually editing the configuration files. I ever tweaked Fedora ( http://systutorials.com/5472/ ) and am satisfied with the rendering. Hope the tips help.

– ericzma – 2015-12-10T03:37:22.043

No answers