Home
entries friends calendar user info Scribbles in the Dark Previous Previous Next Next
Handwriting on the Sky - Unreasonable Defaults
stranger than the night where black stars rise
11:28 pm December 20th, 2005
glyf
[info]glyf
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
Unreasonable Defaults
This is really just some useless whining, but my name is glyph, for goodness sake. Sometimes I just need to complain about fonts.

Firefox for Linux always seems to ship with the crappiest possible font configuration. Why? This is what the fonts look like by default on a fresh install of Firefox 1.5, and also in Ubuntu's unreleased "Dapper" distribution's current 1.5 package.

badtext

Now, here is the same text rendered using fonts that are packaged with the distribution, and in fact, almost all Linux distributions these days:

goodtext

"FreeMono", "FreeSans", and "monospace". Was that really so hard?

Current Mood: quixotic
Current Music: Symptom Finger (by "The Faint")
5 comments or Leave a comment
Comments
Thread started by Stephen Thorne
jerub From: [info]jerub Date: December 21st, 2005 04:33 am (UTC) (Link)
The FreeMono and FreeSans examples seem to alias badly on my LCD monitor...

But yes, hell yes, this bugs me too

ever since netscape 4. :(
(Reply) (Thread)
keturn From: [info]keturn Date: December 21st, 2005 05:56 am (UTC) (Link)
Terrible browser fonts remind me of archzoom. Can you read this? At all? because with the set of fonts I have in Etch, it's like trying to read through glasses which have been attacked with a stiff wire brush.
(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)
glyf From: [info]glyf Date: December 21st, 2005 08:10 am (UTC) (Link)
I can, but uh, those fonts are small. It looks like this:

archzoom

What's "Etch"?
(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)
keturn From: [info]keturn Date: December 22nd, 2005 07:22 pm (UTC) (Link)
ArchZoom hates my eyes.

Etch follows Sarge. (current Debian testing release.)
(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)
Comment by anthony baxter
anthonybaxter From: [info]anthonybaxter Date: December 21st, 2005 07:01 am (UTC) (Link)
Fonts have always been a personal bugbear of mine - when you're spending many hours a day staring at a screen, it makes a huge difference. I was (until very recently) using the bitstream vera family, but Autrijus put me onto the new MS Windows Vista fonts. Candara and Consolas are both very nice.

(Reply) (Thread)
5 comments or Leave a comment
profile
Glyph Lefkowitz
User: [info]glyf
Name: Glyph Lefkowitz
calendar
Back April 2008
12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930
page summary
tags