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Still using butt ugly fonts
by Gogs on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @02:48
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I've been following the progress of KDE 4 for a while now. Firstly, congratulations to all the devs/other peeps for all their hard work.
However, EVERY screenshot I've seen has had THE most ugly fonts and font rendering.
I know that's not the KDE devs fault directly, but surely there must be a half decent looking font somewhere.
The default for most screenshots is WAAAAAY too big, not proportioned correctly, and DEFINTELY not rendered correctly.
Please note this is NOT a troll or anything. I genuinely would like KDE to succeed, but for me at the moment (indeed ever since I started using linux) the fonts issue is still a long way from being solved. |
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by Hans on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @03:11
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Yes. I have the same problem. The default fonts are not antialiased. I have so switch to bitstream Vera sans to get a nice looking interface. I´m using a self compiled version from yesterdays svn.
I don´t understand why this is not default. We have 2008 I think it is time for more modern default settings.
And I don´t think this is the job of the distributions. KDE should ship a nicely preconfigured version without the need to fine tune everything by hand.
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by sebas on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @03:16
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As far as I understand it, KDE uses whatever fontconfig proposes as default sans serif font. If you don't like it, you should change it. It's not something KDE can do anything about, but your system integrator can. For most users (including me), the default is actually fine (DejaVu Sans on this system, antialiased and all).
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by Bobby on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @03:32
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The first thing that I always do after installing a Linux distro is change the default font. I also use Bitstream Vera Sans which I think is one of the very best fonts for the Linux DE.
I don't know why it isn't KDE's default font. Could it be a licensing problem? I notice that openSuse doesn't even install it as one of it's default fonts, one has to install it extra.
For people like me it's not a big issue but if KDE wants to appeal to normal mortals in a way that OS X does then these little things have to be taken care of.
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by Ben on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @05:05
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Check if DejaVu is installed. DejaVu is the fork of Vera, and thus looks exactly the same for Latin, but has much wider script support, and has people working on it. Vera never got changed or fixed after it was first released.
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by Sutoka on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @09:54
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I'm pretty sure DejaVu is the default on OpenSuSE (though its been quite a while since I've done a fresh install, so I might just be getting confused).
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by Bobby on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @14:28
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I think it's Sans Serif or something like that but it's definitely not DejaVu.
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by Stefan Majewsky on Tuesday 18/Mar/2008, @00:15
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Whatever. The fonts on openSUSE's KDE always look good for me.
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by she on Wednesday 19/Mar/2008, @06:24
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Who cares? Not trying to pick on you, but the point is that screenshots should look VISUALLY APPEALING to people.
Choosing ugly fonts is not a smart way to do, KDE could have an easy link inside widgets to change default fonts easily and quickly without kcontrol-navigating or similar
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by Bobby on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @14:19
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Thanks for the info. I really didn't know that. I just tried it and indeed it looks the same :)
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by sebas on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @03:21
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> Please note this is NOT a troll or anything. I genuinely would like KDE to succeed, but for me at the moment (indeed ever since I started using linux) the fonts issue is still a long way from being solved.
The Dot is quite a poor choice for a medium for 'technical feedback that is not trolling' (not that trolling has its place there ...). The best thing you can probably do with your feedback is taking it to a mailinglist (such as kde-devel) and find out why it is that way, and what you can do to change it.
BTW, font rendering on my systems, and on screenshots I see is just fine, I cannot see the issues you're complaining about, so it's at least very subjective.
For this commit-digest it's way offtopic (it's not about some recent change, is it?). Another reason to choose a mailinglist ...
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by Gogs on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @03:26
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I would disagree. This thread is about progress being made in KDE aka Commit Digest. I would say that poor fonts don't represent progress, therefore it would be legitimate to point that out on this thread.
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by Matt Williams on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @03:44
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But you can't seriously expect all the KDE developers to follow all the threads on all the Dot articles, especially given the signal:noise ratio. Of course, you're free to point it out here but it's unlikely that anything productive will come of it. The mailing list is the correct place to report issues such as this and Bugzila is the place for most other wishlist/bug reports.
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by Gogs on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @04:07
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No I certainly do not, but having being reading the Commit Digest announcements for a while they do certainly appear to attract their fair share of devs...
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by Bobby on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @04:45
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That's true, I have seen even big shots like Aseigo addressing problems on the dot quite a few times even though they might have been posted on Bugzilla or the mailing list.
I have also posted a few problems/bugs (haven't got a Bugzilla account yet) here which have been been dealt with, so yes they (the devs) are on the alert even on the dot ;)
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by sebas on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @05:55
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That doesn't make it a more suitable medium for doing so. In fact, posting to the right mailinglist helps the developers keeping track of it (so chances increase it gets addressed), increases chances that the right developer even reads it, and it helps developers a great deal by respecting their workflow.
So while sometimes things get picked up from the Dot, it's by no means a preferred, nor suitable, medium to report bugs.
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by Bobby on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @05:59
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I am aware of that sebas and that's why I am going to get registered on Bugzilla today. Of course I don't have a bug right now but I am sure that one will come ;)
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by elsewhere on Friday 21/Mar/2008, @19:18
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> I would disagree. This thread is about progress being made in KDE aka Commit Digest. I would say that poor fonts don't represent progress, therefore it would be legitimate to point that out on this thread.
You can't hold the devs accountable for something that is the responsibility of the distros. You may as well complain that KDE doesn't speed up package management. KDE does what it rightly should, and relies on the defaults set in the environment, unless the packagers have altered those defaults. If those don't work well, your criticism is misdirected.
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by same on Monday 17/Mar/2008, @17:09
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just wanted to add that i am also not happy with the kde fonts choice!
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by Thomas Walther on Wednesday 19/Mar/2008, @18:39
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This screenshot here
http://vizzzion.org/images/blog/pink.png
demonstrates that KDE doesn't always need to have ugly fonts. I think these fonts are really nice.
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Re: Still using butt ugly fonts
by Gogs on Thursday 20/Mar/2008, @03:45
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I would say that the rendering of this font is better, but the font itself is still pretty ugly.
It's not in proportion, and by that I mean its width is greater than its height.
As someone pointed out it's all subjective of course, but I have yet to see any fonts in KDE which look nicer than those in Windows.
Even when what IMVHO I would call a nice font is chosen, by default it is too large and/or the rendering/kerning sucks.
In that screenshot look also at how far the tops of the letters l,k and f extend above the height of any letters which are capitalised.
Also, please note that the spacing is uneven between the letters on the taskbar. For example the 'K' is touching the 'o' where is says EMail - Kontact, but yet there is a big gap between the 'o' and the 'n'. Reading further along, the spacing is inconsistent.
No I'm sorry (but again, it's only my humble opinion) font rendering in Linux/KDE still has a LONG way to go before it's as good as it is in Windows.
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