How to Have Sharp Fonts the Windows Way

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calande
Posts: 106
Joined: 2006/04/06 13:03:14
Location: Brazil
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How to Have Sharp Fonts the Windows Way

Post by calande » 2007/11/20 22:38:50

I built a more "official" tutorial on how to tweak fontconfig to have sharp fonts like Windows XP's default configuration. It's basically a set of XML files with the Microsoft fonts: http://www.sharpfonts.com/
Please don't screem at me if you dislike Microsoft and its fonts :P

Lenard
Posts: 2283
Joined: 2005/11/29 02:35:25
Location: Indiana

How to Have Sharp Fonts the Windows Way

Post by Lenard » 2007/11/20 23:09:20

Or install the webcore-fonts and webcore-fonts-vista noarch rpm packages from:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/msfonts/

FunkyRes
Posts: 80
Joined: 2007/11/24 07:35:21

Re: How to Have Sharp Fonts the Windows Way

Post by FunkyRes » 2007/11/25 18:43:29

Fonts are a topic I like :)

If you use LaTeX - the type 1 Lucida fonts sold by tug do nicely in /usr/share/fonts
If you are lucky, thrift stores sometimes have "Microsoft Font Pack for Windows 3.1" collecting dust, dirt cheap, which includes the ttf versions of those same Lucida fonts.

They are compressed in some weird MS compression with file names ending in .tt_ - I forget what program I used to decompress them, I've got it somewhere here. I picked up the font pack for $3.00 - and got some other fonts with it, but those fonts were the deal maker for me.

Palatino Linotype is a must - just for the all the characters it has, especially it's polytonic Greek. I don't know where to get it cheap but I got it from myfonts.com. Get all four faces if you can.

Be careful of .otf fonts - they sound tempting because they are T1 outline so you would think they would work better in Linux than the .ttf flavored OpenType fonts - but they don't, they display OK in fontconfig aware apps but almost nothing knows how to print them. Some fontconfig apps (ie AbiWord) rightfully blacklist them because they know they can't print them.

Adobe still sells the Base35 fonts in Type 1 but it is difficult to find on their website. Yes, we have the URW that are free, but I can tell the difference and prefer the Base35. Unfortunately, fontconfig doesn't handle them properly because of how they are named internally. I think it is a bug, it should handle the Base35 properly - but it doesn't. Helvetica is where it screws up. If memory serves me, it is the Helvetica Narrow faces. I bought the ttf versions of Helvetica for screen though, so I'm all good. I just use the Type1 in LaTeX.

The URW clones are named in the way fontconfig likes them as far as family and weight goes. Thus - while they are metric compatible clones, they are different in how they are named - and that bothers me a little. I guess it shouldn't.

Lucida Mono is the closest thing to the wonderful Apple font Monaco (same designer) - and is available in all four standard faces (Monaco is only available in Roman). When I grabbed them (myfonts.com) they were available in Type 1 - perfect for use with LaTeX - but I think they only have otf there now.

Lucida Mono also is funny with fontconfig due to the way they are named internally - I use it as my default monospace font for just about everything, it's really frustrating because font-config will fake embolden rather than use the real bold that's sitting right there just begging to be used.

I probably should look at a modern version of fontconfig - I'm still running FC6 as my desktop.
Doulis SIL also has some very nice fonts if you are into foreign character sets, some of them have been released with an open license. Free is always good.

The best ttf symbol font I've found is Symbol Proportional BT - it's not metric compat with Adobe Symbol, but it's a nice looking font, very well designed. Like many of the fonts I like though, it is commercial.

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