How I do fonts in Puppy

Message

Eyes-Only · #16 Post by **Eyes-Only** » Wed 13 Feb 2008, 20:50

There's a gentleman by the name of deniros who's done a basic package of this in "Additional Software", either as a .pup or .pet, and released it to us where he's turned on the bytecoding and stuff. Now of course the results will be in no way as good as what SHS has documented above because following his methods you'll get the exactitude for your size monitor whereas this package is solely a "rough guesstimate" of course.

However, I've found that for lazy people like me -rolls eyes- deniros's packages do make a fairly "good 'nuff" substitute for the time being until the day when I do have time from working on five separate distros to sit back and give some attention to going through with what SHS has very graciously taken a great deal of time to hand to us here freely of his own time and effort.

BTW: Deniros's packages may be found here: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=26020

Thank you so very much SHS for doing this and I have bookmarked this page for future reference. I hope others have as well. I've also taken one of the sections you'd written prior---equally as detailed---and copied it to a text file which is now backed up on a CD with other important documents. Way to go! You know how I feel about this as we've discussed this in the past to great extent.

Once again SHS, thank you for all your hard work in making Puppy more easily readable for those with vision problems.

Amicalement,

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

disciple · #17 Post by **disciple** » Mon 03 Mar 2008, 23:44

I've done a whole lot more experimenting in the last couple of days, and here are some of my observations:

-The change to /usr/X11R6/bin/xwin stops X starting on my machine
-for some bizarre reason the code for antialiasing in local.conf didn't work, but if I first turn antialiasing off for all fonts, and kept the suggested code to turn it back on for large fonts (taking out the code relating to small fonts), then I got the intended results.
-I prefer to have antialiasing turned off for fonts up to 26 pixels rather than 13.
-changing the code in Xorg.conf I can't fix the stroke on the capital K in Times New Roman at size 28. But maybe this is because I don't have the change to /usr/X11R6/bin/xwin?

Eyes-Only · #18 Post by **Eyes-Only** » Tue 04 Mar 2008, 00:12

I'm just curious disciple: Are you using a Puppy version below 2.10? I ask because you supposedly only needed to make that directory if using a Pup below 2.10---2.10 and above used the X11R7 pathway if I've read SHS's instructions correctly.

Not that I really know all that much about this topic in all actuality. So like I should be speaking!

Amicalement,

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

disciple · #19 Post by **disciple** » Tue 04 Mar 2008, 00:36

Yes.
The really funny thing is that the sub-pixel rendering settings don't do anything on my (LCD) screen. I'm wondering if it is a problem with fontconfig not reading local.conf correctly, but there seems to be no way of finding out.

erikson · #20 Post by **erikson** » Thu 20 Mar 2008, 20:57

Now *here* is a thread that I have to read very carefully !!!

Having had various ancestors and close relatives in the printing business, coming from the Windows world and being used to Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, Times New Roman etc, and having taken pains to make my personal website typographically appealing... I was missing that in Puppy.

Now let's see if my computer skills are on par to get these fonts working.

Wolf Pup · #21 Post by **Wolf Pup** » Fri 21 Mar 2008, 01:39

liberation fonts - metric-compatible with Monotype Corporation's Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier New.link

Liberation Sans - Arial
Liberation Serif - Times New Roman
Liberation Mono - Courier New

liberation_fonts_ttf-0.2

md5sum

erikson · #22 Post by **erikson** » Sat 22 Mar 2008, 17:52

On my pcPuppyOS pendrive (under /usr/share/fonts/default/TTF/), I simply have put symbolic links to the Verdana and Tahoma fonts on my WinXP hard disk (under c:/WINDOWS/Fonts/, mounted as /mnt/hda1/WINDOWS/Fonts/).

Lo and behold! IceWM and Thunderbird see and use these fonts, even with correct point sizes.

Next, OxygenOffice swriter (as included in pcPuppyOS) has a lot of built-in fonts, but (to my taste) few if any are suitable for documents with a "professional" look.

Now I created a sample document with MS Word under WinXP, using various popular "windows" fonts (arial, verdana, tahoma, times new roman, courier new, trebuchet). When I open this doc in OxygenOffice swriter (included in pcPuppyOS), lo and behold! the fonts show correctly, and I can even edit text using these fonts.

Ninety percent of my Puppy font concerns are solved

erikson · #23 Post by **erikson** » Tue 25 Mar 2008, 16:40

I'm trying to follow SHS's instructions, including the compilation. It will be my first Linux compilation, wish me luck!

Concerning bash, he says...

Get the bash-3.1.pup dotpup at http://dotpups.de/puppy-releases/2.01/service-packs/

... but apparently that link is dead (Error 404).

Googling for alternative bash-3.1 sources, I find a forum thread dated 2006-Jul-09
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=9262
wherein is mentioned...

The command:
bash --version
should report:
GNU bash, version 3.1.0(1)-release (i486-pc-linux-gnu)

I'm running very recent Puppy versions (Puppy 3.01 seamonkey and pcPuppyOS 3.01rc6) and both report...

# bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.00.16(1)-release (i486-t2-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Now my questions.

- If it's known since Jul 2006 that bash 3.1 is needed, why are new distribs still using lower versions? Is there anything wrong with bash 3.1?
- Would it be okay to use bash 3.00.16(1) as included in Puppy 3.01?

Colonel Panic · #24 Post by **Colonel Panic** » Wed 16 Jul 2008, 19:57

Good thread, I intend to give the ideas in the OP in particular a try soon.

Colonel Panic · #25 Post by **Colonel Panic** » Wed 16 Jul 2008, 22:02

It worked! The desktop looks way better now. Many thanks to Sit Heel Speak for his post.

Next stop; adding the same fonts to Abiword. I expect there's a thread for that somewhere.

astrogreek · #26 Post by **astrogreek** » Thu 17 Jul 2008, 12:04

I had a look at the screenshots by the OP (the "before" and "after"), and my reaction was:"You have got to be kidding! All that and so little improvement?"

Sorry to say it, but text looks far better on my Windows XP than they do in your screenshots.

Sit Heel Speak · #27 Post by **Sit Heel Speak** » Thu 17 Jul 2008, 22:58

It helps to appreciate the beauty of these, if you are looking at a notebook LCD or a TFT flatpanel screen, and viewing at fullscreen in your image viewer (mtPaint or IrfanView).

Puppy 2.17.1 with one rxvt window chrooted into Gentoo.png

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view423.html

The actual page, so you can switch tabs and directly compare:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2 ... ew423.html

Still think it looks better in XP?

@erikson: Bash 3.1 is now available as a dotpet, use Puppy Package Manager.

tadatada · #28 Post by **tadatada** » Tue 22 Jul 2008, 09:14

admiring you.

Sit Heel Speak · #29 Post by **Sit Heel Speak** » Tue 22 Jul 2008, 19:35

An experiment:

Chinese fonts without my font tweaks (in "stock" Puppy 4.1-alpha-4, with the kai-pc.ttf font added-in and the short local.conf version given above, with "autohint" instead of "hinting" (in other words, using the standard Puppy capabilities):
http://i33.tinypic.com/1j6lj6.jpg

Chinese fonts with my full font tweaks (in Puppy 4.00-k2.6.25):
http://i35.tinypic.com/29w1tvm.png

I do not read Chinese, so cannot judge; would a native Chinese-speaker (reader) please look at both of these, and tell me if one or the other looks better?

astrogreek · #30 Post by **astrogreek** » Sun 10 Aug 2008, 13:21

Sit Heel Speak wrote:It helps to appreciate the beauty of these, if you are looking at a notebook LCD or a TFT flatpanel screen, and viewing at fullscreen in your image viewer (mtPaint or IrfanView).

Puppy 2.17.1 with one rxvt window chrooted into Gentoo.png

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view423.html

The actual page, so you can switch tabs and directly compare:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2 ... ew423.html

Still think it looks better in XP?
...

Sorry if I was bit harsh, and for the late reply. But yes, it looks much better in XP. I use a nice and sharp laptop LCD. I guess it depends a bit on the screen and personal preferences too. I installed the package by Deniros http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=26020 which made my fonts much nicer, but they are too heavy for me. Is there a way to make them lighter? I believe getting nice fonts that are easy to read is very, very important, otherwise people are going to switch back to Windows (or Mac). I did.

Sit Heel Speak · #31 Post by **Sit Heel Speak** » Sun 10 Aug 2008, 20:04

astrogreek wrote:Dear SHS, my Buick looks way better than your Chevy...but I'm not going to post my own screenshot to tinypic.com so you can see...oh, and by the way, I'm using a Ford built by someone else, and it isn't quite satisfactory...can you tell me how to fix the Ford?

Must...control...tongue...of death...

Sit Heel Speak · #32 Post by **Sit Heel Speak** » Sun 10 Aug 2008, 20:32

Upload a screen capture of your XP to tinypic, and post here the url, so I can see what I'm competing against...

***edited: I would especially like to see this page:

http://www.komonews.com/

whose webmaster seems fiendishly dedicated to continual refinement to make it ever more Vista-friendly and Linux-unfriendly...

***

PM me the /etc/fonts/local.conf that Deniros' package puts on your computer. Maybe improvements can be made there.

Sit Heel Speak · #33 Post by **Sit Heel Speak** » Sun 10 Aug 2008, 20:35

I should also here note, that the unpatented (i.e. default) autohinting of the newest libfreetype, in Puppy 4.1-alpha-5, is better than previous versions, actually pretty good; it's getting close to the point where there isn't enough difference between with and without my tweaks, to make the game worth the candle.

bobnutfield · #34 Post by **bobnutfield** » Wed 20 Aug 2008, 13:24

Just followed your instructions, and wow, what a difference! Thank you. It makes the Puppy experience all the better!

Bob

astrogreek · #35 Post by **astrogreek** » Tue 26 Aug 2008, 19:29

Sit Heel Speak wrote:Upload a screen capture of your XP to tinypic, and post here the url, so I can see what I'm competing against...

***edited: I would especially like to see this page:

http://www.komonews.com/

whose webmaster seems fiendishly dedicated to continual refinement to make it ever more Vista-friendly and Linux-unfriendly...

***

PM me the /etc/fonts/local.conf that Deniros' package puts on your computer. Maybe improvements can be made there.

XP:http://i38.tinypic.com/11rb3f4.jpg
Puppy:http://i36.tinypic.com/2qwg208.jpg
Both from Opera 9.51.
I'll PM the file as soon as possible. Thanks! And again sorry about the slow response, I have been away.

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

How I do fonts in Puppy

god, too complicated

Thank you for the beautiful fonts!