How I do fonts in Puppy

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Sit Heel Speak
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#31 Post by Sit Heel Speak »

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...

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Sit Heel Speak
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#32 Post by Sit Heel Speak »

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.
Last edited by Sit Heel Speak on Sun 10 Aug 2008, 21:46, edited 1 time in total.

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Sit Heel Speak
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#33 Post by Sit Heel Speak »

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.

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bobnutfield
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Thank you for the beautiful fonts!

#34 Post by bobnutfield »

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

Bob

astrogreek
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#35 Post by astrogreek »

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.

astrogreek
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#36 Post by astrogreek »

Update: after doing a bit of searching and reading about Linux vs. Windows vs. Mac fonts, I realize that what fonts people like is highly subjective. I have seen example comparisons posted, where I find the Linux fonts horrible, while others have the opposite preference.
Ideally, I would like to be able to tune the font to my liking, like in Windows with the Cleartype tuning app.
In this image I prefer the "thinnest" font at the lower right:
http://i38.tinypic.com/9gx0ra.jpg

On the whole I like the fonts in Puppy very much, they are just a tad to heavy for me. But in Opera fonts look very bad. I tried a few tips to improve it, but that may have made things even worse.

disciple
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#37 Post by disciple »

IMO it is definitely best not to have any font smoothing for small fonts like you would use for normal on-screen display. The first thing I do when I have to use a Windows machine is hunt down all the different controls to turn off cleartype - in Windows, in Office, in IE. It's quite painful because they hide all the controls, and the ones in Office 2007 always seem to be in different places, but at least it lets my eyes stop screaming :)
Do you know a good gtkdialog program? Please post a link here

Classic Puppy quotes

ROOT FOREVER
GTK2 FOREVER

astrogreek
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#38 Post by astrogreek »

http://img376.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fontswh5.png

I think the non-cleartype is a bit too thin and blocky; the cleartype is just right; and my Puppy Opera fonts are waaaay too heavy.

Josef
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Re: Where to obtain good TrueType fonts

#39 Post by Josef »

Sit Heel Speak wrote:
Finally, you must tell Puppy that the new subdir exists. Open an rxvt window and issue the commands (do not omit the dot at the end of the middle three commands):

cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF
mkfontscale .
mkfontdir .
fc-cache -fv .
xset fp+ /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF

Now you have a very capable set of fonts.
I just copied my c:\windows\fonts folder into /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF and followed your instructions above.
A few error messages came up, but however fonts look MUCH better now.

I must admit that your little tutorial was a bit intimidating since my linux knowledge is VERY low. I have bookmarked this thread to come back later when I have enough courage to follow the whole tut.

Thanks!

Josef

(I wonder why fonts in every linux distro I've tried look like shit)

disciple
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#40 Post by disciple »

FWIW Openoffice.org does use freetype... the problem is that it includes its own freetype (actually, 3.x may not... I can't remember; but it certainly did before). You can fix its font rendering by replacing its freetype with links to the system freetype.

I hope you get better soon SHS.
Do you know a good gtkdialog program? Please post a link here

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ROOT FOREVER
GTK2 FOREVER

Bosola
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.pet package

#41 Post by Bosola »

Well, this is my first time posting, and I've only been using Puppy - or, indeed, any version of Linux - for a couple of days now.

Anyway, I'm using Boxpuppy, the Puplet that's integrated with OpenBox. Now, maybe I'm making some terribly newbish mistake here, but I've tried to use the .pet package, and initiating it simply causes my system to go dead. Just black and crash.

Can anyone help? Is this expected behaviour?

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Sit Heel Speak
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Re: .pet package

#42 Post by Sit Heel Speak »

Bosola wrote:...I'm using Boxpuppy,...I've tried to use the .pet package, and initiating it simply causes my system to go dead. Just black and crash...Is this expected behaviour?
No, it is not expected behavior. You should just have to single-left-click on the PET package, it should take a minute or less to install, and there should be no problem.

There is more than one version of BoxPup and it is possible that the retro version with kernel 2.6.21.7 may not be compatible, my hunch is that the version of freetype in the PET package may be too new for that old of a kernel (and other libraries). If you will tell me which version of BoxPup you are using, I will download and install it and see what's going on.

Bosola
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#43 Post by Bosola »

I'm using Boxpup 4.1.2. I downloaded the .iso from here only two days ago.

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Sit Heel Speak
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#44 Post by Sit Heel Speak »

Bosola wrote:I'm using Boxpup 4.1.2. I downloaded the .iso from here only two days ago.
Try the version I have just posted here

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trio
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#45 Post by trio »

Hi Sit Heel Speak,

I need help, maybe off topic, but it's about fonts.

I need to have a list of fonts' REAL NAMES not the name of the .ttf files. Can you tell me how to get this done?

say I save it as /tmp/fontslist.txt:
monofonto
ionic charge
pdingobats
Dejavu Sans

Thanks in advance

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Sit Heel Speak
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#46 Post by Sit Heel Speak »

trio wrote:I need to have a list of fonts' REAL NAMES not the name of the .ttf files. Can you tell me how to get this done?
Sorry, no, not in Linux. I would speculate, code to map from .ttf name to real name exists...in either libxft or libfreetype --but exactly where, or how to exploit, so far I don't have that skill.

So far, when I want to see the real name, I copy the .ttf over to a Windows machine and use Bitstream Font Navigator from Corel Draw 8 to see it.

What distro are those fonts in?

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trio
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#47 Post by trio »

Sit Heel Speak wrote:
trio wrote:I need to have a list of fonts' REAL NAMES not the name of the .ttf files. Can you tell me how to get this done?
Sorry, no, not in Linux. I would speculate, code to map from .ttf name to real name exists...in either libxft or libfreetype --but exactly where, or how to exploit, so far I don't have that skill.

So far, when I want to see the real name, I copy the .ttf over to a Windows machine and use Bitstream Font Navigator from Corel Draw 8 to see it.

What distro are those fonts in?
I got it, command #fc-list

Thanks anyway

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James186282
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#48 Post by James186282 »

I was wondering what steps I would need to take to allow me to take some simple monospaced font, edit a few minor things (Slashed Zeros, I and 1 with more distinct differences Letter J with hats etc. All I would use this for is editing code. I played around with a font editing program "fontforge" which overwhelmed me after I changed the bitmaps. *Hinting splines etc. Maybe thats the only way to make a font work? I worked with some guys on the original Antialiasing in the early 80s but.... I don't need to have a recognizable alphabet in 2 x 2 (It IS possible btw)

Most important - Thank you very much for spelling out improving Fonts. I really enjoy seeing whats going on under the hood. pet files are great. Don't get me wrong I just like to see what the "OZ" is really doing behind the curtain. If I can add that to anyone who is reading this. Wizards are also nice. Much of the time I don't have any serious interest in how things work. I'm happy to click and await the greatness. I do think it would be a terrific plus to make a short (as possible) description of what just happened when you install a pet.

Pet copys a batch script named zarfme to /root/applications/bin and changes the path in /etc/zarf5.rc to include /root/applications/zarf
or whatever. I am a bit of an insane perfectionist about comments in code and while there are often ways to find out how something works by surfing the web I find it more pleasing to list the program and see how it works. Someday I'll have to list my menu.lst file (To boot my machine) for everyone to say "He IS insane" I think mine is up to 25k. My jwm files are getting equally huge with my comments as I try to understand what everything does.

Not everyone can change the engine in her car but a lot of people can swap the horn or put in a bigger battery. This thread is great because your the guy who CAN replace his (font) engine and its very nice that you share the info!
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer.
Art is everything else we do.
[i]Donald Knuth [/i]

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