Ugly Open Sans Bold

[ntrrgc]

Yesterday I installed fontconfig-ultimate following the instructions in the Arch Linux wiki. So far, the system looks mostly good, except for a few quirks.

This is Open Sans Bold 10, from the infinality-bundle-fonts repository:

Noticeably, the e has been bitten off at the top, maybe being too bold at the bottom. Also, the capital T is smaller than the lowercase h and the kerning does not look uniform either.

[bohoomil]

Thank you for using and the feedback.

I believe it must be a mess somewhere in your $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/.fontconfig or some leftovers from previous fontconfig installation in /etc/fonts/conf.d. The expected rendering of Open Sans at mid-to-low heights with packages from the repository (libs & fonts) looks like this (more or less: click to enlarge):

[ntrrgc]

Uhmm... I have no .fontconfig file in my home directory. Truth is I used Infinality before with the AUR packages, which are currently uninstalled.

This is the content of my /etc/fonts/conf.d/ hashed in md5, so we can easily tell if yours and mine are different: https://dpaste.de/Um6u

[bohoomil]

Check and compare the output of two commands:

$ grep Xft <(xrdb -q)
Xft.antialias:  1
Xft.autohint:   0
Xft.dpi:        96
Xft.hinting:    1
Xft.hintstyle:  hintfull
Xft.lcdfilter:  lcddefault
Xft.rgba:       rgb

$ grep INFINALITY <(env)
INFINALITY_FT_FRINGE_FILTER_STRENGTH=50
INFINALITY_FT_USE_VARIOUS_TWEAKS=true
INFINALITY_FT_FILTER_PARAMS=06 22 36 22 06
INFINALITY_FT_CHROMEOS_STYLE_SHARPENING_STRENGTH=20

Depending on your WM/DE, the Xft settings may differ.

[ntrrgc]

For the first command:

Xft.antialias:  1
Xft.hinting:    1
Xft.hintstyle:  hintmedium
Xft.rgba:       rgb

Which is weird, since in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/infinality-settings I have set hintfull (default), not hintmedium.

For the second:

INFINALITY_FT_FRINGE_FILTER_STRENGTH=50
INFINALITY_FT_USE_VARIOUS_TWEAKS=true
INFINALITY_FT_FILTER_PARAMS=06 22 36 22 06
INFINALITY_FT_CHROMEOS_STYLE_SHARPENING_STRENGTH=20

I'm using KDE4. In systemsettings antialising is set to 'System preferences'.

[ntrrgc]

Hmm... it seems the System preferences option is useless. I tweaked antialiasing to Enable and, in the following dialog, hinting: medium was selected. I changed it to full, saved, restored to System preferences and now xrdb -q tells I'm using full hinting.

Edit: Open Sans keeps looking the same though.

[bohoomil]

Plasma 5? Can it be something about #56?

[ntrrgc]

No, I said KDE4.

[bohoomil]

If this is KDE4 only, then you may need to add to your startup applications a script that will source custom .Xresources:

Xft.antialias:  1
Xft.autohint:   0
Xft.dpi:        96
Xft.hinting:    1
Xft.hintstyle:  hintfull
Xft.lcdfilter:  lcddefault
Xft.rgba:       rgb

A simple xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources should do.

I have to do this in Xfce4, too. As far as I can remember, KDE4 works just fine with it. Then you can leave full hinting in system settings.

[ntrrgc]

Sorry, but what do you mean with sourcing that?

I mean, what command should I run in order to do that?

[bohoomil]

A simple command execution:

xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

-- put in your startup applications. Of course, with the above settings.

[ntrrgc]

Done, but still the same :(

[bohoomil]

Odd... As this is unlikely a bug, I think it may be worth asking on Arch forums in the dedicated ib support thread. There are many KDE users around who hasn't reported any problems with this particular DE and ib. You can share the link to this issue -- just write a post describing briefly the problem. Someone will sooner prompt you with a hint there than in an isolated bug report.

[ntrrgc]

I just created a new user in order to test this with an empty profile. This is the new snapshot:

The e looks much better. The uppercase T is still smaller than the lowercase h, but after looking at other screenshots, that seems the expected behavior in Open Sans. It looks like the problem is located within my profile.

[bohoomil]

The 'Th' pair is what Open Sans looks like by default:

(screenshot source)

This has nothing to do with bad rendering or design. See this for example:

[ntrrgc]

Yeah, it's fine. Now I only have to find why it does not work in my profile.

[bohoomil]

I have no idea... Are you sure there's really nothing among your local config files that might interfere with default font settings?

[ntrrgc]

I suspect there it is, but I don't know where to look for. For the time being I'll try to find files containing the word font in my dotfiles.

[ntrrgc]

I found it. ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf

After removing it, the e is no longer bitten off.

[bohoomil]

Great -- I'm really glad that the problem is gone.