* readable font in qt applications
Posted on March 18th, 2009 by Alex. Filed under Linux.
Most probably you will get ugly fonts (especially Courier) in QT applications such as Opera after a clean installation of Debian Lenny.
Ugly Courier font in Opera
In the Internet there are many hints and tips, how to activate antialiasing for the font, so that it does not look so ugly anymore:
- http://pigeonsnest.co.uk/stuff/sarge/uglyfonts.html
- http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-user-german@lists.debian.org/msg15779.html
- http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=95965&sid=0b241276525fef86ba2ffcf68ee27747
- http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=22021
Some of them include manipulation of the font settings or to disable the use of the X core fonts in Opera (type opera:config into the address line, go to User Prefs and disable Enable Core X Fonts. Hint: Type . [that is a fullstop] and a letter for an immediate search within the page.). The results were not satisfying, since Courier which looks like a typewriter font, is replaced by something looking like Arial.
However there might be a very simple solution. It just took me several hours to find it. The X core fonts are missing and hence Opera cannot use them at all. To install the core fonts, execute an apt-get install xfonts-75dpi-transcoded as root. If you need only the fonts in the ISO 10646-1 and ISO 8859-1 encoding, you can also install xfonts-75dpi instead. Also have a look at the 100dpi versions of the packages. After installing, the same section of the screen has visibly improved:
After installation of X Core fonts
I do not care about antialiasing as long as the font is readable.