striker Posted March 4, 2006 Share Posted March 4, 2006 (edited) When I use some fonts in kWord (or any other editor or wordprocessor for that matter) to print something like a piece of text, and I use the Andale mono font or whatever font you would like to see here, why the heck it prints really different in PClos, SuSE and Mandriva ...?Is anyone able to answer this question other then with 'it just happens to be that way' or 'it's by design' ?Those fonts are not what I'm used to see in other OS's, albeit they are better than e couple of years ago. Some fonts are the same like way back then. Why come they were lousy then and better now when used while printing ? Edited March 4, 2006 by striker Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted March 5, 2006 Author Share Posted March 5, 2006 Ok, I found something :Start with this as a bit of basic information...http://grc.com/ctwhat.htmhttp://grc.com/cttech.htmhttp://grc.com/freeandclear.htm... and head over to this link :http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/sh...ad.php?t=267914It really starts getting interesting with post #14 and then onwards to the end of the thread.There's a resume of all this on a wiki page below - much easier to read and follow:http://slackwiki.org/LCD_Monitor_Configuration_In_X.OrgThe above delivers enough for a extended study period of a few weeks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rolanaj Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 Wow interesting who knew there was so much involved in making fonts. I did notice today that the fonts in Mozillas browser are cleaner than in Firefox, wasn't even thinking about it but opened my personal google page and the difference was amazing.Thanks for the links Striker Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted March 5, 2006 Author Share Posted March 5, 2006 You're welcome rolanaj. I'm hammering on this for a long time and these were the first good links I stumbled upon while searching for something completely else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 I just checked my Slackware install . . . because apparently this problem is more often seen in Slack then other distros . . . . . but my fonts do show up fine in there too . . . like any other distro I boot.I know this problem exists . . . several people have complained about it . . . but I always have had good rendering of the fonts in the dirstros and browsers I use ( and even the browsers I do not use ) apparently I am in a luxury position.I do feel sympathy for the people having these issues, I can imagine it is very annoying . . . . . but I wonder if the problem really is software related like the links posted do suggest . . . . because I keep thinking that it is hardware. ( But sure, what do I know, because in the end I do not have the same problem as others have to deal with )Anyway . . . I hope the wiki Striker links to will give a solution for you all ! Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted March 5, 2006 Author Share Posted March 5, 2006 Nope, the problem lies in the font rendering. The links explain it all. (but I warned you it 'll take a fair amount of reading ! )Just a little experiment : in Mandriva and PClos and SuSE you can install fonts (import them in SuSE) from Windows. Now take from Windows the Arial font and install it in one of these distros, better yet in all three of them. Open up a text editor like kWord and type a little story or just copy 'n paste something from the net into the editor in each distro : have a good look at it and then print it out.Now boot into Windows (if you dare to have that around ) and just do the same, pasting it in Wordpad and using the Windows Arial font. Look at it very good (it's definitely less fatty) and print the story and have a look at it.See the difference ? I sure do, and not alone in printed material but also on the display, either CRT of LCD. And that's why I'm trying to get to the bottom of this. And believe me, it has nothing to do with the hardware, it's the font rendering in linux which is the culprit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebrke Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 (edited) I used to install the MS fonts, but gave it up several installs ago as a matter of principle. SuSE's own serif and sans fonts look good on-screen (or maybe I've just gotten used to them!) and look pretty good on paper, so I guess I'm lucky like Bruno. Edited March 5, 2006 by ebrke Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 Nope, the problem lies in the font rendering. The links explain it all. (but I warned you it 'll take a fair amount of reading ! )Just a little experiment : in Mandriva and PClos and SuSE you can install fonts (import them in SuSE) from Windows. Now take from Windows the Arial font and install it in one of these distros, better yet in all three of them. Open up a text editor like kWord and type a little story or just copy 'n paste something from the net into the editor in each distro : have a good look at it and then print it out.Now boot into Windows (if you dare to have that around ) and just do the same, pasting it in Wordpad and using the Windows Arial font. Look at it very good (it's definitely less fatty) and print the story and have a look at it.See the difference ? I sure do, and not alone in printed material but also on the display, either CRT of LCD. And that's why I'm trying to get to the bottom of this. And believe me, it has nothing to do with the hardware, it's the font rendering in linux which is the culprit.Yep . . . BUT . . . Arial is a Windows font . . made for Windows, so sure it will display better in Windows.Arial is not even a "real" typefont . . . . it is just an "bad job" adaptation because "real" type fonts do look lousy on a computer screen, so MS took a few "real" fonts ( Helvetica and Universe ) mashed them together and tweaked them to death to give a reasonable rendering on the screen.Sure the fonts in Linux are not "real" fonts either . . . even the so called Helvetica is not the "real" Hevetica, it is an adapted version of it.Even in old-fashion typesetting there were differences in how a font would print onto paper depending the manufacturer who constructed the machine that made the lead letters to form a text page.They tried to introduce DIN norms when computer-typesetting was the new rage ( even there you had BIG differences on how a font looked on the screen and on the photographic output the computer produced ) but even with the DIN norms there were and still are differences from manufacturer to manufacturer.If you take 2 books . . . one pre and one post computer-typesetting you can see the difference and notice that quality has gone down in a gigantic way . . . and even worse with DTP.I do believe you when you say it is software related . . . . but I think you should not try to compare a font exclusively made for Windows with what you see in Linux. Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted March 5, 2006 Author Share Posted March 5, 2006 (edited) Then tell me this : why are most of the linux fonts that fat either on the display or printed? I can't hand that over to my boss, he'll kick me out within the first hour. There's no near letter quality to be seen in linux. In windows you have it readily available.Edit :Maybe it's better to forget the printed material issue for now, that's another league. Let's concentrate on the displayed fonts for now. Edited March 5, 2006 by striker Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 Fonts you have on your desktop computer are not suitable for printing at all ( nor in Windows ) . . . DTP is the worst invention ever !On screen I have no problems with the "fatness"of the fonts . . . mine show an acceptable amount of black and white. But sure I can't compare it to what I would like to see in print in a book. Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted March 5, 2006 Author Share Posted March 5, 2006 Mmm, I tend to see where you are heading now. Is there any font at all which is the same in linux and the other os ? (another question : is that why in Kate you can set a font for displaying and a font for printing ??)DTP don't you talk about that ! You'll never get to see on your screen what it's going to look like when pressed. The best you get is a slight resemblence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teacher Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 I suppose somehow we would need to find a way to merger developers with font designers to improve things. As a kid with a paper route I used to love watching the men putting together each page of the newspaper. They could add leading to a page so fast it seemed like their hands flew. I always wondered what would happen if they dropped a tray with all the lines of type and had to figure out how to put it back together but they never did that. It was fun to watch the ticker tape come out of the machines as well. Do kids today even know where ticker tape came from? I guess I am feeling ancient all of a sudden. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillD Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 Well, in OpenOffice, Nimbus Roman No. 9 L (what ever that is) seems to look pretty good for correspondence and prints as well as Times New Roman (both in 12 pt) and it came with PCLos; unlike the MS fonts I downloaded. However Nimbus is slightly "fatter" and takes up a little more space on the line for the same text than does Times New Roman (which I normally use for correspondence, documents, etc., in Windows). Nimbus does not seem to suffer from the odd, erratic spacing on the screen in OO that seems to characterize Times New Roman in OO. And Nimbus and Times NR in 12 pt are about the same height and both seem to print cleanly. However, I have yet to find any way to make an envelope template for OO that will work with my front envelope feed HP printer with proper return address location; so I had to make one in Kword, which would be a real nuisance if I were serious about doing much correspondence in OO.Also, unlike some of the other fonts, Nimbus seems to print well with my HP printer in OO. For some reason, when I try to print in Kword, the printer uses too much ink and the result has a slightly "gloppy" look to it.The main problem I have seen with just sticking with the Linux fonts is that in email, things do not seem to translate too well to people using Windows (and I have sent countless emails back and forth to myself with various fonts from Linux to Windows and Windows to Linux in an attempt to come up with something that would not change size or become unduly "fat" in one or the other and I have yet to find anything that looks in Linux much like it does in Windows despite all this. The "fat" stuff that appears in my Linux Thunderbird compose box, is significantly "thinner" in Windows, and depending on which font I use, may also be radically different in vertical size. Also, the rendition of too many web pages is totally "incorrect" (as compared with Windows) without MS fonts installed.Unfortunately, they all tend to appear somewhat fuzzy on my screens (whether LCD or CRT) in Linux (PCLos and Ubuntu at least).Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 Is there any font at all which is the same in linux and the other os ?Nope . . because all OS'es is made by software developers and they have no clue about typefaces . . . . and designers of typefaces make them for printing and they know that computers by design are not suited to print/display characters. Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted March 6, 2006 Author Share Posted March 6, 2006 Thanks for the replies !JuliaI remember a complete printing/press set up in the museum I used to work as chief of the technical service dep. We had a bunch of voluntaries working with that equipment. Before the whole set up went into working condition again, we had to put all those typefaces one after one after their recondition in those huge cases. They weight almost a ton. And then the press itself : we had to reinforce the floor before we even could place the press.BillThanks, time to do some more experimenting.BrunoThanks for the heads up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted March 6, 2006 Author Share Posted March 6, 2006 update :I've encountered some possibilities to adjust the fonts in each individual editor/wordprocessor for displaying/printing. I'm making some progress now, the result at the moment is the fonts look much better now, now I know where those fonts come from and what's the philosophy behind it. Hope to report back later or tomorrow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted March 7, 2006 Author Share Posted March 7, 2006 I have a dumb question... I need a hint how and where to set a different font for printing in OOo 2 as opposite to the font displayed. Anybody out there to set me in the right direction? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teacher Posted March 7, 2006 Share Posted March 7, 2006 Arre you referring to under Tools-->options --> Fonts--> Apply replacement table where you can tell it to print in a different font? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillD Posted March 7, 2006 Share Posted March 7, 2006 If you print in something different than you are viewing it in, you risk getting into trouble unless by some weird coincidence the printing font and the viewed one are both identical in height, width and spacing. If they are not, what comes out of the printer will not look like what you intended. This could be a major problem if formatting is at all important to you.Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted March 7, 2006 Author Share Posted March 7, 2006 Tnx for the hints ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted March 7, 2006 Author Share Posted March 7, 2006 I was able to get the fonts right to my likings and my vision - speaking of PCLinuxOS now. I have to say, it took a fair amount of time, it wasn't just a 'click 'n choose 'n click again' operation, but I managed to get me a good looking system.Which fonts I use now and that sort of things I'm not gonna post however; My vision and my preferences are completely different than yours. All I want to say right now 'having acceptable fonts on the screen and if you spent some more time on it even good fonts' is possible. This is how I did it : I tried this and that but was always kicked back to the start, so I started afresh and tried every single font I had on the machine. Where at all possible I left out the Windows specific fonts because I learned those were specially crafted so to speak. I have to admit tho that this was not always possible, probably because I do have my own preferences.Anyhow, after spending one and a halve day on this - only the screen fonts ! - and working with them, I was able to choose the best among them for my vision and my likings. I'm working now with them since a day and I don't get any eye fatigue anymore or even wet eyes, which I got before starting this whole struggle. But it was worth it i.m.o : so I'm going to ease up a bith now for a few days and enjoy. The only problem I'm left with at the moment is to get the printed fonts good too, but that can wait a few more days. ( I've ran out of ink )So, ugly fonts and unreadable fonts are possible in linux, but with some descent thinkering and spending some time on the subject, you might be able to get good looking and readable fonts without getting eyestrains. You don't get them the easy out-of-the-box way (there are of course exceptions), but what on this earth do we get easy ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted March 8, 2006 Share Posted March 8, 2006 I've enjoyed this thread. I downloaded Windows fonts in PCLos and was happier than what I was using but I reinstalled and did not reinstall the windows fonts so I might do some tinkering of my own.Let me know when you start working on FF fonts, LOL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted March 8, 2006 Author Share Posted March 8, 2006 (edited) I've enjoyed this thread. I downloaded Windows fonts in PCLos and was happier than what I was using but I reinstalled and did not reinstall the windows fonts so I might do some tinkering of my own.Let me know when you start working on FF fonts, LOL.I've already been there ,done that. The fonts in FF look really good now. But one warning : the fonts in FF are the most difficult to get right. It depends on many factors, amongst them your personal vision / eyesight, the display your using, the sites you frequent. And of course your own preferences.If you need an advice : start with the KDE fonts in the look 'n feel section and forget about the printer fonts for now, concentrate on the fonts on the screen only. Pick up the printer fonts later when the screens look good to you. Go ahead with all editor fonts for the screen, after that's done the FF fonts are left to be picked. Take your time and be picky, in between of those sessions go and do something else, relax. It took me more than 36 hours to get them right to my vision and my preferences. The day there after I walked through all the settings once more and did some minor readjustments, those are the settings I'm still using now.I know, for some people it might be looking as a dream, good fonts... but it is possible. Of course, if you are satisfied with what you have, leave it where it is. But for the others, start thinkering and fiddling around with them and use a system for that, don't start thinkering here and there, use a system and try to document it very well. And get some coffee and something to eat, you might need it... Edited March 8, 2006 by striker Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted March 9, 2006 Share Posted March 9, 2006 striker, I use ksnapshot alot so my printer prints exactly what is on the screen. Maybe that's why I don't notice a problem with the printer font different from the screen display. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted March 9, 2006 Author Share Posted March 9, 2006 Liz, that's quite an idea.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillD Posted March 10, 2006 Share Posted March 10, 2006 What is Ksnapshot? Where is it? And how do you use it?Thanks,Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted March 10, 2006 Author Share Posted March 10, 2006 multimedia > Graphics > ksnapshot.It's a utility for taking screenshots.You can see how to set it up on its screen, it's so simple that I believe I don't have to explain that to you.You can take a screenshot of the whole screen, a window under your cursor or a particular region freely adjustable. A delay for taking the shot is also build in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted March 10, 2006 Share Posted March 10, 2006 Since I'm a diehard fan, in windows, of the free utility called printkey2000, which is a screen capture program, I asked Bruno what I could use in linux. He pointed me to ksnapshot and I've been using that since about my first week in linux (I had to get my networked printer working but that was not too hard to set up).I have ksnapshot to use a region and I move my cursor around to grab what I want, then I print it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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