Agfa Monotype, a global provider of fonts and font technologies, has licensed fonts to Red Hat. Red Hat has licensed Agfa Monotype’s Albany, Cumberland and Thorndale typeface families, and a font that conforms to the Unicode 3.2 specification, Unicode’s latest international character encoding standard for multilingual digital information exchange. Red Hat is licensing these high quality fonts through the Red Hat Network, mostly targeting Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers.
Agfa Monotype Licenses Fonts to Red Hat for its Enterprise Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
does fedora fall under the Red Hat umbrella?
These fonts are not going to be included in Fedora, no. Fedora’s goal is to not include any licensed/copyrighted stuff.
If Fedora users have access to the Red Hat Network though, they might be able to get their hands on these fonts. It also seems that a future RHEL version will have these fonts included, but not Fedora.
Well…by reading the title of the article…
Agfa Monotype Licenses Fonts to Red Hat for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
I’m glad to see that Red Hat sees this as an issue. To me, one of the biggest problems with Linux is the fonts. It may sound superficial, but it’s hard to keep Linux as my primary distro when everything is so ugly. I’ve tried many different distros and I’ve never used one whose fonts were as nice as MS’s.
Just my oppinion. No flame war intended.
Why don’t you just download the MS Core fonts and install them? They are available for free.
http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/
These are the same fonts you have in Windows, MS lets you redistribute them.
Woah, doesn’t take much to make you happy. 🙂
>I’m glad to see that Red Hat sees this as an issue
There were the Vera fonts released last April, which are also of high quality. Problem with these fonts though was that they didn’t have all the unicode information in them (no greek for example). The RH guy who wrote the Pango font library for GTK+, Owen Taylor, was against including the Vera fonts as the default font-set on Red Hat Linux because of this problem (no full character set). So, Red Hat now licenses these fonts for themselves and RHEL to get around the Vera problem.
>I’ve tried many different distros and I’ve never used one whose fonts were as nice as MS’s.
MS uses patented technologies and high quality propriertary fonts that no OSS OS can use. However that doesn’t take away the truthfulness away of your statement.
Also, please note that no matter how much you optimize and tweak a font engine, you always need to do some font-specific tuning to get the most out of your 4-5 most used fonts. Be Inc did that, Microsoft did that too, Linux folks should start considering optimizing for the widely-used MS webfonts (arial, verdana, times, courier, Tahoma, Trebouchet etc) and Vera too.
in Linux?
They may look good on Windows, and on a Mac, but how will they look in Linux.
Not to mention that, with Freetype 2.1.7 and anti-aliasing turned on, those MS fonts look better on Linux than they do in Windows!
It’s not superficial to want nice fonts, as it makes reading on the computer easier on the eyes – as long as the resolution is high enough, mind you. I use 1600×1200 with 24bpp, and my fonts look fantastic!
> with Freetype 2.1.7 and anti-aliasing turned on, those MS fonts look better on Linux than they do in Windows!
Oh, please! I have the latest on my slackware and the latest fontconfig too, and while font rendering is much better than in the past on Linux, it is still not up to par with windows (and may never be due to patents and because of fonts getting optimized for specific rendering engines by their creators). So, get over it and back to the topic.
I find that Andale Sans looks best for my taste, but of course others may find that they like other fonts best. That’s okay, they all look fantastic.
Seriously, the only other OS that comes close to Linux for fonts now is OS X!
(Lo-res shot included to give an idea of what it would look like on a 1024×1080 desktop).
http://archie.homelinux.net:8080/images/user/kde_shot3.jpg
http://archie.homelinux.net:8080/images/user/kde_shot3_lores.jpg
Perhaps the version you have wasn’t configured optimally. I know you now have to turn off that bytecode interpreter off if you want to get good results – in other word, the people behind Freetype2 have come up with better alternatives than the patented algorithms…
By the way, this is very much on-topic. With Freetype2, these fonts are going to look as good as OS X, and better than Windows (IMO).
Have you tried Freetype with the Bytecode Interpreter enabled? This is the Apple-patented technique that makes fonts look much nicer. Its not enable by default on most distributions because of patent issues.
ArchLinux happened to have it enabled by default (Its canadian based), and the fonts look MUCH nicer IMO. Though Ive seen people go either way with this.
Also, fonts are still opinion. I know people who can’t stand Anti Aliasing (they obviously aren’t using LCDs).
No, no, you have to leave the bytecode interpreter turned off, but turn on the improvements to the auto-hinter developed by David Chester.
In version 2.1.5, you had to uncomment those options in the file include/freetype/config/ftoption.h (they’re at the end of the file). I’m pretty sure that they’re standard in version 2.1.7, because I installed the rpm from Mandrake Cooker and it worked out-of-the-box.
I’m at home on my XP machine and looking around I don’t see anything special font wise compared to my Fedora install. Granted I have not tweaked the XP settings but I haven’t tweaked fedoras either. There are times you notice bad fonts on linux like when reading pdf or doc’s, but not when surfing or on the desktop.
In short maybe they could be better but a show stopper? not since RH 8.0
>(Lo-res shot included to give an idea of what it would look like on a 1024×1080 desktop).
Sorry, but it doesn’t work this way. All you did there was to RESIZE that image! This is _wrong_ and it shows nothing to us. Also, it is EASIER for any rendering engine to render big fonts like yours there than rendering fonts on 8pt or 9 pt(it seems that you are running on 13 or 14pt, which is pretty large and not defaults on any OS). To truly show the quality of a font engine, you need to include high quality screenshots (png preferably), of at least 4-5 different high-quality fonts (not crappy fonts like some Gnu offers) and all should range from 8pt to 12pt. THAT’s how you do correct comparisons on fonts and you get to see the problems well.
>Perhaps the version you have wasn’t configured optimally.
That’s a cheap shot, sorry. If a distro can’t do that for its users, then the software itself is in error and not ready for usage, no matter the visual results. Software should be easily configured by the distro makers. If you are suggesting that my distro has it wrong, then forntconfig or freetype has a bigger problem anyway.
I agree though that those who do not like Anti-Aliasing should turn the bytecode interpreter on. It does improve quality quite a bit. Personally, on a high-resolution screen, I can’t live without AA (which is why I’m unhappy with regards to fonts on my Win2K box at work…anyone know how to get UI fonts anti-aliased without needing an administrator account?)
>I’m pretty sure that they’re standard in version 2.1.7
I use do 2.1.7 btw.
The relative quality of fonts really depends on what kind of setup you have. On my setup (1600×1200 15″ LCD) I find Freetype without the bytecode hinter enabled to be the best setup. Cleartype hints far too aggressively — all that hinting is unnecessary when you have that many pixels to play with. On a standard CRT, I prefer Freetype with the bytecode hinter enabled, and anti-aliasing disabled for fonts between 8 and 15 point. I find antialiasing distracting at those resolutions. With that setup, rendering should be identical between Freetype and the standard Windows font-renderer.
In all cases, I prefer to use the stock Freetype, because distros include all sorts of crazy patches by default.
The only time I can see people preferring Cleartype’s rendering would be if you like your fonts a bit fuzzy — enable full anti-aliasing at CRT resolutions. Though, I find RedHat 8’s fully anti-aliased rendering on standard CRTs to be quite good.
Eugenia, do you have any screenshots of your font rendering in Slackware?
Fortunately, in Linux – the technology always exists.. The only question is if the users are smart enough to utilize it.
>Eugenia, do you have any screenshots of your font rendering in Slackware?
Yes, give me 10 minutes to boot to it and get them.
And please use the correct subject!
Sorry, but it doesn’t work this way. All you did there was to RESIZE that image!
Yes, I know that. I’m trying to show people who have lower-res monitors what I see.
This is _wrong_ and it shows nothing to us.
Okay, well only look at the big screenshot then.
Also, it is EASIER for any rendering engine to render big fonts like yours there than rendering fonts on 8pt or 9 pt(it seems that you are running on 13 or 14pt, which is pretty large and not defaults on any OS).
Nope. Default font size is 11. I guess KDE resizes it depending on resolution.
THAT’s how you do correct comparisons on fonts and you get to see the problems well.
Well, in this case the comparison is between what I see at home (Linux), and what I see at work (Win2K). I like what I see at home better. What else can I say.
My gf has a 1152×864 desktp. I took a screenshot of it. Of course it’s not going to look quite as nice, but still, it’s pretty good!
http://archie.homelinux.net:8080/images/user/capture1.png
“Perhaps the version you have wasn’t configured optimally.”
That’s a cheap shot, sorry.
It wasn’t meant as one.
If a distro can’t do that for its users, then the software itself is in error and not ready for usage, no matter the visual results.
I agree. But then the distro makers should read the documentation for the software – if a non-programmer like me could understand it, then the person doing the packages should have as well.
Software should be easily configured by the distro makers. If you are suggesting that my distro has it wrong, then forntconfig or freetype has a bigger problem anyway.
I disagree. The persons responsible for Freetype2 did a great job, and they offered many options to the end user: bytecode interpreter, auto-hinting, etc. It’s up to the distro makers to test those options and choose the one they like best.
However, as Ben has already mentioned, fonts are kind of a subjective matter. What looks good to someone might not look good to someone else. I merely suggested that the version for your distro might have been configured that way by someone who thought this looked good. I used to configure my own, but I now use the Mandrake Cooker packages and I’m very happy with them.
Sorry if I didn’t make myself clear. Personally, I love my fonts, but perhaps I’m spoiled by my 1600×1200 screen…
Here it is: Slackware-Current with freetype 2.1.7 and latest fontconfig.
http://www.osnews.com/img/5768/fonts.png
Notice that the Vera font (default on the menus and on Alleyoop) is well-rendered, and then check the two web browsers to notice how terribly both Verdana and Arial are rendering.
Wow….Your GF’s screenshot had some really nice fonts. The best I’ve seen in Linux.
The first two you posted though I didn’t like….but your GF’s was really nice.
Any chance we can get you to write a quick tutorial on how to get your fonts like that (including then choosing the proper fonts in Mozilla and KDE settings)? Please
Hm. It’s true that Arial doesn’t look very good (personally, I don’t think it ever looks good, not even in print, but I admit here it’s not being rendered that well). I don’t think Verdana looks that bad, though.
Is Andale a MS font?
> It’s true that Arial doesn’t look very good
The other MS web fonts (which are of high quality) don’t look good either on Linux. In your screenshot too, you can see that the word “Monotype” has colliding characters on your browser (it’s Arial that’s used there). Vera fonts look pretty good too. As I said, the new font advancements on Linux ARE very good, the performance is better than in the past, but it is just not as good as OSX’s or Windows’ and as I explained in my first comments on this story, it might never be, for reasons that are beyond the control of the freetype or the fontconfig developers. Now, let’s get back on topic.
Any chance we can get you to write a quick tutorial on how to get your fonts like that (including then choosing the proper fonts in Mozilla and KDE settings)? Please
Well, I didn’t do anything special. I used the latest Mandrake Cooker freetype2 rpms. I think it has to do with the font you pick. I really like Andale Sans (and Andale Mono for fixed width fonts), but some people find it too tall – it does make for vertically longer menus. And there are still some problems with the letter “i”, which sometimes seems too “fat” at certain font sizes.
This is a really interesting conversation (and no flames nor trolls, I’m impressed!), but I have to go to bed…gotta go to the dentist at 7:45 tomorrow morning. (Ugh!)
I’ll catch up tomorrow if the thread is still alive.
Okay, my entry into the screenshot comparo:
1024×768 : Arial and Vera 12-pt @ 75 dpi
http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg990h/kde_32_screenshots/kde-fonts-l…
1600×1200 : Arial 9-pt and Vera 12-pt @ 133 dpi
http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg990h/kde_32_screenshots/kde-fonts-h…
All screenshots taken with Freetype 2.1.7 with bytecode interpreter disabled. The desktop is KDE 3.2-RC1.
Eugenia, I don’t know why KDE is rendering so strangely on your machine — it works out of box on Debian.
Anybody with a Windows box want to submit some screenshots (preferably the same fonts and same page) so we can compare?
Okay, a quickie before bed.
The other MS web fonts (which are of high quality) don’t look good either on Linux. In your screenshot too, you can see that the word “Monotype” has colliding characters on your browser (it’s Arial that’s used there). Vera fonts look pretty good too.
Mmmh. You do make a good point. Perhaps then the best strategy is to make more use of high-quality “free” fonts, like the Vera fonts from BitStream. After all, fonts come in and go out of fashion, and imitations are commonplace (even Arial is a knockoff of Helvetica). I remember when Times New Roman and Helvetica were all the rage (when DTP took off in the mid-to-late 80’s).
On the other hand, moves like RedHat’s licensing of the Agfa fonts (see, back on topic! 😉 are another good development. I don’t mind paying a reasonable price for good fonts – Albany in particular is a nice font, nicer that Arial anyway. The problem I have with commercial fonts is that they’re pretty expensive to buy à la carte…it’s only worth it if you’re into DTP or other types of design (and then you’re probably using a Mac anyway…)
Oh well, gotta go, for real this time!
Rayiner, the screenshots you gave us are not useful. The arial font on the konqueror window rendering osnews is NOT the normal one and definately is not arial 9pt, it is *extremely* big and so any comparison based on them wouldn’t be useful. Please edit your kde font preferences AND the font preference down in the konqueror panel to show normal/default font sizes and also SMALL font sizes which is where all the meat is.
I have seen many times in your screenshots that you have altered the fonts to be really big (I also use 1600×1200 on my 21″ SONY monitor and I don’t have to alter anything).
> I don’t know why KDE is rendering so strangely on your machine
My KDE doesn’t render strangely, these were the DEFAULT font size values for Konqueror 3.1.5 (latest stable, slackware updated the kde packages just a few days ago). And no, these are not slackware specific, I get these font sizes on koqnueror on any distro.
The arial font on the konqueror window rendering osnews is NOT the normal one and definately is not arial 9pt,
—
Which screenshot are you talking about? As I said (“Arial and Vera 12-pt”), in the first one, both are 12-pt. The default KDE UI font is 11-pt, so I updated the low-res screenshot for 11-pt Arial. Looks mostly the same. In the second screenshot, the Arial, it is definitely 9-pt Arial. Remember, 9-pt @ 133 dpi is a whole lot more pixels than 9-pt at 100 dpi.
I have seen many times in your screenshots that you have altered the fonts to be really big (I also use 1600×1200 on my 21″ SONY monitor and I don’t have to alter anything).
—
That’s because you use a 21″ monitor. That’s 95dpi, which is just about the same as the 96dpi default resolution of Windows. 1600×1200 at 15″ is 133dpi. Of course, people whose monitors run at a different native resolution will see the screenshots differently.
My KDE doesn’t render strangely, these were the DEFAULT font size values for Konqueror 3.1.5
—
The font rendering for KDE shouldn’t be different from the font rendering in Epiphany, if both are at the same font sizes. The defaults in Konqueror are braindead. They specify a minimum size of 7-pt! OSNews, unfortunately, uses unreadably small fonts by default. Thus, the screenshots were taken with a sane minimum font size of 10-pt.
> The font rendering for KDE shouldn’t be different from the font rendering in Epiphany, if both are at the same font sizes
I use the defaults, I didn’t use the same font size for both konqueror and epiphany.
>The defaults in Konqueror are braindead.
That is not my problem then.
>OSNews, unfortunately, uses unreadably small fonts by default.
I am sorry, but I just use SIZE=2, it is you that require even bigger fonts. I can read them just fine.
I don’t know if I have the same fonts as you. I’m using all of the defaults except that I have turned on ClearType. The resolution is a piddly 1024×768 (the nicer laptop broke).
http://s88151037.onlinehome.us/images/ss.png
Nice rendering.
Check out the Arial rendering inside the osnews story and awe! And then go back to these Linux shots and check how the arial characters collide with each other, and if you actually run Arial on small size (but not on huge dpis like Rayiner does
), then you will see even more big changes between the two rendering engines.
I think I need an eye check up because I like the Linux (Rayiner) fonts better. Is it just me?
>Is it just me?
Yes. The Arial renders much better on XP in Pat’s screenshots. Even with Rayiner using such a huge font (which is why you think you like it better, it feels cleaner) you can still see the characters colliding between them.
I don’t know what you people are doing to your poor Linux fonts, but here’s what I see with Mozilla 1.6, Freetype 2.1.5, compared with Pat’s screenshot:
http://www.cs.loyola.edu/~swest/font.png
The Arial renders much better on XP in Pat’s screenshots. Even with Rayiner using such a huge font (which is why you think you like it better, it feels cleaner) you can still see the characters colliding between them.
Perhaps, I don’t understand what character collision is. But I looked once again carefully Rayiners screenshot, and observed each character line for line. I can’t find any character collisions.
The only difference I see is that Pats’ fonts look longer than Rayiners’. As for character collision, you’d have to explain that to me.
First of all, are you sure you are using Arial from MS?
Second, check how your Verdana renders with SIZE=2 instead of size=1 as requested in the code, because *some* linuxes (depends on the configuration and libs used) can’t render verdana smaller!
>As for character collision, you’d have to explain that to me.
Check the word “Monotype” on this shot’s story table: http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg990h/kde_32_screenshots/kde-fonts-l…
check how the “n” collides with its neighbor characters and how “t” is getting killed by o and y. And on the next word, check how o and b from the world global collide too. That’s how you compare font engines…
“First of all, are you sure you are using Arial from MS?
Second, check how your Verdana renders with SIZE=2 instead of size=1 as requested in the code, because *some* linuxes (depends on the configuration and libs used) can’t render verdana smaller!”
Eugenia, I’m not sure if you’re referring to me (I posted the png comparing my screenshot with Pat’s. That screenshot was taken with Arial (from Microsoft’s corefonts package, installed through portage). I’m not sure how you’d like me to do the Verdana comparison. If you want to see anything in particular, let me know.
Not to beleaguer the point, but I think my fonts look ok. I will say that I have seen some pretty awful fonts in Linux though.
The Verdana test already exists in your screenshot:
The “By Eugenia Loli-Queru – Posted on 2004-01-27 02:42:13” is using Verdana and that’s what I was reffering to.
>As for character collision, you’d have to explain that to me.
Check the word “Monotype” on this shot’s story table: http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg990h/kde_32_screenshots/kde-fonts-l…..
check how the “n” collides with its neighbor characters and how “t” is getting killed by o and y. And on the next word, check how o and b from the world global collide too. That’s how you compare font engines…
Also look at the ‘e’ in ‘Dell’, ‘Offers’, ‘Update’.
Yes, I see it now. The Linux Arial fonts are not as evenly spaced as the ones on Windows. But I don’t think the letters are colliding. You’d have to actually be looking for flaws to notice this behaviour.
Unfortunately, I’m not on my Linux box, I’d have analyzed things more closely since I think GNOME renders/spaces/places fonts better due to pango.
When I played around with GNOME’s fonts, I noticed different hinting levels alter the spacing of fonts. I don’t know how, or if, all that relates to this issue.
>The Linux Arial fonts are not as evenly spaced as the ones on Windows
The font used is Microsoft’s. What’s different is the font engine, not the font.
>You’d have to actually be looking for flaws to notice this behaviour.
But of course. This is how you compare modern font engines: in the details. They are all “ok”, so the best wins in the details indeed.
>I don’t know how, or if, all that relates to this issue.
Not in this case.
Whoops, my bad (I’m not a typographist). I see what you mean now. I realize I had “minimum font size” set to 12 in Mozilla.
Anyway, here’s another screenshot, with correct Verdana size and all:
http://www.cs.loyola.edu/~swest/font2.png
They may not be as good as OS X, but I’m satisfied.
Standard fonts are 10-12 point. 10-pt appears to be the default in Internet Explorer. Your DPI setting should be precisely equal to the physical DPI of your monitor. For a 15″ LCD:
sqrt(1600^2 + 1200^2) = 2000.0 — number of diagnol pixels
2000.0 / 15.0 = 133.333 pixels per inch, or 133 dpi.
Now, take a look at Ben’s screenshots. If he’s using the Windows defaults, he is running at 96 dpi. At 10-pt, the em-square should be 0.138 inches tall. That translates to 13.333 pixels at Ben’s resolution. If you check the height of a capital letter ‘A’ it is 9 pixels. So, the capital ‘A’ of Arial uses about 67.5% of the vertical space of the em-square. At 133-dpi, the em-square for the same text should be 18.472 pixels tall. Assuming the same 67.5% vertical space utilization, a capital ‘A’ in Arial should be 12.468 pixels tall. On my machine, I measure the capital ‘A’ to be 13.0 pixels tall, which is just about what it should be.
I’ve uploaded a detailed comparison between the rendering in Ben’s 1024×768 screenshot and the rendering in my 1024×768 screenshot. The only valid portion to consider is the body text of the story, since in both screenshots, it appears to be using 10-pt Arial.
http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg990h/kde_32_screenshots/comparison….
A few points of comparison:
– Overall, you’re hard-pressed to find a difference between the two. They look nearly the same, and there are no egregious rendering errors in either. Even the closeups show a striking degree of similarity.
– Eugenia does have a point that the Freetype rendering runs letters together in places. But if you look at the closeups, you’ll see that so does the Cleartype rendering, except its slightly less noticible because Cleartype uses a lighter shade of color. Look closely at the “rn” in the “Thorndale” closeup.
– On the other hand, the Freetype rendering is nicer in places. Look at the ‘2’ in “Unicode 3.2” of both screenshots. Cleartype turns the diagonal part of the glyph into a 4-pixel 45-degree diagonal line. Meanwhile, the Freetype rendering more faithfully reproduces the gentle outward curve at the end of the diagonal. The ‘3’ also looks a bit distorted in the Cleartype screenshot.
– Look at the closeups of the ‘y’ glyphs. Cleartype tries to keep the two upper lines of the ‘y’ as distinct as possible. This puts the top part and the bottom part of the glyph out of proportion. Freetype reproduces the ‘y’ more naturally, though a bit fuzzier.
– Check out the ‘s’ in “specification.” Cleartype completely distorts the gentle diagonal into (as shown in the closeup) a horizontal line. Freetype preserves the gentle curve of the glyph.
– Cleartype shows better kerning in places. In the ‘spec’ of “specification” the letter spacing is completely even, while there is an unusual spacing around the ‘e’ in the Freetype rendering.
– Cleartype also extends the glyphs vertically in places with good results. The ‘f’ in “information” is a more well-developed head in the Cleartype rendering. However, this also unbalances the word as a whole. If you look at Arial when rendered at a large point-size (say, 20pt) you’ll notice that the top of the ‘t’ and the top of the ‘f’ should end at the same place. They do this in the Freetype rendering, but Cleartype extends the top of the ‘f’ and the dot of the ‘i’ one pixel above the top of the ‘t’.
There are a couple of things to note:
– Its not a *completely* fair comparison, because Cleartype is using sub-pixel AA, and Freetype is not. However, the difference between the two is rather minimal.
– The Freetype screenshots were taken with the bytecode hinter *disabled* because that’s how I run it on my machine. I’m actually a bit surprised that Freetype performed so well at low-resolutions without the bytecode hinter.
In conclusion — my original point still stands: At high-resolutions (my LCD
Freetype looks better because the auto-hinter has enough pixels to play with. At lower resolutions, with the bytecode hinter enabled, and anti-aliasing disabled for small point sizes, they should look identical. At lower resolutions with anti-aliasing enabled you can make up your own mind. I like how Freetype stays more faithful to the original glyph shapes, but I can see that people might prefer the sharper look of Cleartype. However, I don’t think its a cut-and-dry decision between the two, and certainly don’t see as big a difference as Eugenia does. Maybe I’ve just gotten used to my Linux fonts 
OK guys, so Verdana, Arial and co. render better in MS Windows ?
What’s surprising here ? On Linux, for best results you should use Vera fonts (at least if your encoding is supported). And if you do, you’ll notice that the font quality is perfect.
And about websites stupidly specifying which font face to use, that’s not a problem as, if you don’t install MS webfonts, they’ll fall back to the beautiful vera fonts.
So I don’t get where the problem is, really…
Web sites worldwide are using MS’ WebFonts, not Vera. That’s one of the potential problems, except the fact that these webfonts are actually used elsewhere widely as well. Additionally, I don’t see why a TTF font –according to your logic– should render better on Windows than on Linux. If the rendering engine is good enough, fonts should render the same everywhere.
Now I have read all those messages about Arial and I don’t get the point? What are we talking about Arial? First Eugenia said you should optimize for a few actually used fonts, so what do we care about Arial?
Looking at the screenshots it’s obvious that Windows does indeed space out the Arial font slightly better but then again, the Vera font on _my_ system looks better than the Arial font on Windows. Both Vera Sans and Vera Sans Mono give a great appearance for anything starting from 9pt (8pt is still very good but I’m not so sure about it) with anti-aliasing and the bytecode interpreter disabled.
Sure, some websites explicitly use Arial (just “sans-serif” would be more sane IMO) for their font family declaration, but:
a) Arial doesn’t even come installed by default on most distributions and I don’t understand why I should install it manually just to get worse font appearance?
b) You can configure your browser to always use the fonts you have selected. I always do this and it actually makes all websites look nice for me.
Bottomline: If default fonts on Linux (not Fedora yet, but this will hopefully change once Vera gets more glyph coverage and Vera still comes installed by default) are already nicer than default fonts on Windows, how can they be “ugly” in general? I just don’t see any truth in that statement.
As for “size=2”, don’t forget that this basically means “one size smaller than the user selected fonts”. Many websites do this because the default fonts configured in most browsers are _huge_, but you have to keep this in mind. If a user configured his or her default fonts to be “just right” and then you set a smaller font as default for your website, you have to expect some users to complain about less readable font sizes. It’s not really their fault. I think a better idea would be to use default fonts (for normal text) and then tell users to change it in their preferences if they don’t like it.
Web sites worldwide are using MS’ WebFonts, not Vera.
Like Julien and me said, you get Vera if you don’t have MS fonts installed (or configured your browser to ignore custom fonts). This will not make websites look worse, because no sane website depends on a certain font family for its layout, at least I’m not aware of any.
Additionally, I don’t see why a TTF font –according to your logic– should render better on Windows than on Linux. If the rendering engine is good enough, fonts should render the same everywhere.
To quote yourself:
“Also, please note that no matter how much you optimize and tweak a font engine, you always need to do some font-specific tuning to get the most out of your 4-5 most used fonts. Be Inc did that, Microsoft did that too”
I’m not sure if that’s true, but after all you said that, not me.
Web sites worldwide are using MS’ WebFonts, not Vera.
Well, they specify MS Webfonts. But your browser will use whatever it wants. And, on Mozilla, if a website specifies – for example – Arial, it will fall-back to the default sans serif font. So, if you have “Vera Sans” configured as your default sans serif font, “Vera Sans” will be used. And the same goes for Serif fonts of course.
And the same goes for office documents, where OpenOffice will replace any MS fonts by its nearest equivalent on our system.
Additionally, I don’t see why a TTF font –according to your logic– should render better on Windows than on Linux. If the rendering engine is good enough, fonts should render the same everywhere.
Well, you said it yourself: because of some US patents. I don’t know why Vera fonts render so well on Linux without using those patents. Maybe because they were optimised for Xfree/fontconfig ?
Here you have a direct comparison between Arial on Windows and Vera on Linux:
http://liebesgedichte.net/Temp/fonts.png
(I don’t know why the “Posted on …” line hasn’t changed in size, must be a browser thing)
It’s probably a matter of taste, but personally, I just like my Linux fonts better. I especially like Vera Sans Mono better than any other Monotype font, which is a good thing because I use it a lot (terminal, text editors and typing in this input box
). And while I’m not sure if Freetype is really as good as other font rendering engines, at the very least it renders the Vera fonts crystal clear.
actually makes the text look blured and hard to focus for people with good or perfect vision, on the other hand people who wear glasses tend read better with a AA on. Arial at size 10 (i think it’s 2 in html) looks good with AA off, whereas other ttf’s do not.
After reading all comments it seems to me that there are some misconceptions about font rendering. Maybe we can clarify this together.
First, most people say things like “my resolution is 1024×768”. I would say this is “de jure” wrong and “de facto” right. But let us use the correct terms:
Resolution: Resolution is the number of pixels used per inch on an display. It is measured in DPI. Maybe the wrong usage of this term came from the fact, that if you change the number of pixels displayed the resolution also changes if the displaysize does not change.
Dimensions: This is the number of pixels along the x-axis and y-axis of the display. Common dimensions are 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024, …
It is useless to compare font rendering engines by screenshots, if one does not have the same resolution. I think we can see this in the discussion between Rayiner and Eugenia. For me the situation looks like that:
Rayiner has a 15″ display with 1600×1200. He says that this makes 133 DPI.
Eugenia has a 21″ display with 1600×1200. She does not say which resolution it has, but I would say it is about 91 DPI.
What happens now, when Rayiner makes a screenshot of a 10 pt font? The font uses on his display approx. 10/72 Inch (1pt is 1/72 inch). This makes 10*133/72 = 18,5 Pixels. But what size does a 18,5 Pixel high font have on Eugenia’s display: (18,5*72)/91=14,6 pt.
That’s why we read sentences form Eugenia like:
“I have seen many times in your screenshots that you have altered the fonts to be really big (I also use 1600×1200 on my 21″ SONY monitor and I don’t have to alter anything).”
I would not say Eugenia was wrong in accusing Rayiner. She just forgot that one cannot compare font rendering engines by screenshots without a lot of circumstances beeing equal.
I would like point out some other things:
– A 10pt font has always the same height. It does not matter which dimensions you use, 10pt are 1/72 Inch. Most people say, that if they switch dimensions from 1280×1024 to 1600×1200 the fonts get smaller. This effect does appear on some buggy platforms like windows, MacOS or some Linux Distributions. The correct behaviour is to adjust the resolution to the correct value. Fonts have the same size as with lower dimensions, but they are painted with more pixels.
– People can read online text faster on high resolution displays with 300 DPI and above. This displays are not affordable right now. The conclusion is, that one should be happy about each dpi one can have. Therefore is a 17″ TFT with 1280×1024 Pixels much better than a 19″ TFT with 1280×1024, because it has a higher resolution and text gets more readable.
– Because most people don’t care to set the correct resolution in their font rendering settings, we have a lot of problems. The most prominent problem is font rendering on websites. Designers who use Windows with 96 DPI or MacOS with 75 DPI use pixel sizes which look great on their platform. But the resulting font size is highly dependend on the resolution. The same with ridiculous small or big pt sizes when people have a high difference between their physical resolution and the configured one.
I actually now specify the bitstream vera fonts for use on the web. I prefer them because they are rounder than Arial and makes by internet look much better. I can also make the fonts small and they will still be readable. I do not mind too much that the rendering deviates from the Windows usual though too. They look good to me and that is what matters most.
I like the Bitstream Vera Sans Mono on Linux. Looks great.
OK, so here are my 0.0000000000002 cents…
First of all, my comments are based on experience with a 14″ 1400×1050 laptop LCD display (Dell Latitude 640) and a 19″ 1280×1024 LCD FP display (Dell Ultrasharp (?) 1900FP). I run SuSE Linux 9.0 with the stock Freetype 2.1.4 (see below).
In my experience, there are two distinct issues with FreeType rendering of the MS webfonts.
1. METRICS (well, in case I am not using the word correctly, let me just say “size”). With the bytecode interpreter ON, you can clearly see that Arial becomes “bigger”—certainly taller, and maybe even wider. This is the main reason why, if you view e.g. http://www.cnn.com using IE on Windows it looks fine, but if you view it using any sane browser on Linux *with* the MS webfonts installed and the bytecode interpreter OFF, the characters seem tiny. I found this out playing with ftview, which comes with the stock FreeType distribution. Recompile FreeType with the bytecode interpreter ON, try loading Arial at say 12pt in ftview, then force the autohinter off and on. You will see the difference.
One solution is, believe it or not, to *not* use the MS webfonts, and use Vera instead, with no native hinting, and autohinting with desired. Vera Sans is quite nice, and the metrics are similar (not identical) to those of the *natively hinted* Arial. Sorry I cannot attach a screenshot right now. It’s not perfect, it’s not 100% faithful to the original, but it looks pretty enough for me, and, most importantly, it’s very readable on virtually all Web pages I visit. Again, it’s not perfect.
The problem with native hinting is that some fonts, such as Vera, are really not that well hinted (see the Vera README for an acknowledgement of this fact): basically, they are meant to be used with aggressive AA and autohinting. Moreover, it may be illegal to use native hinting, which makes me feel uneasy. I am happier with autohinting…
2. Subpixel AA: this is *not* done by FreeType, but by Xft2. And, if you look at their ML, it seems they acknowledge that the current (XFree86 4.3) implementation is a first cut—it could be improved. There is a lot of fringing, to the point that, on my 19″ FP (85 dpi), I am better off disabling subpixel AA for large (>14pt) font sizes—thanks Fontconfig for that! On my 14″ laptop (124 dpi) this is still visible, but less bothersome to me.
Just my $.00000000000002 worth, as I said.
Marciano
PS: in case you were wondering, SuSE ships FreeType with native hinting OFF, as you can check by using ftview.
Christoph Bartoschek, you hit the nail right on the head. It always amazes me that people keep referring to the number of pixels on their screen as “resolution”. I guess it’s just one more term which lost its true meaning in computers. The other thing is that “10pt” doesn’t equal “the letter x is 10 pixels high” although people insist on using it that way too.
I don’t see why a TTF font –according to your logic– should render better on Windows than on Linux. If the rendering engine is good enough, fonts should render the same everywhere.
So should web pages. Unfortunately, by having a 90%+ dominant platform around, any quirks of that platform will be worked around in most pages.
Likewise, I’m sure designers optimize their fonts to look good in MacOS and Windows (probably in that order, because if users cared much about this stuff, they’d not be using Windows anyway). If that means working around a quirk in the dominant renderer, so be it. Freetype, if it wants to render those fonts “right”, will have to have the same quirks built in.
I really don’t understand. When I had my FreeBSD desktop setup, I had beautiful fonts, and you want to know why? I stuck to some nice URW Type1 fonts. Anti-aliased quite nicely at any size I threw at it.
Before you slam Freetype, download some good Type1 fonts and give them a try, you might be pleasently surprised at the results.
Xft also produces some very nice results on IRIX
http://www.nekochan.net/albums/album36/gtk_demo2.jpg
you’ll notice that Mozilla in upper part of that shot is not anti-aliased, that gives you a fair comparison between standard font rendering and Xft on IRIX
http://www.nekochan.net/albums/album36/abiword2.jpg
The only way I know to have perfect standard MS font rendering (arial,verdana,etc) without artefacts is to use freetype with the bytecode interpreter enabled and no anti-aliasing for standard point size. IMHO antialising is useless at anything between 8pt an 15pt : it cause too much eye strain. Even Windows by default do not antialias font at these sizes !
Eugenia is certainly not right in “accusing” me of anything. I took care to note the DPI setting in my original post, and I have a note on my screenshot page explaning why the fonts may look too large on peoples’ screens. My original assertion was that *on my setup* Freetype is far superior to Cleartype, which is true (excessive hinting from Cleartype is unecessary at 133dpi). I also asserted that with the bytecode hinter on, and anti-aliasing disabled, the rendering between the Windows renderer and Freetype should be identical, which is also the case.
Anyway, high-res screens are not too expensive. I have found 140dpi 16″ LCDs for about $250 online. The problem is that these are bare LCDs, without the electronics to drive them. Even if that adds another $250 to the cost, $500 for a 140dpi screen is very reasonable. However, flat-panel monitor manufacturers seem bent on ignoring the high-volume/low-cost laptop LCDs and instead sticking with low-res panels for their desktop LCD monitors.
Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access /albums/album36/gtk_demo2.jpg on this server
Now, this brings up one very good question:
What the heck is RedHat doing licensing ESQ fonts?
ESQ is Monotype’s nomenclature for very well-hinted TrueType fonts. The problem is, that the FreeType autohinter ignores the TrueType hints! Unless RedHat has plans to license the TrueType hinter patent from Apple, I don’t see what use these expensive fonts would be. I’m guessing that there is more to RedHat’s plan than just these fonts…
I’ve just read my own comment and think, that I expressed myself the wrong way. I meant that it was wrong to accuse you. But maybe it was in the face of ignorance of the implications of the DPI settings.
I would like to have a 300 DPI display. I’ve once read of a Iiyama display which costs about 7500 Euro, but 140 DPI is nice compared to the standard 90 DPI.
Just wanted to say that this is a nice development.
Too bad you have to buy a license of RedHat Enterprise…
Doesn’t mather to me if Truetype can take advantage of the full hinting or not, there is always room for improvement.
Closed source expensive monopolistic fonts might never be as good as open source Linux fonts.
That’s weird just goto http://www.nekochan.net/gallery/
under Irix screenshots there’s a folder called squeen, there’s some very nice screenshots of Abiword 2 and gimp2 with decent enough fonts (well compared to standard irix)
Eugenia:
I have a screenshot that shows what it is capable of when you don’t let patents get in the way. Unfortunately I don’t have a web site to put them on so I’ll just email them to you.
It should be enough evidence to convince you that freetype is just as good as windows at font rendering.
The screenshots are of my mandrake 9.1 system with freetype 2.14 re-installed, bytecode interpreter enabled, anti-aliasing disabled, using arial and tahoma at small sizes (9 to 12 point, 96dpi)
“Oh, please! I have the latest on my slackware and the latest fontconfig too, and while font rendering is much better than in the past on Linux, it is still not up to par with windows (and may never be due to patents and because of fonts getting optimized for specific rendering engines by their creators). So, get over it and back to the topic.”
Oh, please yourself !
I have the latest ‘everything’ on my SuSE 9 boxen and & they are every bit as good as windoze or Mac. (and may always be due to non patented free authorage)
So, get over it, go check it out.
—
commence censoring…*now*
Screenshots (geocities, copy and paste into URL bar):
+http://www.geocities.com/jhnphm/vera.png
+http://www.geocities.com/jhnphm/verdana.png
+http://www.geocities.com/jhnphm/arial.png
All software (displayed) was distro provided, w/o recompilation (I have the latest everything, at least as of a wee ago(can’t type in a ‘cay’, have a stuc eyboard), since debian updates faster than dialup can fetch it). Autohint and subpixel rendering has been disabled by fontconfig, and running off a 1280×1024 CRT.
IMHO antialising is useless at anything between 8pt an 15pt : it cause too much eye strain. Even Windows by default do not antialias font at these sizes !
I love the “even Windows” part. Anti-aliasing is supposed to be used if you have a. low resolution, and b. small point sizes. Why Windows insists on disabling anti-aliasing when you most need it has always been beyond me.