HOWTO: Improve Font Rendering in LMDE

[torturedutopian]

Hmm, I don't know, they do look really good under, well, Ubuntu.

Any idea regarding the speed issue with Firefox ?

Thanks for the reply !!!

[rivenathos]

When you use LMDE, you are now in the Land of Debian, not the Land of Ubuntu.

Really, switching the Ubuntu font to Sans or changing the size from 11 to 10 will make a difference.

[craig10x]

When you use LMDE, you are now in the Land of Debian, not the Land of Ubuntu.

Really, switching the Ubuntu font to Sans or changing the size from 11 to 10 will make a difference.

On the updated isos...Clem had added the proper patching that ubuntu uses (and gives it that excellent font rendering)...that is the iso i installed from (64 bit version) and the font rendering is as good as it is on ubuntu or the ubuntu based mint main edition....no tinkering needed!

I do kick up the fonts by 1 size though in my Chrome Browser (which makes many pages slightly larger for my old tired eyes...)....
So while it's debian...it now renders like Ubuntu! (best of both worlds)

I did use the ubuntu fonts on my Chrome web browser for awhile (requires the ubuntu fonts extension on Chrome) but after awhile i went back to the normal Chrome fonts...I do always install the ms-corefonts before i even add in my Chrome Browser, however, and it looks fine with the default Chrome fonts...

[torturedutopian]

Indeed, gtk apps look perfect The issue only relates to Firefox and Thunderbird.

thanks for the replies

I'll think I'll create a new thread for the specific Firefox speed rendering issue.

[torturedutopian]

I think someone may have already told this, but installing Iceweasel instead of Firefox fixed the fonts issue for me

[Darklink]

@rivenathos thanks for the tip. fonts in FF and Thunderbird now look similar to the rest of the system.

Greets
Darklink

[runbei]

Hate to say it, but after running the scripts and restarting, fonts are still awful in OpenOffice 3.2.1 Debian as supplied with LMDE. What to do? What to do?

[kmb42vt]

Hate to say it, but after running the scripts and restarting, fonts are still awful in OpenOffice 3.2.1 Debian as supplied with LMDE. What to do? What to do?

Yup, they do indeed although I haven't run the script since recent updates to LMDE should have accomplished the same thing as the script or so I'm told. To be honest about it OpenOffice looks rather awful all around, buttons and all. I think the best theme integration I've seen so far is in LM 10 KDE.

[runbei]

Hate to say it, but after running the scripts and restarting, fonts are still awful in OpenOffice 3.2.1 Debian as supplied with LMDE. What to do? What to do?

Good news, I think. I got a huge improvement in font quality in OpenOffice by simply changing the settings in MintMenu > Preferences > Appearance.

In the Fonts tab I chose "Best shapes" > Details > Smoothing (Grayscale) > Hinting (None) > Subpixel Order (RGB) > Close > Close.

With Subpixel Smoothing turned on, the fonts only looked decent in a very small range of zooming; at other zoom levels they looked very heavy, almost like boldface, very hard on the eyes. With the new settings, fonts look readable at all zoom magnifications.

[sgosnell]

Another option is to remove OpenOffice and install LibreOffice. It's now the default office suite, I think, and it's certainly in the repositories.

[runbei]

Another option is to remove OpenOffice and install LibreOffice. It's now the default office suite, I think, and it's certainly in the repositories.

I gave LibreOffice an - admittedly brief - try but went back to OpenOffice because a feature that's critical for me was crippled in LO - the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts. It was turned off by default. A bit of searching revealed that I could turn it on by choosing to activate "experimental features" (or similar wording) under Tools > Options. But then it still didn't work correctly. My question: why is this feature "experimental"? - It's been working perfectly in OpenOffice for at least eight years!

Don't get me started about OpenOffice/LibreOffice development. Linux desperately needs a GREAT word processor that everyone can easily use, especially when they're coming from MS Word. To take one example of where OO breaks that bridge - the Track Changes feature, which is absolutely required in many working environments - is completely useless in OO, because after 5-7 pages of editing with changes hidden, editing slows to an unbearable crawl. And who in God's earth would want to edit with complex changes displayed? Also, and this is a killer: Track Changes in OO tends to inter-mix changed text with the original! Completely useless.

Okay, since I have gotten started - why on earth doesn't OO provide a simple way to find and replace line endings, similar to replacing ^p in Word. This is an extremely useful feature, yet in OO you have to use regular expressions - and if and when you do succeed in understanding how to replace line endings (very complex, and instructions are confusing and semi-hidden), you can't put them back in again if you change your mind.

In general, using regex for replace is just fine - for techies. But the lack of basic functions that operate in a simple way for end-users is just plain nuts.

Finally, OpenOffice desperately needs a big AutoCorrect library, similar to Word's, which is wonderful.

I wrote a 340-page book in OpenOffice. I loved its stability, which was far better than Word's, especially for editing big docs. But the formatting features are a bit tough - I lost a lot of hair figuring out how to create chapter headers, first chapter pages, etc. So - a great engine under the hood, but much that needs fixin' above.

[sgosnell]

Well, you could demand your money back.

[runbei]

Well, you could demand your money back.

Just trying to light a fire - as my old man used to say, the squeaking wheel gets the grease.

[kmb42vt]

Another option is to remove OpenOffice and install LibreOffice. It's now the default office suite, I think, and it's certainly in the repositories.

Does it actually look better (fonts and in general) than OpenOffice?

[kmb42vt]

Another option is to remove OpenOffice and install LibreOffice. It's now the default office suite, I think, and it's certainly in the repositories.

LibreOffice is currently not in the LMDE repositories unfortunately although by what I've read a Debian bug report has requested that LibreOffice be added to the "Squeeze" backports repo sometime in the future.

[sgosnell]

Sorry, LibreOffice is in the Sid repository, not Testing. I went to Sid some time ago. It looks better to me, and I prefer it. It's possible to install both and compare them side by side, if you want. You can get a .deb file from here if you're using Gnome, or from there navigate to the KDE version if that's what you're using.

[randomizer]

I wrote a 340-page book in OpenOffice. I loved its stability, which was far better than Word's, especially for editing big docs. But the formatting features are a bit tough - I lost a lot of hair figuring out how to create chapter headers, first chapter pages, etc. So - a great engine under the hood, but much that needs fixin' above.

Wouldn't LaTeX have been better for that?

[runbei]

Wouldn't LaTeX have been better for that?

Absolutely! LaTeX would be ideal. Book design is an art that's far beyond me, and it would be wonderful to find a beautiful LaTeX book-formatting template. But, so far, I've had no luck - there seem to be hardly any LaTeX book packages, even ugly ones. And it's doubly frustrating because a Web search turns up some gorgeous designs created by in-house designers for publishing firms - and they aren't giving away the code.

[jcoleman]

@Ikey - thanks for the script - it worked for me along with the fix.

howdy to everybody else - played with few other distro's but Mint LMDE 64bit is what got loaded on the rebuild for the Mrs's.; did a dist-upgrade, looks like LibreOffice replaced OpenOffice - "OK" with me.

[kmb42vt]

howdy to everybody else - played with few other distro's but Mint LMDE 64bit is what got loaded on the rebuild for the Mrs's.; did a dist-upgrade, looks like LibreOffice replaced OpenOffice - "OK" with me.

It did for me as well but after digging through synaptic I found that it left most of the OpenOffice directories and files. I had to run the following to get rid of them:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get --purge remove openoffice

One other thing I noticed is that the upgrade removed the spell checking dictionary that's required for OpenOffice/LibreOffice from LMDE as well so spell checking in Writer and the other LO programs no longer works. I fixed that by installing the correct (locale) "MySpell" dictionary from Synaptic and that solved that problem. Just letting you know.