Incorrect text display

[trytip]

damm your fonts are messed up, what did you do? show a snap of your font settings

[Slowpoke47]

damm your fonts are messed up, what did you do? show a snap of your font settings

This is current. Problem arose while using default font. Switched to Century Schoolbook because, along with zoom, the text is more legible. BTW, the defect appeared without any input from me. Note that in parts of the FF menu, as seen here, some text displays correctly.

[trytip]

i didn't mean firefox settings, mint font settings

[Slowpoke47]

System font s/shot:

Just tried an experiment- we have had only one user to date, but when I created a new user, text etc. displays normally. This seems to tell me that the problem is in the original user home directory.

Last month, the mouse died a gradual death, unrecognized until it stopped responding, but I noticed and corrected some oddball errors at that time. No idea what else needs to be fixed.

Also realized that screenshots I have posted here have been huge, but they don't appear as such on my own screen when I open them.

[trytip]

locate fonts.conf you installed some fonts or changed a configuration somewhere

[Slowpoke47]

The result of your command:
steve@steve-Inspiron-519:~$ locate fonts.conf
/etc/fonts/fonts.conf
/etc/fonts/conf.avail/10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf
/etc/fonts/conf.d/10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf
/etc/ghostscript/fontmap.d/10gsfonts.conf
/home/steve/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf
/timeshift/snapshots/2019-11-28_17-32-51/localhost/etc/fonts/fonts.conf
/timeshift/snapshots/2019-11-28_17-32-51/localhost/etc/fonts/conf.avail/10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf
/timeshift/snapshots/2019-11-28_17-32-51/localhost/etc/fonts/conf.d/10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf
/timeshift/snapshots/2019-11-28_17-32-51/localhost/etc/ghostscript/fontmap.d/10gsfonts.conf
/var/lib/dpkg/info/gsfonts.conffiles
steve@steve-Inspiron-519:~$
I don't know what this is telling me...
I see a date here 11/28- but this problem arose just before Christmas.

[trytip]

show what you have for

Code: Select all

xed $HOME/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf

[Flemur]

System font s/shot:System fonts.png
Just tried an experiment- we have had only one user to date, but when I created a new user, text etc. displays normally. This seems to tell me that the problem is in the original user home directory.

Post the content of the fonts.conf file that trytip mentioned.

Also realized that screenshots I have posted here have been huge, but they don't appear as such on my own screen when I open them.

Do you have a hi-res monitor? Post output of

Code: Select all

inxi -G

[Slowpoke47]

Just now able to get back here. Earlier I misstated the problem onset, my apology- not around Christmas- started a week ago.

Code: Select all

steve@steve-Inspiron-519:~$ xed $HOME/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf
steve@steve-Inspiron-519:~$ inxi -G
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD RS780 [Radeon HD 3200] driver: radeon v: kernel 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.6 driver: ati,radeon 
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 1440x900~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: AMD RS780 (DRM 2.50.0 / 4.15.0-72-generic LLVM 8.0.0) 
  v: 3.3 Mesa 19.0.8 
steve@steve-Inspiron-519:~$ 

Don't believe this monitor is anything special.

[Slowpoke47]

Time to cut my losses on this- currently setting up a second Admin account which will eventually replace the corrupted one. I'll need to move the data from the old into the new, and replicate the settings as well.

So far, the new account displays correctly. Should have done this before agonizing over forensic analysis. Perhaps more experienced users will point out any holes in this strategy, for which, thanks in advance.

[trytip]

your fonts.conf is quite messed up there is no antialias and hintstyle is none.
so if you create a new user then be sure not to make the same mistake that replaced your fonts.conf because you will be right back here.
navigate to .config/fontconfig in your file manager , rightclick on fonts.conf and compress (to back it up temporary) and replace with this:

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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">

<fontconfig>

    <match target="font">
        <edit mode="assign" name="embeddedbitmap"><bool>false</bool></edit>

        <edit mode="assign" name="antialias">  <bool>true</bool></edit>
        <edit mode="assign" name="autohint">   <bool>false</bool></edit>
        <edit mode="assign" name="hinting">    <bool>true</bool></edit>

        <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle"><const>hintslight</const></edit>

        <edit mode="assign" name="rgba"><const>rgb</const></edit>

        <edit mode="assign" name="lcdfilter"><const>lcddefault</const></edit>
    </match>

</fontconfig>

save and then in Terminal you need to refresh fonts cache with: sudo fc-cache -fv
reboot. if fonts are the same there are more configs somewhere that either you changed or some application did

PS: next time do not post a picture of the text, but select all text copy and paste it here in a code bracket

[Slowpoke47]

your fonts.conf is quite messed up there is no antialias and hintstyle is none.
so if you create a new user then be sure not to make the same mistake that replaced your fonts.conf because you will be right back here.

PS: next time do not post a picture of the text, but select all text copy and paste it here in a code bracket

If I had a clue about how I got to that point, I would have some chance of undoing the damage. At my newbie level, I'm better off to start over. So far, so good. If I need to go back and continue the effort to repair the damaged user account, I'll refer back to this thread and your post.

I have learned about posting code here, but since that display looked to me like a gui display, I didn't think the copy/ paste would work, so I didn't try it.

Many thanks for your assistance and patience.

[BG405]

I suppose it's worth a shot copying the fonts.conf file from the new account to the original one & taking ownership of it there with sudo chown $USER:$USER ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf from within the original account, to see if that fixes it.

[Slowpoke47]

I suppose it's worth a shot copying the fonts.conf file from the new account to the original one & taking ownership of it there with sudo chown $USER:$USER ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf from within the original account, to see if that fixes it.

Thanks for the suggestion. Is this reversible in case I screw things up further?

[BG405]

Is this reversible in case I screw things up further?

It is, if you need to, as long as you make a backup of the file you are replacing before you copy the new one there. I tend to make a backup of such files by copying it to e.g. fonts.conf.old (in the same directory) so if things go awry, you can remove the new file & then remove the .old from the backup.

Terminal commands to do so would be:
cp ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf.old to make the copy.
Then if you need to restore it rm ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf followed by mv ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf.old ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf. You can of course use your file manager to do this e.g. Nemo.

[Slowpoke47]

Thank you. As a newbie I'm somewhat terminal-challenged, but if I get my courage up I'll try it.

[BG405]

You're welcome. As for Terminal, I use it all the time but it's entirely up to you if/when you want to explore it. I (along with a number of others on here) just find it easier to post Terminal commands for stuff like this plus I'm not sure which desktop environment you are using, hence my guess at Nemo for the file manager.