Terribly ugly OpenOffice fonts on Kubuntu 10.04

[sb56637]

Hello everyone,
Kubuntu 10.04 is quite nice, but I spend a lot of time in OpenOffice every day, and I just can't stand the fonts with Kubuntu. The antialiasing is terrible or non-existent. The interface fonts looks narrow and jagged, and the document fonts look just as bad. Any suggestions?
Thanks a lot!

[PJJ]

Re: Terribly ugly OpenOffice fonts on Kubuntu 10.04

I dislike the OO fonts also. therefore, I downloaded the Windows fonts and then set up the most frequently used fonts in my 'default' template.

It works, but the ugly OO fonts have a tendency to pop up at the most inopportune moments. they really can make life unpleasant.

I would tell you how to download and install the Windows fonts but I can not remember the process at this time. I have to google it every time I want to install the fonts.

There is also a way to get rid of fonts you do not like, but I have not dared to use that process for fear that I am eliminating fonts that are used generally by the OS.

[sb56637]

Re: Terribly ugly OpenOffice fonts on Kubuntu 10.04

Hmm, thanks for the reply. This problem seems specific to Kubuntu though, because the default free fonts in Ubuntu under Gnome are beautiful. It's an antialiasing/rendering problem under Kubuntu. Makes it almost unusable though, I wonder if the Kubuntu devs actually have tried using their build of OpenOffice for any real work? It makes my eyes bleed after a few minutes.

[abalone]

Re: Terribly ugly OpenOffice fonts on Kubuntu 10.04

Could I get a screenshot, I wonder? Even without the openoffice.org-kde package installed I have nice UI and document fonts. I don't have any of the MS core fonts installed. I use the Deja Vu and Droid fonts a lot. Only by disabling antialiasing do I get jaggy fonts, but that of course affects KDE/QT applications as well. What's your ~/.fonts.conf saying? I take it you have checked the GTK+ Appearance System Settings module and OpenOffice's View preferences?

[sb56637]

Re: Terribly ugly OpenOffice fonts on Kubuntu 10.04

Hi, thanks for the reply! This is actually a complaint about the pure default settings straight off the live CD. I'll post my screenshots tomorrow, but suffice to say it's just the plain old Kubuntu 10.04 live CD with default settings on a standard Acer laptop with Intel graphics.

[sb56637]

Re: Terribly ugly OpenOffice fonts on Kubuntu 10.04

Hi there, here's a screenshot from the live CD. This time I just tweaked the KDE control settings a little bit, it's slightly improved here but not much. I have my GTK appearance settings to use the KDE settings.

[img width=400 height=224]http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/4058/snapshot1p.png[/img]

[rincewind]

Re: Terribly ugly OpenOffice fonts on Kubuntu 10.04

I installed 10.04 today and I have the same problem. There is a difference between the fonts in KDE apps and GTK apps. The fonts look very good in the KDE apps, but not as good in the GKT apps (Firefox, Thunderbird, ...)

My previous install of Kubuntu 9.10 the fonts look excellent in the GTK apps.

[terabyte]

Re: Terribly ugly OpenOffice fonts on Kubuntu 10.04

er...I'll have a look not tried it yet. Hang on

[rincewind]

Re: Terribly ugly OpenOffice fonts on Kubuntu 10.04

I just now changed the font settings from "System Setting" (the default) to Enabled, and selected "Use sub-pixel rendering" and Hinting style to medium and restarted Firefox. And the fonts look much better. I usually play around with these settings, but since the fonts already looked good in KDE after installation I didn't think of changing these settings. I assumed the "System Setting" would already be set to optimal values...

[tobs]

Re: Terribly ugly OpenOffice fonts on Kubuntu 10.04

since quite some time, we just use 'helvetica', even if it's not installed...

all out printers (except the canon bubblejet for foto-quality) support postscript, even the new color-laser. years ago, stil stuck to windows, we decided to use helvetica as our 'corporate'-font.

was never a problem in openoffice in windows, as helvetica or at least arial which is mapped to helvetica was installed on all systems.

switching to linux, i had t learn helvetica is missing.
but opening an document created on a windows machine then font still remaind 'helvetia', despite the font was not physically present on the system. display is ok, print is perfect.

now with kubuntu 10.04 i still don't have a helvetica installed , but openoffice accepts a manually overwritten font 'helvetica' and we all are still happy...

don't ask my where openoffice gets the gylphs from, but it is reasonable on screen and prints are perfect...

maybe it's only on our systems here, and a magical wizzard delivers the glyphs from moon or andromeda, i stopped wondering about this behaviour loooong ago and just am happy it still works for me.

btw: it's not only 'helvetica'. 'arial' works fine too, and even 'times roman' seems to fit!
maybe you first have to install a postscript-printer (i ALWAYS install the printers very early in a setup, and thus have the default printer with postscript ready when starting openoffice the first time).

[abalone]

Re: Terribly ugly OpenOffice fonts on Kubuntu 10.04

Yes, my DejaVu Serif in Abiword looks just like in the OpenOffice screenshot above.

There's only one solution I know of:

1) Install gnome-settings-daemon

2) Uninstall pulseaudio and whatever else it pulled in that you don't want

3) Edit or create the file .gconf/desktop/gnome/font_rendering/%gconf.xml to adjust DPI, subpixel anti-aliasing and hinting to your liking. Here's mine (sorry, I don't have an LCD screen):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gconf>
	<entry name="dpi" mtime="1249612654" type="float" value="96"/>
	<entry name="hinting" mtime="1258498902" type="string">
		<stringvalue>slight</stringvalue>
	</entry>
	<entry name="antialiasing" mtime="1258498902" type="string">
		<stringvalue>grayscale</stringvalue>
	</entry>
</gconf>

4) Run gnome-settings-daemon

5) In my case, the daemon gives me super-large GUI fonts in GTK+ apps, and the DPI setting doesn't seem to make an appreciable difference. However, if I kill the gnome-settings-daemon process again, in-document fonts will stay the same and GUI fonts will shrink back to their normal size.

Alternatively, use (say) the Droid font family instead of the Deja Vu fonts. It seems to come out better overall along with some other fonts, using only "slight" hinting but not the gnome-settings-daemon.

I just now changed the font settings from "System Setting" (the default) to Enabled, and selected "Use sub-pixel rendering" and Hinting style to medium and restarted Firefox. And the fonts look much better. I usually play around with these settings, but since the fonts already looked good in KDE after installation I didn't think of changing these settings. I assumed the "System Setting" would already be set to optimal values...

I have the impression that the "System Setting" setting in KDE's fonts control module doesn't really work. It leaves the ~/.fonts.conf file untouched, still reflecting the choices made the last time anti-aliasing was set to "Enabled". So if I set anti-aliasing to "Enabled", configure it for "full" hinting, and click "Apply"... and then set anti-aliasing to "System Setting" and click "Apply" again... fonts will still be rendered with full hinting even though the system-wide setting (/etc/fonts/conf.d) is "slight" - which I prefer. So what I do is use "System Setting" but either wipe the ~/.fonts.conf file (so it can't override the system-wide setting) or make sure I had set it up correctly before.