Bad looking fonts on Fedora 7 and latest KDE Branch 3.5

[Steven P. Ulrick]

On Mon, 04 Jun 2007 15:20:23 -0500
Rex Dieter <rdieter at math.unl.edu> wrote:

> Steven P. Ulrick wrote:
> 
> >> fwiw, fedora's kde packaging does have quite a few distro-specific
> >> patches applied, but I'm pretty sure they aren't much different
> >> between fc6 and f7.
> >> 
> >> If you ever discover the cause of your font maladies, let me know
> >> if there's anything we can do to help on the fedora-packaging side
> >> of things...
> 
> > That question is, "These distro-specific patches
> > that you refer to, can I assume that they were applied to what is
> > now Fedora 7, and therefore if these patches are my problem, that
> > would be why I saw this problem immediately after switching to
> > Fedora 7?"
> 
> Possibly, who knows?  My point was that since the patches for fc6 and
> f7 are similar/identical, and that you said you did *not* see
> problems with fc6, I'd venture that likelyhood to be small.
> 
> > While at work today, I was contemplating taking this question to the
> > Fedora users list.  If, after reading my other findings when I
> > release them, you think I should take this to fedora-devel, let me
> > know and I will be glad to oblige.
> 
> Sure, couldn't hurt.  More eyes the better.
> 
> -- Rex

Hello, Everyone
Later I am going to put a link in this message to a screenshot that is
very interesting.  But first I will describe the screenshot, and repeat
a little detail about this issue that is scattered throughout this
thread.

First of all, get this in your heads: all of the fonts in every
graphical application in Fedora 7 look absolutely wonderful on our
system.  With the glaring exception of the fonts in Branch 3.5 KDE
compiled from SVN.  If I start a Fedora 7 shipped KDE application from
within my, let's say "Branch 3.5 enabled user account," the fonts look
terriffic in that application.  See the following two screenshots to
see more clearly what I'm talking about:
http://www.afolkey2.net/Projects/screenshot-Konqueror-ComicSans-01b.jpg
http://www.afolkey2.net/Projects/screenshot-Konqueror-ComicSans-02.jpg

OK, that's the introduction.

Now for the new stuff.
1. Using the Branch 3.5 version with the inferior looking fonts, I open
up KControl and go to "System Administration | Font Installer"  It
shows 175 TrueType Fonts installed as my Personal fonts.  Remember,
this is the Branch 3.5 KControl where the fonts look inferior to the
Fedora 7 KControl.

2. I clicked the "Administrator Mode" button since I wanted to try
installing my Personal fonts system-wide and see what happened...  Of
course I got a "Run as root - KDE su" password prompt.  This was
displayed with the inferior looking fonts that display only on Branch
3.5 installed KDE apps.  This is all as expected.  So far....

3. I enter the root password and click "OK"  Before I proceed on point
3, here is a link to the screenshot:
http://www.afolkey2.net/Projects/screenshot-FontInstaller.jpg
You will notice the really nice looking anti-aliased fonts that are
inside the administrator mode part of the window?  You will further
notice that the fonts in the rest of the window are still the inferior
looking ones that display with Branch 3.5 apps.

4. I then clicked the "Add Fonts" button.  The result looked like this:
http://www.afolkey2.net/Projects/screenshot-FontInstaller-2.jpg
This is exactly what I want my fonts to look like, and that is exactly
what they used to look like.

5. After following the appropriate steps, the Font Installer appeared
to install my Personal fonts system-wide.  Unfortunately, that was not
what happened.  For some reason, my Personal fonts were not installed
system wide.

Anyway, the main point of this message was to show and describe that
screenshot I just took that shows antialiased and non-antialiased fonts
in the same window.  In case anyone is wondering, I do have KControl in
my Branch 3.5 install of KDE set to antialias the fonts.  It just isn't
getting done...  But I haven't given up :)

Steven P. Ulrick
-- 
 16:33:30 up 7 min,  0 users,  load average: 0.72, 0.50, 0.25
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