[Konsole-devel] [Bug 226308] konsole renders coloured files bold/illegible

[Ivan Vasin]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=226308





--- Comment #32 from Ivan Vasin <nisavid gmail com>  2010-07-26 21:37:07 ---
after some further investigation, i found out that the Inconsolata font (among
others) is actually rendered with a different width when bold.  i'm not sure if
this width is defined by the font or by some font renderer, but it's obviously
a bug--the otherwise fixed-width font does not have fixed width when a bold
weight is applied to some glyphs but not others.  regardless, i don't think
it's a fault of KDE.  the DejaVu Sans Mono font exhibits no such problem.

two different workarounds work for me: setting KDE's monospace font (or
Konsole's font) to (1) Inconsolata Bold or to (2) DejaVu Sans Mono at a smaller
size.  these both have drawbacks.  the former option removes the ability to
have bolder monospace fonts (because they are already bold), but the latter
option doesn't look as good (IMHO).  however, both are much better than dealing
with clipped text.

regarding the bright/bold dispute: even if this is a matter of preference, the
fact remains that some so-called fixed-width fonts are wider when bold.  i
think it's safe to assume (but correct me if i'm wrong) that regardless of
preference, no one wants their monospaced fonts to become un-monospaced and
clipped when bold/bright.  so i see two avenues for recourse: either fix the
un-monospacing, or fix the clipping.  again, i don't know who is the culprit
behind the un-monospacing.  however, it's clear that Konsole is causing the
clipping.  shouldn't this be the primary issue to address in this bug?  it
certainly won't be fixed simply by providing a bold/bright option in Konsole's
settings--that would still provide bold as a choice, and selecting it would
trigger the faulty bold clipping behavior with monospaced fonts that become
un-monospaced when bold (e.g. Inconsolata).

as for alternate behaviors to use instead of clipping, i see three options:
    A. when determining the character width, Konsole should examine all font
weights/styles/variants that it might possibly apply, and it should use the
largest of those widths.  currently it appears to use the width of the default
weight/style/variant.
    B. when it encounters a supposedly monospaced font that isn't monospaced,
Konsole should fix it.  shrink glyphs that are too wide, and stretch glyphs
that are too narrow.
    C. both of the above--choose the largest actual width as the default
character width, and stretch any glyphs that are smaller.

stretching and shrinking font glyphs doesn't sound very appealing, but maybe an
elegant solution already exists for this.  otherwise, the former option seems
much simpler.

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