Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-01-28 17:31:47

The stock BunsenLabs desktop includes the ttf-mscorefonts-installer package — this downloads and installs the Microsoft True Type Core Fonts for the Web which should provide a consistent browsing experience (in respect of the fonts at least) for those familiar with Windows.

However, as it stands BunsenLabs' fonts.conf file instead prefers the fonts-noto package for all of the aliases (monospace, sans-serif & serif) and so the Microsoft fonts are not used at all.

As such, I would propose that we either:

Change fonts.conf to prefer Microsoft's fonts, like this:

<alias>
    <family>serif</family>
    <prefer>
        <family>Times New Roman</family>
    </prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
    <family>sans-serif</family>
    <prefer>
        <family>Arial</family>
    </prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
    <family>monospace</family>
    <prefer>
        <family>Andale Mono</family>
    </prefer>
</alias>

Stick with noto-fonts and remove ttf-mscorefonts-installer entirely.

Personally, I much prefer the first option, here is a comparison:

ttf-mscorefonts-installer:

noto-fonts:

I think that the narrower Arial font looks much better than the Noto Sans original and the hinting and antialiasing seem superior under high magnification but this is all rather subjective.

What does everybody think about these ideas?

johnraff · 2018-01-29 05:03:19

What's wrong with
3) Carry on as before, leaving users to select the MS fonts if they prefer?

While there are subjective differences, I'm at a loss to strongly prefer one or the other. Others may disagree...

One advantage of the Noto fonts is that they support a much wider range of glyphs: pretty much all languages except Chinese, Japanese and Korean. (For those, fonts-noto-cjk is needed, which brings in an extra 100+MB.)

brontosaurusrex · 2018-01-29 06:57:36

A more design oriented person may actually be offended with arial (I imagine), so whatever non-arial wins imho. ArchLabs did a really good work in that area, using Ubuntu fonts (irc).

Last edited by brontosaurusrex (2018-01-29 07:03:56)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-01-29 07:30:45

johnraff wrote:

What's wrong with
3) Carry on as before, leaving users to select the MS fonts if they prefer?

Nothing, I suppose, it just feels "messy", especially given that the package downloads third-party files from the interweb to install stuff.

johnraff wrote:

One advantage of the Noto fonts is that they support a much wider range of glyphs: pretty much all languages except Chinese, Japanese and Korean. (For those, fonts-noto-cjk is needed, which brings in an extra 100+MB.)

Yes indeed, which is why I didn't suggest dropping noto-fonts

If the MS versions are used as the default then noto-fonts can "fill in" any missing glyphs (if it is installed).

I would say though that stretch is using a fairly recent version of the MS fonts and so their coverage should be excellent.

brontosaurusrex wrote:

A more design oriented person may actually be offended with arial

Really?

Is it considered "bad" in design circles?

johnraff · 2018-01-29 07:43:40

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

If the MS versions are used as the default then noto-fonts can "fill in" any missing glyphs (if it is installed).

Ah! I didn't know fonts worked like that (like icons).

martix · 2018-01-29 07:58:36

I have sympathies for noto-fonts, although the first screenshot looks more familiar. I don't find anything wrong with the second one either. There are differences, but somehow I have a "say no to microsoft" attitude... Hehe...

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-01-29 08:19:55

martix wrote:

but somehow I have a "say no to microsoft" attitude... Hehe...

And there's the rub — could it be that some people would actually prefer that we not have the fonts installed, purely on principle?

The licence is also somewhat vague, which may trouble some.

martix wrote:

the first screenshot looks more familiar

It should look the same (at least in respect of font type) as if the page was viewed from Windows, is this a good thing?

martix · 2018-01-29 08:45:26

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

martix wrote:
but somehow I have a "say no to microsoft" attitude... Hehe...
And there's the rub — could it be that some people would actually prefer that we not have the fonts installed, purely on principle?

Oh yesss! I'd say so.

martix wrote:

the first screenshot looks more familiar
Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
It should look the same (at least in respect of font type) as if the page was viewed from Windows, is this a good thing?

I guess it's more like a bad thing, as there are too many machines on this planet running Windows... The situation is much better on the International Space Station.

Last edited by martix (2018-01-29 11:47:25)

brontosaurusrex · 2018-01-29 09:06:18

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Is it considered "bad" in design circles?

More like superabused, i think it will probably fall into comic-sans area in a year or two (totally subjective). It's not a bad font technically.
https://www.credera.com/blog/ux/arial-bad-brand-break/

Last edited by brontosaurusrex (2018-01-29 09:23:20)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-01-29 11:08:03

brontosaurusrex wrote:

It's not a bad font technically

Good to know, thanks.

And your links make some good points — do we really want BunsenLabs to look like a Windows knock-off?

tknomanzr · 2018-01-29 17:45:55

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

johnraff wrote:
What's wrong with
3) Carry on as before, leaving users to select the MS fonts if they prefer?
Nothing, I suppose, it just feels "messy", especially given that the package downloads third-party files from the interweb to install stuff.
johnraff wrote:
One advantage of the Noto fonts is that they support a much wider range of glyphs: pretty much all languages except Chinese, Japanese and Korean. (For those, fonts-noto-cjk is needed, which brings in an extra 100+MB.)
Yes indeed, which is why I didn't suggest dropping noto-fonts
If the MS versions are used as the default then noto-fonts can "fill in" any missing glyphs (if it is installed).
I would say though that stretch is using a fairly recent version of the MS fonts and so their coverage should be excellent.
brontosaurusrex wrote:
A more design oriented person may actually be offended with arial
Really?
Is it considered "bad" in design circles?

Not really. Helvetica used to have severe issues on Apple's products because Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided to use a bitmapped font called "Helvetica" (same font naming and inner tags) that overwrote the postscript version. A consequence of that was that if the font were used in print it looked atrocious. Virtually every classified system ever uses Helvetica 8 in the newpaper industry. The time I spent tracking down that issue would have been much better spent, imo. However, it is worth noting that tex-gyre-heros is a drop-in opensource replacement for Helvetica. Similarly, tex-gyre-termes for times, etc. Those fonts are all part of the Latex package which is huge if I remember correctly. I ended up replacing our entire classifieds system at the paper with tex-gyre-heros. It had the additional benefit of using slightly less vertical space than Helvetica, which was nice because print classifieds barely generate profits anymore.

EDIT:
I used Arial and its cousins quite frequently in advertising. In particular, it pairs nicely with Open-Sans (Which is one of my favorite sans-serif fonts). Car ads, real estate ads, anywhere where space for text is at a minimum, Arial or Arial Narrow were candidates.

EDIT II:
For reference: The Latex font catalog

brontosaurusrex · 2018-01-29 20:19:54

Well http://www.writingfordesigners.com/wp-c … 5Pic1.jpeg (very subjective I know).

johnraff · 2018-01-30 02:08:50

Can't say I'm thrilled with 'Andale Mono' tbh - looks a bit spidery compared with 'Noto Mono'.

qcgxr · 2018-01-30 19:22:03

Put me in the no-on-principle camp. Also seems strange to aim for MS familiarity with regards fonts while, so far as I can tell, not doing so elsewhere in BL.

johnraff · 2018-02-03 02:58:13

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

I would say though that stretch is using a fairly recent version of the MS fonts and so their coverage should be excellent.

Why do you say that? Stretch's changelog shows the last entry in 2014.
The download script has a copyright year 2001 and the cab file sha256 sums are unchanged, even in Buster, from Jessie.
( Check your own /var/lib/msttcorefonts/cabfiles.sha256sums )

The install script's message also suggests that no new fonts will be available from Microsoft:

These fonts were provided by Microsoft "in the interest of cross-
platform compatibility". This is no longer the case, but they are
still available from third parties.

---

Anyway, for reference, our current fonts install list:

(Noto fonts currently set as the desktop default)
fonts-noto
fonts-noto-mono
fonts-cantarell
fonts-dejavu
fonts-inconsolata
fonts-liberation
ttf-mscorefonts-installer

Remove ttf-mscorefonts-installer?
Any other removals or additions?
(Not too many huge additions please - some unicode fonts are quite bulky.)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-02-03 10:21:39

johnraff wrote:

fonts-dejavu
fonts-liberation
ttf-mscorefonts-installer

^ Remove these, the two fonts-* packages are 13MiB and duplicate what is available with fonts-noto, which also has MS font replacements.

Are they all in the ISO image? That would be a very worthwhile saving there.

EDIT: can we set Inconsolata as the monospace alias?

It's lovely and we have it installed anyway 8)

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2018-02-03 11:13:39)

johnraff · 2018-02-04 07:04:39

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

johnraff wrote:
fonts-dejavu
fonts-liberation
ttf-mscorefonts-installer
^ Remove these, the two fonts-* packages are 13MiB and duplicate what is available with fonts-noto, which also has MS font replacements.

What are the names of the Noto substitute Arial, Times & Courier fonts?

Anyway, if Noto provides a good range of fonts, there might not be much need for us to be adding many more - they're always an apt-get away.

Does anyone object to dropping fonts-dejavu and fonts-liberation (as well as ttf-mscorefonts-installer) from the default list?

can we set Inconsolata as the monospace alias?

Why not? It seems to have a lot of fans, and we've gone to the trouble of shipping it.
(The difference is small to my eyes, tbh.)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-02-04 11:41:15

johnraff wrote:

What are the names of the Noto substitute Arial, Times & Courier fonts?

Noto Sans, Noto Serif and Noto Monospace, as specified in our fonts.conf file.

johnraff wrote:

can we set Inconsolata as the monospace alias?
Why not? It seems to have a lot of fans, and we've gone to the trouble of shipping it.

Yay! Inconsolata is well l33t, it will be an improvement 8)

EDIT: I made the change directly, hope that's OK:

https://github.com/BunsenLabs/bunsen-co … 236d4d1a26

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2018-02-04 12:28:31)

johnraff · 2018-02-05 02:17:39

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Yay! Inconsolata is well l33t

That's what I was afraid of...

I'll set it on my own system too, and see if it annoys me.
EDIT: Are you sure the setting shouldn't be "Inconsolata Medium"?
It makes quite a difference on my Jessie urxvt with font set: URxvt.font: xft:Monospace:size=12
EDIT2: I had to squash up the letter spacing too: URxvt.letterSpace: -2

Anyway, I'll remove those other fonts from the install lists.

Last edited by johnraff (2018-02-05 02:31:16)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-02-05 06:57:31

johnraff wrote:

Are you sure the setting shouldn't be "Inconsolata Medium"?
It makes quite a difference on my Jessie urxvt with font set: URxvt.font: xft:Monospace:size=12
EDIT2: I had to squash up the letter spacing too: URxvt.letterSpace: -2

The plain "Inconsolata" setting seems to produce very nice results, see my scrot here:

https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 768#p67768

That's with -1 spacing and it is correct for that font size, perhaps the metrics have changed slightly since jessie? The freetype version certainly has.

Anyway, I will test again tonight and report back.

#1 2018-01-28 17:31:47

Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#2 2018-01-29 05:03:19

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#3 2018-01-29 06:57:36

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#4 2018-01-29 07:30:45

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#5 2018-01-29 07:43:40

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#6 2018-01-29 07:58:36

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#7 2018-01-29 08:19:55

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#8 2018-01-29 08:45:26

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#9 2018-01-29 09:06:18

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#10 2018-01-29 11:08:03

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#11 2018-01-29 17:45:55

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#12 2018-01-29 20:19:54

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#13 2018-01-30 02:08:50

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#14 2018-01-30 19:22:03

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#15 2018-02-03 02:58:13

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#16 2018-02-03 10:21:39

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#17 2018-02-04 07:04:39

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#18 2018-02-04 11:41:15

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#19 2018-02-05 02:17:39

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#20 2018-02-05 06:57:31

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

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