Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

johnraff · 2018-02-05 07:28:25

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

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?

To be honest, it looks too stretched-out even there to me. Personal tastes I guess.

It may well be a Jessie thing, as you say, but "Inconsolata" is much smaller than "Inconsolata Regular" or "Inconsolata Medium" in my terminals. For that, I had to increase the font size two points (14), and set -2 spacing for something I could look at. But then it's OK.

Maybe the extra words were throwing the font selection into some totally other fallback font!
(In GTK interfaces, though, Inconsolata offers the variants: Italic, Regular, Medium, Bold and Bold Italic.)

tknomanzr · 2018-02-05 16:41:21

I am going to post the Terminator profile that I set up for Helium-dev soon. Whatever you decide, it will need to be updated there. At the moment, I am using Monospace 10 in it.

Link to the topic:
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 822#p67822

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-02-05 19:24:09

johnraff wrote:

"Inconsolata" is much smaller than "Inconsolata Regular" or "Inconsolata Medium" in my terminals.

I'm not surprised:

empty@virtbl:~ $ grep -A3 '>mon' /home/empty/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf                                                                                                          
        <family>monospace</family>
        <prefer>
            <family>Inconsolata</family>
        </prefer>
empty@virtbl:~ $ fc-match mono
Inconsolata.otf: "Inconsolata" "Medium"
empty@virtbl:~ $ sed -i 's/Inconsolata/Inconsolata Medium/' /home/empty/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf                                                                               
empty@virtbl:~ $ fc-match mono                                                                                                                                                      
VeraMono.ttf: "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" "Roman"
empty@virtbl:~ $ sed -i 's/Medium/Regular/' /home/empty/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf                                                                                               
empty@virtbl:~ $ fc-match mono                                                                                                                                                      
VeraMono.ttf: "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" "Roman"
empty@virtbl:~ $ sed -i 's/Regular//' /home/empty/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf                                                                                                     
empty@virtbl:~ $ fc-match mono                                                                                                                                                      
Inconsolata.otf: "Inconsolata" "Medium"
empty@virtbl:~ $

But yes, perhaps we need to bump the font size up a point for Inconsolata?

In respect of the width issue, a -2 letterspace produces overlap on my system:

So -1 looks correct to me.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-02-05 19:31:27

tknomanzr wrote:

At the moment, I am using Monospace 10 in it

Yes, that is the correct font name to use in all other configuration files, we set the actual "monospace" font type in fonts.conf

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-02-05 20:39:44

I'm changing my mind about letterspace — the overlap only appears for smaller fonts, the bigger sizes do look much better with -2 (10pt bold font shown):

After using that -1 does indeed look "stretched" to me

johnraff · 2018-02-06 02:29:25

Of course these spacing adjustments only apply to urxvt, right? What about terminator and GTK apps?

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-02-06 08:27:52

johnraff wrote:

these spacing adjustments only apply to urxvt, right?

Yes, that's right.

What about terminator

I haven't tested that (yet) but it seems less fussy than urxvt in respect of lateral spacing.

GTK apps?

The code boxes in the forum look _much_ nicer with Inconsolata (compared to the old Noto Mono), it's all rounded & trendy

EDIT: but the font in the Gtk applications is more "stretched out" than the -2 letterspace option, which is interesting.

EDIT2: here's Inconsolata in OpenBSD's xterm (with no adjustment), their metrics seem slightly better (10pt bold shown):

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2018-02-06 08:52:22)

Martin · 2018-02-06 18:48:01

brontosaurusrex wrote:

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

Somewhat related and quite off-topic: http://www.thedenveregotist.com/news/na … m-migraine

/Martin

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-02-06 19:25:06

I've been using Inconsolata for a while now and for 10pt I do think a -2 letterSpace is correct.

Comparison of terminator & urxvt (with -2 letterSpace):

I would say that is very close and urxvt looks better spaced (and better rendered as well but that's off-topic).

EDIT: update:

^ That's with -1 letterSpace, terminator seems to use that but I do still think -2 is best.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2018-02-06 20:15:10)

johnraff · 2018-02-07 02:44:41

^Prefer -2 as well. Pity it can only be applied to urxvt though.

(In fact, it would be so nice to be able to tweak the vertical spacing of fonts too. Some of them are just too high. It's easy with html+css using 'line-height'.)

DeepDayze · 2018-02-10 03:22:01

Many websites look better with the MS fonts installed, as browsers will use the fonts if you have them installed. I even made use of the Win10 fonts by copying over the fonts folder from my Win10 partition into my home dir and updating the font cache.

Last edited by DeepDayze (2018-02-10 03:23:01)

brontosaurusrex · 2018-02-10 10:37:15

With https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc … 0font-face many of those pages will eventually probably update the logic behind their css. Not saying that is a solution for today.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-02-10 15:57:40

DeepDayze wrote:

Many websites look better with the MS fonts installed, as browsers will use the fonts if you have them installed.

Yes but that rather depends on the definition of "better" because without the MS fonts installed the websites will fall back to our chosen sans-serif font (Noto Sans) instead and thus harmonise the web fonts with the system fonts, which I much prefer.

johnraff · 2018-02-11 02:29:28

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

DeepDayze wrote:
Many websites look better with the MS fonts installed, as browsers will use the fonts if you have them installed.
Yes but that rather depends on the definition of "better" because without the MS fonts installed the websites will fall back to our chosen sans-serif font (Noto Sans) instead and thus harmonise the web fonts with the system fonts, which I much prefer.

Me too. In fact, I disable webfonts right off and enforce my choice of font on all web pages.
Firefox Preferences>Content>Fonts&Colors>Advanced
Uncheck "Allow pages to choose their own fonts..."

Anyway, the fonts provided by ttf-mscorefonts-installer are pretty old and I wouldn't expect many web developers to be setting them by choice. As DeepDayze points out, if you've got a recent Windows install to hand it's easy to copy ttf files into Linux and get something newer.

thoro · 2018-02-17 10:47:43

I for my part always install the MS fonts. Not because I use it myself, but rather to stay "compatible" with those who still use Windows.

johnraff wrote:

Anyway, the fonts provided by ttf-mscorefonts-installer are pretty old and I wouldn't expect many web developers to be setting them by choice. As DeepDayze points out, if you've got a recent Windows install to hand it's easy to copy ttf files into Linux and get something newer.

Seems to me to be the smartest and best way.

Cheers!

#21 2018-02-05 07:28:25

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#22 2018-02-05 16:41:21

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#23 2018-02-05 19:24:09

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#24 2018-02-05 19:31:27

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#25 2018-02-05 20:39:44

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#26 2018-02-06 02:29:25

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#27 2018-02-06 08:27:52

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#28 2018-02-06 18:48:01

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#29 2018-02-06 19:25:06

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#30 2018-02-07 02:44:41

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#31 2018-02-10 03:22:01

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#32 2018-02-10 10:37:15

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#33 2018-02-10 15:57:40

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#34 2018-02-11 02:29:28

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

#35 2018-02-17 10:47:43

Re: Microsoft fonts — use them or lose them?

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