Mac-quality font rendering Howto, and an RPM question

[cprise]

The plain Linux font rendering that comes with Fedora can be quite hard to look at, so I set out to find a guide to make the fonts look more like Ubuntu and found this:

   http://www.infinality.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=77

Even as pre-made packages go its not really easy, but I can say that Infinality tries to be comprehensive and I've had good results with it so far. Your fonts are likely to look much better if you use this as opposed to one of the more reserved freetype configuration guides (such as the official Fedora one).

There are a couple of catches, however, so here is the approach that worked for me:

1) Don't put this in your regular appvm template if you value system integrity... that should be all of us. I have a separate template that I use for less-trusted appvms - which get a lot of use, so the effort to improve fonts is still worth it to me - and its here that I put the proprietary media codecs and improved font rendering. In particular, the above Howto has you add the Infinality repository to yum-- that was too much risk for me, so instead of adding an unsecured and obscure repository to my template I made it a one-time risk and downloaded the RPMs by hand in a disposable vm then transferred them to the target template vm.

The nice thing about Qubes is its security architecture lets me add third-party apps and modifications to vms without having to worry about being fastidious with security updates in my less trusted vms; I can keep using this version of the modified freetype server as long as it appears to be working... kind of like the good old days of personal computing. ;)

As of this writing, the two packages needed for an installation are:
   http://www.infinality.net/fedora/linux/18/x86_64/freetype-infinality-2.4.12-1.20130514_01.fc18.x86_64.rpm
   http://www.infinality.net/fedora/linux/18/noarch/fontconfig-infinality-1-20130104_1.noarch.rpm

...this should replace your Fedora-supplied freetype package (use the --force if necessary :) ). Question: Could someone chime-in and say whether the new freetype package will need to be 'pinned' in place to survive system updates?


2) Although Infinality carefully emulates OS X, iOS, Ubuntu and Windows font rendering characteristics, it oddly defaults to a 'homebrew' configuration that is supposedly preferable to the more established styles. However, I found text rendered by the Infinality default to appear muddy and more irksome to read than what Fedora ships with. So of course I went running into the arms of the OS X settings, and step 5 in the Howto deals with changing the rendering style. In my case it meant doing this:

   # sudo sh /etc/fonts/infinality/infctl.sh
   # sudo nano /etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh

So, basically I chose 'OSX' twice here. The editing step itself is irksome, because you are looking for the USE_STYLE declaration 3/4 of the way down the script.


3) Steps 6 and 7 do not seem to apply to Qubes-Fedora users. Step 8 has you edit /etc/X11/Xresources (still in the template vm).


4) The 'liberation-fonts' package in Fedora 18 is rather old and doesn't give good results with the OS X style. Replacing them with the 2.0 versions rectifies the odd look on certain screens and web pages:
   http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=353877

(The Howto mentions the inconsolata fixed-width font, but it seems to be inconsequential with the OS X settings.)


5) Shut down the template vm now. Running an appvm that uses this template should exhibit windows with the new font rendering style.

After all this, I must say the result is quite easy on the eyes... like putting on an old pair of great-fitting jeans; Very clear and crisp, and none of the text looks either wiry (Fedora default) or muddy (Infinality default). I was trying to find an Ubuntu-quality font setup but this modification surpassed my hopes.

[Alex Dubois]

On Saturday, 23 November 2013 11:32:13 UTC, cprise wrote:

The plain Linux font rendering that comes with Fedora can be quite hard to look at, so I set out to find a guide to make the fonts look more like Ubuntu and found this:

   http://www.infinality.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=77

Even as pre-made packages go its not really easy, but I can say that Infinality tries to be comprehensive and I've had good results with it so far. Your fonts are likely to look much better if you use this as opposed to one of the more reserved freetype configuration guides (such as the official Fedora one).

I like the idea.
 

There are a couple of catches, however, so here is the approach that worked for me:

1) Don't put this in your regular appvm template if you value system integrity... that should be all of us. I have a separate template that I use for less-trusted appvms - which get a lot of use, so the effort to improve fonts is still worth it to me - and its here that I put the proprietary media codecs and improved font rendering. In particular, the above Howto has you add the Infinality repository to yum-- that was too much risk for me, so instead of adding an unsecured and obscure repository to my template I made it a one-time risk and downloaded the RPMs by hand in a disposable vm then transferred them to the target template vm.

The nice thing about Qubes is its security architecture lets me add third-party apps and modifications to vms without having to worry about being fastidious with security updates in my less trusted vms; I can keep using this version of the modified freetype server as long as it appears to be working... kind of like the good old days of personal computing. ;)

As of this writing, the two packages needed for an installation are:
   http://www.infinality.net/fedora/linux/18/x86_64/freetype-infinality-2.4.12-1.20130514_01.fc18.x86_64.rpm
   http://www.infinality.net/fedora/linux/18/noarch/fontconfig-infinality-1-20130104_1.noarch.rpm

...this should replace your Fedora-supplied freetype package (use the --force if necessary :) ). Question: Could someone chime-in and say whether the new freetype package will need to be 'pinned' in place to survive system updates?

If installed in template, AFAIK, no.

If installed in VM:
The read-write areas that I know off are under /rw:
/home (which map to /rw/home)
/usr/local (which map to /rw/usrlocal)

So either you can install the package in /usr/local or you will need to install it there.
You will then have to edit /rw/config/rc.local (which is launched as one of the last scripts by systemd, but not the latest...) to create symlink to set in place in / the libraries/files you want to make available in /

Not sure it is the cleanest way to do installs in VMs, but that it how I would do it.
 

[cprise]

On 11/23/13 08:09, Alex Dubois wrote:

I like the idea.
 

Haven't tried Windows or Ubuntu styles yet, but the Mac one does look great. I'm so glad I found that Howto.

...this should replace your Fedora-supplied freetype package (use the --force if necessary :) ). Question: Could someone chime-in and say whether the new freetype package will need to be 'pinned' in place to survive system updates?

If installed in template, AFAIK, no.

If installed in VM:
The read-write areas that I know off are under /rw:
/home (which map to /rw/home)
/usr/local (which map to /rw/usrlocal)

So either you can install the package in /usr/local or you will need to install it there.
You will then have to edit /rw/config/rc.local (which is launched as one of the last scripts by systemd, but not the latest...) to create symlink to set in place in / the libraries/files you want to make available in /

Not sure it is the cleanest way to do installs in VMs, but that it how I would do it.

Thanks.. As long as normal template updates won't overwrite the Infinality freetype package, that's fine with me. It installs quite easily with 'rpm -i --force'.

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

On 23.11.2013 14:54, cprise wrote:
>
> On 11/23/13 08:09, Alex Dubois wrote:
>>
>> I like the idea.
>>
>

> Haven't tried Windows or Ubuntu styles yet, but the Mac one does look /great/.

> I'm so glad I found that Howto.
>
>>
>> ...this should replace your Fedora-supplied freetype package (use the

>> --force if necessary :) ). _/Qu//estion:/ Could someone chime-in__and say

>> whether the new freetype package will need to be 'pinned' in place to

>> survive system updates_?

>>
>>
>> If installed in template, AFAIK, no.
>>
>> If installed in VM:
>> The read-write areas that I know off are under /rw:
>> /home (which map to /rw/home)
>> /usr/local (which map to /rw/usrlocal)
>>
>> So either you can install the package in /usr/local or you will need to
>> install it there.
>> You will then have to edit /rw/config/rc.local (which is launched as one of
>> the last scripts by systemd, but not the latest...) to create symlink to set
>> in place in / the libraries/files you want to make available in /
>>
>> Not sure it is the cleanest way to do installs in VMs, but that it how I would
>> do it.
>
> Thanks.. As long as normal template updates won't overwrite the Infinality
> freetype package, that's fine with me. It installs quite easily with 'rpm -i
> --force'.

Perhaps "yum install /path/to/rpm/file" would be better.

--
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

[cprise]

On 11/23/13 10:00, Marek Marczykowski-Górecki wrote:
> On 23.11.2013 14:54, cprise wrote:
>> Thanks.. As long as normal template updates won't overwrite the
>> Infinality freetype package, that's fine with me. It installs quite
>> easily with 'rpm -i --force'.
> Perhaps "yum install /path/to/rpm/file" would be better.
>

I don't know why it would...? I looked at the yum install docs. Maybe
there is some behavior I'm not aware of?

[Alex Dubois]

I prefer XFCE... I'll need to dig into how to change the fonts in here... in my 1000 todo list but if someone find something, please post the link here :-)

[cprise]

The instructions are basically agnostic about the desktop environment (with a caveat about KDE IIRC)... so I would expect the above steps to work without any changes with XFCE on Qubes. That is, unless XFCE forces some settings of its own on freetype.

Remember, its not so much about selecting fonts as changing the rendering methods for the existing fonts. And I didn't really change any fonts in the system, but updated one instead.