FC3-font issue

[P Jones]

On Apr 5, 2005 9:52 AM, VEC <vec at aut.uah.es> wrote:
> Hello, P:
> 
> Thanks your you kind reply. You are right about the fact it is a
> system-level font definition problem / incompatibility in FC2 vs FC3:
> 
> I would like to define my own fonts set to ensure portability: hundreds
> of pages of documents require some guaranty!.

Virginia;

Sorry for my delayed reply.

Since I have been unable to figure out what the difference is between
FC1 default system fonts and FC3, I redefined my default system fonts
in FC3 to the Bitstream Vera fonts by adding the following to my
/etc/fonts/local.conf file (this has appeared on the list before):

<!--
  Provide required aliases for standard names
-->
        <alias>
                <family>serif</family>
                <prefer>
                        <family>Bitstream Vera Serif</family>
                </prefer>
        </alias>
        <alias>
                <family>sans-serif</family>
                <prefer>
                        <family>Bitstream Vera Sans</family>
                </prefer>
        </alias>

This has been my solution for consistency from version to version. It
appears that other linux distributions (Ubuntu, anyway, and Mepis) are
settling on the Bitstream fonts as the defaults.

> Furthermore, I would like
> to install windows fonts to better read in doc files coming from
> ms-windows systems. In OOo I believe you can then set the default font
> in the tools/options/text docs/basic fonts(western) and then in the
> styles definitions themselves...can't you?

You can, but I found that installing the MS web fonts on FC3 caused OOo to 
use Arial as its default font no matter what I changed, so  removed
them. I also have a philosophical problem with mixing MS and linux, so
basically I've just forced myself to like the Bitstream Vera fonts,
and now, I do. ;-)

> It looks that you have done this (MS web fonts? where are they? -is this
> the microsoft word stuff?) . Can you provide me with useful tips?

Other people in the thread gave pointers to the MS web fonts. The web
fonts have Arial and Times New Roman, maybe the two most popular fonts
I see referenced when someone sends me a DOC file.

Again, all the previous info is just my way of dealing with a problem
that I haven't put a lot of time into solving. I saw some stuff in
bugzilla that was a little like the problem I've noticed, but I
haven't seen a lot of activity on the list on this subject, so maybe
it is happening to only a few people.

-P

> Thanks
> 
> El lun, 04-04-2005 a las 01:15, P Jones escribió:
> > Hi Virginia;
> >
> > I've redirected your email to the list. I had a noticeable problem
> > with OOo in FC3 as well. Spacing around the default font, which I
> > believe to be Luxi Sans, is significantly different than it was in FC2
> > and FC1. For some bizarre reason, and I've repeated this on three
> > different machines, much of the problem goes away if you use GNOME as
> > your desktop. XFCE doesn't suffer from the problem either. In KDE,
> > font spacing in the menus and the applications is bad.
> >
> > What I've done to get around the problem is to switch to GNOME, which
> > I find very tolerable in FC3, and in Ubuntu Hoary, which has GNOME
> > 2.10, it's become my favorite desktop. Then, as much as I like the
> > Luxi fonts for interface fonts, I've switched to the Bitstream Vera
> > fonts for interface. Vera Sans is a lot wider than Luxi Sans, but very
> > readable at small font sizes (I like 8 pt. for my desktop and web
> > browsing default size).
> >
> > I recall some thread somewhere mentioning that the Luxi font's spacing
> > had in fact changed, so it wasn't a Fedora issue so much as an
> > upstream issue, but I could be completely wrong there.
> >
> > Anyway, try switching to GNOME and then open your OOo documents from
> > there. Does the problem go away?
> >
> > By the way, the other issue I had was that installing the MS Web Fonts
> > caused OOo to consider Arial to be the default font. Not sure why that
> > happened either. So I uninstalled them and the problem went away. I
> > had no font issues on FC1, and I don't know what has changed, but I'm
> > going to jump into the FC4 beta cycle with the next test release, and
> > hopefully things will be better.
> >
> > -P
> --
> Virginia Escuder Cabañas
> 
>