TrueType fonts?

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: TrueType fonts?
started by: RoGuE_StreaK

Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Feb. 13 2005,04:40

Wondering how/if you can install truetype fonts, preferably just simlinking from a windows partition. A major thing I noticed is that this forum etc uses Verdana, which doesn't come with DSL, so it reverts to some default Times type font that is, personally, hard to read and unattractive at 1024x768 on a 15" (tried same res under windows, Verdana looks decent still).
I have Xfree86 on my CD if necessary (read somewhere in the forum that the default X server may not have had truetype support built in, but that's about all I've found out in my searching).

PS. Is verdana proprietary? If not, any way of including it in the standard ISO, as it's extremely widely used on the web (tahoma and arial too). Or similar open source fonts that can assume the identity of said fonts (ie. if verdana is specified, opensource fontX sticks it's hand up and says, "yeah, that's me!")

PPS. Come to think of it, this is probably a major reason why I don't use DSL full-time, or near-enough - a lot of the fonts aren't anywhere near as easy on the eyes as the standard windoze ones. We now have decent refresh rates, 3d acceleration, need better fonts! Nothing I can pinpoint exactly, just something about the fonts makes it hard to use for long periods of time.

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 13 2005,07:18

I agree with your assessment.

The fonts aren't bad at 800x600 but they are hard on the eyes at 1024x768 especially at 60Hz refresh rate.

Other open source distributions have built-in fonts that look better, so I am sure that it is possible without using restricted fonts.

Obviously, we can't go crazy and add a ton of fonts because they would eat up too much space on the disk. But a few select new ones and appropriate substitution tables would help things greatly.