maemo.org - Talk - Various font things

I have used linux for many years and one thing I always do is make the fonts look more like windows. I get a copy of the freetype library and turn on the bytecode interpreter, recompile, and use windows fonts instead of the default linux fonts. This is my preference, so don't flame me. I like antialiasing off until about 20 point on my desktop.

On the n800, things are a little different because of the small screen. However, I did compile the freetype library with the bytecode interpreter and installed it. Using windows fonts, the font quality is much more like I prefer it, but again, the fonts a bit small for my eyes unless 16 point. When they are small, they are clear and readable, so for those who already use small fonts, you might really like this. I will probably use the 14 point for a while and see how it goes.

I also heavily modify my .fonts.conf file to get the antialiasing tweaked very specifically by fonts size.

I also noticed that the fonts in the web browser (esp in the Mozilla based engine) are smaller than, say, the fonts in leafpad. This can be adjusted by the user_pref("layout.css.dpi", 96); to another, larger number. I tried it at about 120 and the fonts seemed to be on par with the point size in leafpad. I really liked this but there were two problems. The whole page is now wider and one must scroll sideways to see it; and, more significantly, the zoom buttons will crash the browser. I suspect the zoom feature is just changing the dpi settings and there is some interference at some dpi levels.

I will not be posting a howto for changing the freetype engine. I you do not know enough about linux to do that on your own, then you are likely to break something and have to reflash your device.

I have attached a screen shot of the mozilla engine rendering a page with minimum fonts size of 14 using the Arial font. I had to cut it because the attachments allowed on this server do not allow a full 800 width and once it gets compressed it gets ugly.