[ jEdit-users ] Good Fonts For jEdit On Linux

[Randall R Schulz]

Hi,

I'm getting a Linux system up and running and I'm probably going to
migrate from Windows for my day-to-day work to Linux. I'm using the
SuSE 9.0 Professional distribution and KDE as a desktop environment.
I've installed jEdit 4.2pre9 there (my 4.1 installation under Windows
is nice and stable, and I don't want to risk downtime by changing a
good thing).

I'm looking for optimal fonts (in general, but specifically for use in
jEdit). I've already found that the font anti-aliasing is not to my
taste, at least for my 1280x1024, 17" trinitron monitor, though I'll
probably be upgrading that component in the near future. I have found a
couple of Web pages that describe getting fonts from my Windows system
to work under Linux, and that seems to be a good start. I've also been
fumbling about, with somewhat mixed success, getting fonts to be
available to Java applications (I'd probably still be tearing my hair
out had I not found a remark somewhere stating that Sun had removed
bitmap font support in the 1.4 release of Java for Linux).


So, after all that preamble, can anybody point me to fonts, free or
commercial (text quality is just too important to demand zero-cost
solutions) that work well? The usual considerations for programming
fonts apply, of course. Additionally, I need fonts that look good
(i.e., are readable) at small sizes. (Generally speaking, I like to
cram a lot of information on my monitor. And I don't go in for this
80-column limit business. 24x80 terminals and their progenitor the
Hollerith card are a thing of the past! My limit is 100 if convenient
and 110 if not. I also use a permanently open side dock for several
heavily used jEdit plug-ins, so the screen size of the font must be
fairly small. -- Thank god my eyes are good!)

So, please recommend. Thanks!

Randall Schulz

[Chris Petersen]

Post by Randall R Schulz
I'm looking for optimal fonts (in general, but specifically for use in
jEdit). I've already found that the font anti-aliasing is not to my
taste, at least for my 1280x1024, 17" trinitron monitor

I've also found that to be true. It seems that horizontal lines
(tops/bottoms of some letters, underscores) anti-alias "brighter" than
other sections of letters, leaving a very unbalanced look. I assumed
this is a problem with some swing/java component that jEdit had no
control of, so I never reported it as a bug.

I personally don't mind the "monospace" font that comes with RedHat (I'm
not sure if it's the actual "monospace" font, or something redhat
aliases to that name). But you might also look for something called
ProFont - I used to use this when I was on a mac, and it shouldn't be
too hard to convert to a linux true type font if you can find it. It's
free, and was designed as a good true type terminal font, with
differences between I and l, and O and 0.

[Randall R Schulz]

Chris,

Post by Chris Petersen

Post by Randall R Schulz
I'm looking for optimal fonts (in general, but specifically for use
in jEdit). I've already found that the font anti-aliasing is not to
my taste, at least for my 1280x1024, 17" trinitron monitor

I've also found that to be true. It seems that horizontal lines
(tops/bottoms of some letters, underscores) anti-alias "brighter"
than other sections of letters, leaving a very unbalanced look. I
assumed this is a problem with some swing/java component that jEdit
had no control of, so I never reported it as a bug.

Yes, poor uniformity is one symptom of the anti-aliasing, possibly in
combination with missing or poor hinting.

Post by Chris Petersen
I personally don't mind the "monospace" font that comes with RedHat
(I'm not sure if it's the actual "monospace" font, or something
redhat aliases to that name). But you might also look for something
called ProFont - I used to use this when I was on a mac, and it
shouldn't be too hard to convert to a linux true type font if you can
find it. It's free, and was designed as a good true type terminal
font, with differences between I and l, and O and 0.

"Monospace" is a virtual font name--assigned in the "properties.font"
file to a specific font or fonts on the local system. I gather that
file is constructd during installation, but I'm not really sure about
that.

I got ProFont and tried it, but it doesn't do so well as a TrueType
font. I don't know if it's hinted well (or at all).


If someone knows how the "properties.font" file is derived, I'd like to
know that, too, though it's even more off-topic here. Assuming it's
constructed in the context of fonts available during installation of
the Java Runtime Environment and / or SDK, I'd guess it must somehow be
maintained / updated if fonts are added or removed. Is there a tool for
accomplishing that update that I'm not aware of?


I should also have stated my requirement that the font be sans-serif.

Post by Chris Petersen
--
Chris Petersen

Randall Schulz

[Dennis Sosnoski]

Post by Randall R Schulz
Chris,

Post by Chris Petersen

Post by Randall R Schulz
I'm looking for optimal fonts (in general, but specifically for use
in jEdit). I've already found that the font anti-aliasing is not to
my taste, at least for my 1280x1024, 17" trinitron monitor

I've also found that to be true. It seems that horizontal lines
(tops/bottoms of some letters, underscores) anti-alias "brighter"
than other sections of letters, leaving a very unbalanced look. I
assumed this is a problem with some swing/java component that jEdit
had no control of, so I never reported it as a bug.

Yes, poor uniformity is one symptom of the anti-aliasing, possibly in
combination with missing or poor hinting.

I use Luxi Mono with jEdit on both notebook and desktop Linux systems,
with excellent results. I'm using Mandrake distributions for both, and
also have Windows fonts installed, but I believe Luxi Mono is a standard
XFree 86 font. I've got the size set to allow 81 column editing on the
notebook with plugins on the left in a maximized jEdit (1024 screen
width), with a larger plugin area and non-maximized jEdit on the desktop
system.

- Dennis

[Chris Petersen]

Post by Dennis Sosnoski
I use Luxi Mono with jEdit on both notebook and desktop Linux systems,
with excellent results. I'm using Mandrake distributions for both, and
also have Windows fonts installed, but I believe Luxi Mono is a standard
XFree 86 font.

Luxi mono is a serif font. IMHO annoying for editing code, but also
looks bad unless you antialias it, and jEdit's (Swing's?) antialiasing
isn't good enough to make it look good.

But that's just my opinion.

-Chris

[Randall R Schulz]

Dennis,

Thanks for the suggestion.

Post by Dennis Sosnoski

Post by Randall R Schulz
Chris,

Post by Chris Petersen

Post by Randall R Schulz
I'm looking for optimal fonts (in general, but specifically for
use in jEdit). I've already found that the font anti-aliasing is
not to my taste, ...

I've also found that to be true. It seems that horizontal lines
(tops/bottoms of some letters, underscores) anti-alias "brighter"
than other sections of letters, leaving a very unbalanced look. I
assumed this is a problem with some swing/java component that jEdit
had no control of, so I never reported it as a bug.

Yes, poor uniformity is one symptom of the anti-aliasing, possibly
in combination with missing or poor hinting.

I use Luxi Mono with jEdit on both notebook and desktop Linux
systems, with excellent results. ...

Yes, Luxi Mono is included in my SuSE distribution. However, as I
mentioned, I don't care for serifed fonts. The extra detail required by
the serifs just don't render well in small sizes and it ends up
compromising the letterforms' appearance and imparing readability.

Post by Dennis Sosnoski
- Dennis

Randy

P.S. I'm also learning a new mail client (KMail, which I really like),
but it's still tripping me up a bit. Sorry about the reply mix-up.

[Gerd Knops]

Post by Randall R Schulz

Post by Dennis Sosnoski
I use Luxi Mono with jEdit on both notebook and desktop Linux
systems, with excellent results. ...

Yes, Luxi Mono is included in my SuSE distribution. However, as I
mentioned, I don't care for serifed fonts. The extra detail required by
the serifs just don't render well in small sizes and it ends up
compromising the letterforms' appearance and imparing readability.

On OS X I use Bitstream's Vera Sans and like it a lot. Should work on
Linux too, you can find it here:

http://www.gnome.org/fonts/

Gerd

[Chris Petersen]

Post by Gerd Knops
On OS X I use Bitstream's Vera Sans and like it a lot. Should work on
http://www.gnome.org/fonts/

I have these fonts installed (I think they come by default with fedora),
but they don't show up in the font list in jEdit.

[Randall R Schulz]

Chris,

Post by Chris Petersen

Post by Gerd Knops
On OS X I use Bitstream's Vera Sans and like it a lot. Should work
http://www.gnome.org/fonts/

I have these fonts installed (I think they come by default with
fedora), but they don't show up in the font list in jEdit.

My system, too, includes the Vera fonts.

When in doubt, the "xlsfonts" command can be used to query available
fonts without interference of any application's internal filtering.
E.g., to see which of the "Vera" fonts are available on your system,
use this command:

xlsfonts -fn '*Vera*'

Note that outline fonts show zeros in the various metric fields. Bitmap
fonts show specific numbers describing available sizes (in a scheme I
find perplexing--you're on your own to come up with a real
understanding!)

You can get crude X-based font previewing with "xfontsel".


Java maintains its own idea of available fonts. To add fonts to it that
are not there once installation of the JVM / JRE / SDK completes,
locate the "jre/lib" directory for the JVM you're using. There you'll
find one or more "font.properties" files (note: in my earlier mail, I
got the name wrong, writing "properties.font" instead). The plain old
"font.properties" is the active one. That's where you have to add
entries to make other fonts available to Java programs.

Rather than reiterate the instructions as I've come to understand them,
I'll refer you to the Sun Web page from which I learned how to do this:
<http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/guide/intl/fontprop.html>.

Here's where I picked up the fact that Java 2 version 1.4 for Linux no
longer includes bitmap font support: <http://forum.java.sun.com/
thread.jsp?thread=483610&forum=31&message=2258348>.

This page explains how to move some select Windows fonts to Linux for
use with Java: <http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/>

Post by Chris Petersen
--
Chris Petersen

Good luck.

By the way, for the time being, I've decided to go with Lucida Sans
Typewriter 12pt and live with only 110 columns visible in the text
area. I'm using the same font for terminal windows, and it allows me to
get 140 columns by 70 rows, which isn't bad.

Randall Schulz

[Chris Petersen]

Post by Randall R Schulz
Yes, poor uniformity is one symptom of the anti-aliasing, possibly in
combination with missing or poor hinting.

Yup. It makes the anti-aliasing feature a big pain to use. I like the
way that MOST of the letters look with it enabled, but enough of them
are messed up that it hurts to look at after awhile.

Post by Randall R Schulz
"Monospace" is a virtual font name--assigned in the "properties.font"
file to a specific font or fonts on the local system. I gather that
file is constructd during installation, but I'm not really sure about
that.

Yeah, that's what I figured. Judging from the look (and lack of most of
my fonts in the jEdit font picker), mine is mapped to Lucida Sans
Typewriter.

Post by Randall R Schulz
I got ProFont and tried it, but it doesn't do so well as a TrueType
font. I don't know if it's hinted well (or at all).

No clue. I guess I only ever accessed the bitmapped portions of it on
my mac - since it was running at 9pt in terminal and BBEdit windows, and
nowhere else.

[Richard Urwin]

Subject: Re: [ jEdit-users ] Good Fonts For jEdit On Linux

Post by Gerd Knops
On OS X I use Bitstream's Vera Sans and like it a lot.

Should work on

Post by Gerd Knops
http://www.gnome.org/fonts/

I have these fonts installed (I think they come by default
with fedora),
but they don't show up in the font list in jEdit.

Randall Schultz' message (21/02/2004 00:10) tells you almost all you need
to know about how to get Vera to work. I know, I just did it.

run xlsfonts
copy out the lines refering to the fonts you want to use (I just did the
ISO????-1 stuff, I don't understand enough to use the other alphabets.)

Paste the lines into font.properties
Move each line next to the existing lines of the same type, ie move Vera
Plain Serif next to the lines that start "Serif.0=" and "Serif.1=". Mine had
just two fonts of each type, yours may differ. Add a prefix "Serif.2=" (or
whatever) on each of the Vera lines.

Restart Java (ie close all Java apps.)

Mine worked like that, but I did think it useful to set-up a character
redirector thing. See the web page. I used the class supplied for one of the
other fonts which was ISO---1. I don't know if this step is necessary.
--
Richard Urwin, Software Design Engineer
Schenck Test Automation
Braemar Court, 1311b Melton Road, Syston, UK.
***@srhsystems.com





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