default fonts in Firefox for Fedora look very bad

[Marius Andreiana]

Hi,

Could anyone with graphic design experience offer more details on this bug?
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=523487

Google confirms it's not just my impression.

Thanks,

[Martin Sourada]

On Thu, 2009-10-15 at 00:00 +0300, Marius Andreiana wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Could anyone with graphic design experience offer more details on this bug?
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=523487
>
> Google confirms it's not just my impression.

Well, the only important difference there is that the font used by linux
version is bigger and uses just grey scale antialiasing as opposed to
the hinted subpixel antialiasing used by windows (not perfect either) --
you are comparing apples with oranges.

It seems that gecko respects system wide settings (sans size; come to
think of it, why is the font size in firefox apparently measured in
pixels instead of the usual typographic units [pt]?) as I have nice
fonts in (almost) default rawhide installation with subpixel hinting
turned on (and size toned down a bit) and it looks in firefox just the
same as in the rest of the desktop (and to say, much better than the
screenshots from both windows and fedora you provided, at least on my
laptop).

Martin

["Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"]

On 10/14/2009 09:44 PM, Martin Sourada wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-10-15 at 00:00 +0300, Marius Andreiana wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Could anyone with graphic design experience offer more details on this bug?
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=523487
> >
> > Google confirms it's not just my impression.
>
> Well, the only important difference there is that the font used by linux
> version is bigger and uses just grey scale antialiasing as opposed to
> the hinted subpixel antialiasing used by windows (not perfect either) --
> you are comparing apples with oranges.
>
> It seems that gecko respects system wide settings (sans size; come to
> think of it, why is the font size in firefox apparently measured in
> pixels instead of the usual typographic units [pt]?) as I have nice
> fonts in (almost) default rawhide installation with subpixel hinting
> turned on (and size toned down a bit) and it looks in firefox just the
> same as in the rest of the desktop (and to say, much better than the
> screenshots from both windows and fedora you provided, at least on my
> laptop).

I hook my laptop running F12 beta Live CD to my 1920x1080 43" LCD TV and
it truly reveal how horrific the default fonts look like..
( you will also notice how both the top and bottom panel are utterly
broken. ).

JBG

[Marius Andreiana]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 11:44 PM, Martin Sourada
 wrote:
> It seems that gecko respects system wide settings (sans size; come to
> think of it, why is the font size in firefox apparently measured in
> pixels instead of the usual typographic units [pt]?) as I have nice
> fonts in (almost) default rawhide installation with subpixel hinting
> turned on (and size toned down a bit) and it looks in firefox just the
> same as in the rest of the desktop (and to say, much better than the
> screenshots from both windows and fedora you provided, at least on my
> laptop).

What could be done so it works this way out of the box, rather than
having users change various settings to make them look better?