[gentoo-user] Font sizes very small in KDE

[gentoo-user] Font sizes very small in KDE

[Stewart Taylor]

Hi All

I've got a problem with the display 
under KDE. I've just installed Gentoo 
for the first time. Under KDE the font 
sizes are very small compared with what 
they should be. Compared with the same 
hardware under Suse 8.0 all text 
displays a little over half the size. 
this affects KDE apps and non KDE apps 
the same. Firefox text on menus and the 
like is so small that it is unusable. On 
one of my own programs the 14 point text 
displays as if it were 8-9 point. I have 
a Matrox Millennium G400 graphics card. 
I've tried all the settings i can find 
and have tried different kernel modules 
settings without success. The info I 
found on the web left me confused as it 
seems that this card may have different 
names in the UK and US. I'm in the UK.

TIA

Stewart
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Re: [gentoo-user] Font sizes very small in KDE

[Holly Bostick]

Stewart Taylor schreef:
> Hi All
> 
> I've got a problem with the display under KDE. I've just installed 
> Gentoo for the first time. Under KDE the font sizes are very small 
> compared with what they should be. Compared with the same hardware 
> under Suse 8.0 all text displays a little over half the size. this 
> affects KDE apps and non KDE apps the same. Firefox text on menus and
>  the like is so small that it is unusable. On one of my own programs
>  the 14 point text displays as if it were 8-9 point. I have a Matrox
>  Millennium G400 graphics card. I've tried all the settings i can
> find and have tried different kernel modules settings without
> success. The info I found on the web left me confused as it seems
> that this card may have different names in the UK and US. I'm in the
> UK.
> 
> TIA
> 
> Stewart

I find this situation a constant annoyance as well. You have,
unfortunately, several issues involved, none of which is completely
resolveable until everybody is on board with the freedesktop.org
standard, but you can get everything to a reasonably stable state that
you can deal with.

The problem (and I must regretfully point out that most of the problem
seems to be KDE, but we'll get to that):

You run KDE. Fine; KDE controls its fonts, you set your fonts to
whatever you like and they look OK (all right, yours don't, quite, but
you can obviously hack them into shape by running them at some
ridiculously high point size. I've also noticed that KDE seems to make
fonts look smaller than I would imagine they should, and I don't know
why, so I just hack them into useability). Then you open Firefox. Which is a
GTK program and whose font size (for menus and the like, not page
display which is controlled by the program) is controlled by the GNOME
control panel (or gtk2rc, but in any case GNOME/GTK, and not KDE).  So
GTK apps are now running essentially unconfigured fonts and font sizes,
so they look like sh*t. Plus KDE is (naturally) trying to control this
window (because it's a window on the KDE desktop), and is unable to
really do so, so that just makes things a bit worse (more on this later
as well). Furthermore you also have X trying to control the font size
for one or more reasons (maybe you have a font server running, maybe
you're running 'uncontrolled' programs which start with an 'X' rather
than a 'K' or a 'G', and of course X is ultimately responsible for
displaying all display elements anyway).

So the situation is that basically "too many cooks spoil the soup". At
least, that's the *first* problem, which we'd have to clear away before
we could be sure that your video card is doing what it should (which I
think it probably is; I have a G400 Max which I used till about a year
or so ago under Linux, and it was really the most trouble-free card I've
used).

Here's what you want to do:

1. emerge x11-themes/gtk-engines-qt. This little GTK engine will add a
couple of entries to the KDE control center which will allow KDE to
control not only the color of GTK apps (which kcontrol already does
before the installation of this engine, check the Appearance and
Themes=> Colors section for the checkbox), but the theme and the fonts
as well, so they can be conformed. Be aware, the themes will only be
conformed for GTK2 applications, and only those which do not theme
themselves (as Firefox does, for example). So any GTK1 apps you might
run will not look so much better (except that the colors will be right),
unless you do what I do, which is run a theme which is designed for all
three engines, GTK1, GTK2 and QT. A few can be found on KDE-look.org.

1a. emerge =x11-themes/gtk-theme-switch-1.0.1-r2 (specifically the 1.0
version which controls GTK1 themes, rather than the 2.0 version, which
controls GTK2 themes, which you don't need, as you're already doing this
with Kcontrol). If you use any GTK1 apps (sylpheed, gnotepad +,
multi-gnome-terminal, etc), this program can be useful for setting their
theme and fonts.

2. Try to stick to programs for one desktop environment wherever
possible. Yes, this sucks, but until KDE and GNOME (GTK) are a lot more
interoperable in this respect than they are now, the easiest way to
avoid them conflicting is to not bring them into conflict by using
programs from multiple DEs if it can be avoided. This is, btw, why I
complain that KDE is the problem; I don't run GNOME or KDE, but Openbox
and FVWM. I run mostly GNOME (GTK) apps, but there are a couple of KDE
apps I like that I use (k3b, krusader). It's hard not to notice that
when I open one of the KDE programs on my desktop which is already
running a bunch of GTK apps, *the font size changes for everything*.
Just a little, but I can see it. This may have been my mistake though--
I had set kcontrol to 'use my KDE fonts for GTK apps' (using
gtk-engines-qt). It's quite possible that, since kcontrol is not running
until I open Krusader or K3b, and because my KDE font size setting is
not quite the same as my GNOME font size setting (because I just can't
deal with hopping back and forth between two control centers every time
I want to change fonts across the entire system), that when kcontrol
necessarily opens to control the KDE application, it changes the fonts
of all the GTK apps to the specified size (the KDE size). The situation
is the same but mirror-imaged for you; if you run KDE, then open a
GNOME/GTK app, the various GNOME backend programs (notably
/usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon) are opened to control the
'look-and-feel' of the GTK app, overriding the KDE settings (unless
you're using gtk-engines-qt, which 'pre-overrides' the
override by GNOME). I've changed the setting in Kcontrol to 'use a
specific font size' (which is the size set by GNOME), so hopefully that
will fix it. In the past, I've just opened up the GNOME control panel or
gtk-theme-switch to 'fix' the GTK apps. But either way, you can see it's
just all an unnecessary annoyance for the user/administrator in the
first place-- and the reason is because these DEs conform to their own
standards, which are fairly incompatible with each other (until they
both finish their migration to the freedesktop.org standard).

Since the point of KDE is that it has a sh*tload of apps for everything
you could possibly want to do ever that are all designed to work with
KDE, it's even easier to just try to stick with apps designed for your
desktop than it is under GNOME (though GNOME has started to get a few
good programs lately-- graveman and gnomebaker are quite nice, though
not quite K3b, and nothing comes close to Krusader, despite Krusader's
lack of interoperability with the GNOME desktop-- so, fortunately the
gap is definitely closing. I'm hoping that GNOME 2.12 will be a
significant step forward in this respect).

Anyway, once you've got that out of the way, you can then deal with your
video settings (if they still need to be dealt with) in what are
hopefully less murky waters.

Hope this helps.
Holly
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Re: [gentoo-user] Font sizes very small in KDE

[David Helstroom]

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Holly Bostick wrote:

>Stewart Taylor schreef:
>  
>
>>Hi All
>>
>>I've got a problem with the display under KDE. I've just installed 
>>Gentoo for the first time. Under KDE the font sizes are very small 
>>compared with what they should be. Compared with the same hardware 
>>under Suse 8.0 all text displays a little over half the size. this 
>>affects KDE apps and non KDE apps the same. Firefox text on menus and
>> the like is so small that it is unusable. On one of my own programs
>> the 14 point text displays as if it were 8-9 point. I have a Matrox
>> Millennium G400 graphics card. I've tried all the settings i can
>>find and have tried different kernel modules settings without
>>success. The info I found on the web left me confused as it seems
>>that this card may have different names in the UK and US. I'm in the
>>UK.
>>
>>TIA
>>
>>Stewart
>>    
>>
>
>So the situation is that basically "too many cooks spoil the soup". At
>least, that's the *first* problem, which we'd have to clear away before
>we could be sure that your video card is doing what it should (which I
>think it probably is; I have a G400 Max which I used till about a year
>or so ago under Linux, and it was really the most trouble-free card I've
>used).
>
>Hope this helps.
>Holly
>  
>

Hi Stewart,

If you are running KDE and Gnome together, I sometimes run into the same 
troubles as you. Generally, as Holly says, the problem is with Gnome/KDE 
not playing well together (assuming you have them both installed). 
However, the way I get around it is to:

a) start up "gnome-font-properties" and choose the fonts which look best.
b) edit your ~/.xprofile to contain:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon &

c) make sure the ~/.xprofile script is executable
 > chmod u+x ~/.xprofile

d) now log back into X, fire up kcontrol and adjust the KDE fonts in 
"Appearance & Themes"->"Fonts"

Hopefully this will be of some help. It seems to work for me, so good luck!


    Dave.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Font sizes very small in KDE

[Stewart Taylor]

Holly Bostick wrote:

Phew! what a long post. Sorry it's taken 
so long to come back on this. I tried 
the emerge x11-themes/gtk-engines-qt. 
Then made the changes in KDE Control 
center. No effect at all. I didn't have 
Gnome installed, so to see if the basic 
setting and hardware are ok I installed 
it, this is what has taken so long. When 
I ran Firefox under Gnome no problems, 
everything was as it should be. So your 
idea that it is basically a KDE problem 
looks to be correct. Where I go from 
here I have no idea.

Stewart
> 
> 
> I find this situation a constant annoyance as well. You have,
> unfortunately, several issues involved, none of which is completely
> resolveable until everybody is on board with the freedesktop.org
> standard, but you can get everything to a reasonably stable state that
> you can deal with.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Font sizes very small in KDE

[Tim Beck]

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Sounds like your DPI may be set incorrectly (if at all). I've had a horrible
time getting the fonts in Firefox + KDE looking usable at normal (10-14)
font sizes. For whatever reason, Xorg doesn't play nice when it comes to
anything font related (at least, not in my experience). It certainly doesn't
work out of the box on any of the machines *I* own.

Below are a few links which you may find useful in relation to your font
problems;

Here's a link to Mozilla's site that talks extensively about font DPI issues
http://www.mozilla.org/unix/dpi.html

Here's a link (it's for archlinux, but still should be okay) about how to
configure Xorg.conf. Note section 4.11 which talks about font sizes and DPI:
http://wiki2.archlinux.org/index.php/XOrg_Font_Configuration

Here's the gentoo-wiki page dealing with xorg and fonts. It talks a bit
about fonts and DPI scaling; at the bottom however is a link about
controlling the font DPI in X: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Xorg_and_Fonts

And finally here's a link to some comments on the gentoo wiki about
KDE/fonts/dpi/etc. I found this comment of particular use a while back:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/Talk:HOWTO_Xorg_and_Fonts#Font_DPI

Lastly, I suggest you try searching the forums for stuff about kde, firefox,
fonts, dpi, etc. Searching the forums has become increasingly annoying due
to the volume of posts there, but if you dig long enough you should find
something useful :)

Good luck!

Tim

On 9/23/05, Stewart Taylor <stewarta.taylor@btopenworld.com> wrote:
>
> Holly Bostick wrote:
>
> Phew! what a long post. Sorry it's taken
> so long to come back on this. I tried
> the emerge x11-themes/gtk-engines-qt.
> Then made the changes in KDE Control
> center. No effect at all. I didn't have
> Gnome installed, so to see if the basic
> setting and hardware are ok I installed
> it, this is what has taken so long. When
> I ran Firefox under Gnome no problems,
> everything was as it should be. So your
> idea that it is basically a KDE problem
> looks to be correct. Where I go from
> here I have no idea.
>
> Stewart
> >
> >
> > I find this situation a constant annoyance as well. You have,
> > unfortunately, several issues involved, none of which is completely
> > resolveable until everybody is on board with the freedesktop.org<http://freedesktop.org>
> > standard, but you can get everything to a reasonably stable state that
> > you can deal with.
>
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Font sizes very small in KDE

[Stewart Taylor]

Hi Tim

Thanks for the reply, just printing the 
info, hopefully this will solve the problem.

Thanks again

Stewart

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gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] Font sizes very small in KDE

[Stewart Taylor]

Hi Tim

Printed the info, read half way down 
first page of Mozilla DPI issues, 
problem fixed in 5 minutes.

Thanks again for your help

Stewart


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