(Please cc me on any replies - I don't currently subscribe to all the lists)
Hi, I've been using Debian as well as other distributions and one thing I can't help but notice - especially on Debian - is that the default fontconfig settings leave a little bit to be desired. Granted, X will likely never have fonts which look as good as, say, OS X (mostly because of patents), but there is still many improvements that could be made to the default configuration that would make the fonts look noticeably better out-of-the-box. In particular, I wanted to raise the following issues: 1. First of all, the AMT and URW fonts substituted for the MS core fonts (in their absence) are - in a word - ugly. This was something I noticed right away when using Debian - other distributions don't use these fonts. In fact, Ubuntu has patched Debian's fontconfig defaults (located in /etc/fonts/conf.d) to *not* use these fonts if an application accepts any metrics - which results in it using DejaVu Sans/DejaVu Serif instead in most cases. Could these AMT/URW substitutions possibly be removed from the default configuration? Ideally we'd just use Red Hat's Liberation, but they still don't have their license issues sorted out... 2. Secondly, by default Debian currently has bitmap fonts enabled in fontconfig. While this allows said fonts to be used, it *also* has significant negative effects - at least with the default bitmap fonts for X installed. In particular, this basically involves common fonts with bitmap versions - if Helvetica is requested by a document, ugly bitmap Helvetica is used instead of a better-looking TrueType font. Could something be done about this in the defaults, either by removing bitmap versions of commonly-used X fonts from the standard X install metapackage or by disabling bitmaps entirely by default (as Ubuntu has done)? 3. Lastly, and most controversially, I have always noticed that with some fonts, turning the autohinter on makes them look MUCH better. However, by default the autohinter is turned off. I can see why - some fonts, especially from non-Latin character sets, have been known to look quite bad with the autohinter on. However, I am wondering - would it be worth considering to have fontconfig turn the autohinter on for a whitelist of fonts known to work well with it? Just throwing out some ideas... Tim
