Bad font rendering between Debian and Fedora

Ask Fedora
1

Hello

As you can see on the following images, the font rendering is wrong with Fedora (check clock applet).

MATE with human-theme-gtk (with FREETYPE_PROPERTIES=“truetype:interpreter-version=35” in /etc/environment). But the problem isn’t everywhere. I also see that I have slight differences elsewhere (marco/csd window title bar, status bar, menu bar, text in css tab of GtkInspector).

debian: gtk 3.24.49 + glib 2.84.3 + pango 1.56.3 + freetype 2.13.3 + fonts-dejavu 2.37
fedora: gtk 3.24.49 + glib 2.85.1 + pango 1.56.3 + freetype 2.13.3 + dejavu-fonts 2.37

Is someone know why?

2

Can you define terms like “bad” and “wrong” a bit more perhaps, those terms are not very descriptive.

3

yes, compare the two screenshots, with fedora each number is larger, moreover the calculated font-size & dpi pour the clock applet aren’t same compared to debian

there is also more space between some characters, but not all, and not everywhere (for example not for the standard menu applet, but for CSD window buttons in titlebar)

4

I wonder if it’s related to hinting? I’ve seen different distros default to None, Slight, and Full so maybe Fedora and Debian have different settings.

5

loool, you are right!

In mate-appearance-properties, this is the DPI value:

image
image580×623 47.5 KB

But if you are on manual+96, then you set automatic, then you set manual (96), the font rendering is updated:

image
image568×158 17.7 KB

image
image570×160 17.5 KB

image
image570×166 17.8 KB

To fix, set 95 then 96!

2 Likes
6

Besides, when I read “Debian, Fedora” I think it is about something wrong with Fedora Workstation, because Debian defaults to Gnome and Workstation is “the” Gnome desktop. Then it is about two Mate desktops, which in my understanding is pretty much a “vanilla” Mate on top of the general-core distribution. What happens is random because I don’t think there is anybody who works on tuning and fixing either Debian Mate or Fedora Mate.