Mapping fonts

[schickb]

Using fc-match I've found that "Helvetica" and "Times" are mapped to old 75dpi fonts by default in Ubuntu.

>fc-match "Helvetica"
helvR12.pcf.gz: "Helvetica" "Regular"

>fc-match "Times"
timR12.pcf.gz: "Times" "Regular"

I'd like to force these to more modern fonts for all users on my system. I've tried adding the following to /etc/fonts/local.conf and then restarting X, but it has no effect. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?


<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<alias>
<family>Times</family>
<prefer><family>Times New Roman</family></prefer>
<default><family>serif</family></default>
</alias>
<alias>
<family>Helvetica</family>
<prefer><family>Arial</family></prefer>
<default><family>sans</family></default>
</alias>
<alias>
<family>Courier</family>
<prefer><family>Courier New</family></prefer>
<default><family>monospace</family></default>
</alias>
</fontconfig>

[Zorael]

Yeah, Helvetica looks awful. That would explain why, too.

I think you want it to look like this. (Excerpt copy/pasted from my user-specific ~/.fonts.conf)

<!-- Font Replacement -->
<match target="pattern" name="family" >
<test name="family" qual="any" >
<string>Verdana</string>
</test>
<edit mode="assign" name="family" >
<string>DejaVu Sans</string>
</edit>
</match>

<match target="pattern" name="family" >
<test name="family" qual="any" >
<string>Helvetica</string>
</test>
<edit mode="assign" name="family" >
<string>Arial</string>
</edit>
</match>

<match target="pattern" name="family" >
<test name="family" qual="any" >
<string>Lucida</string>
</test>
<edit mode="assign" name="family" >
<string>Arial</string>
</edit>
</match>

<match target="pattern" name="family" >
<test name="family" qual="any" >
<string>Lucida Grande</string>
</test>
<edit mode="assign" name="family" >
<string>Arial</string>
</edit>
</match>

<match target="pattern" name="family" >
<test name="family" qual="any" >
<string>Tahoma</string>
</test>
<edit mode="assign" name="family" >
<string>DejaVu Sans</string>
</edit>
</match>

<match target="pattern" name="family" >
<test name="family" qual="any" >
<string>Geneva</string>
</test>
<edit mode="assign" name="family" >
<string>Arial</string>
</edit>
</match>

[schickb]

Yeah, Helvetica looks awful. That would explain why, too.

I think you want it to look like this. (Excerpt copy/pasted from my user-specific ~/.fonts.conf)

Its not really clear to me when to use <match> and when to use <alias>. I did some more digging and I think my solution didn't work because it needed to be <alias binding="same"> instead of just <alias>. I also decided to assign more specific family names. The following now works as expected:


<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<alias binding="same">
<family>Helvetica</family>
<prefer>
<family>DejaVu Sans</family>
</prefer>
</alias>
<alias binding="same">
<family>Times</family>
<prefer>
<family>DejaVu Serif</family>
</prefer>
</alias>
<alias binding="same">
<family>Courier</family>
<prefer>
<family>DejaVu Sans Mono</family>
</prefer>
</alias>
</fontconfig>

Sure seems like something similar to this should be the default for Ubuntu. /etc/fonts/conf.d/30-metric-aliases.conf has something similar, but it uses <accept> rather than <prefer> which seems to let the old 75dpi fonts win.