From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Wed Dec 27 16:10:07 2017 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F06E3E9E7DF for ; Wed, 27 Dec 2017 16:10:07 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from news@mips.inka.de) Received: from mail.inka.de (quechua.inka.de [IPv6:2a04:c9c7:0:1073:217:a4ff:fe3b:e77c]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id BE1A66B5B8 for ; Wed, 27 Dec 2017 16:10:07 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from news@mips.inka.de) Received: from mips.inka.de (news@[127.0.0.1]) by mail.inka.de with uucp (rmailwrap 0.5) id 1eUEHO-0001XC-Cu; Wed, 27 Dec 2017 17:10:06 +0100 Received: from lorvorc.mips.inka.de (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by lorvorc.mips.inka.de (8.15.2/8.15.2) with ESMTP id vBRG9Y1W042268 for ; Wed, 27 Dec 2017 17:09:34 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from news@lorvorc.mips.inka.de) Received: (from news@localhost) by lorvorc.mips.inka.de (8.15.2/8.15.2/Submit) id vBRG9YWs042267 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Wed, 27 Dec 2017 17:09:34 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from news) To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org From: Christian Weisgerber Newsgroups: list.freebsd.questions Subject: Poor default fonts in Firefox Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2017 16:09:34 -0000 (UTC) Message-ID: User-Agent: slrn/1.0.3 (FreeBSD) X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.25 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2017 16:10:08 -0000 You install a new FreeBSD machine with a graphics display, install the xorg and firefox ports on it, all default options, start browsing the web... and you see that some sites (e.g. http://www.bbc.com/news) are presented with pixelated fonts like something out of the 1990s. What do you do? This affects approximately everybody who uses FreeBSD on a desktop or laptop, and it has for years. What's the standard solution, and why doesn't this work out of the box? The underlying problem is that certain popular font names, "Helvetica", "Times", "Courier", are mapped to ancient bitmap fonts by default, e.g.: $ fc-match Helvetica helvR12-ISO8859-1.pcf.gz: "Helvetica" "Regular" My personal solution for the last few years has been to pinch OpenBSD's etc/fonts/conf.avail/31-nonmst.conf file... https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/xenocara/dist/fontconfig/conf.d/31-nonmst.conf?rev=1.1&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup ... that maps these font names to DejaVu Sans/Serif/Sans Mono. Still, that seems hackish and can hardly be expected from your average user. -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de