Keith Devens .com - Weblog: Proggy fonts on Ubuntu :(

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Proggy fonts on Ubuntu :(

I can't get the Proggy Fonts to install on Ubuntu. They even show up in the font list when I install them in ~/.fonts, but what's displayed when I select the fonts is not Proggy, but some variable width icky poo. I tried all different versions of the Proggy Tiny font (which is my fav), even the pcf version for which I followed the directions here.

I've never understood why people like Bitstream Vera Sans Mono so much. It doesn't compare to the Proggy Fonts IMO. How can I program in a font I don't like? This alone would almost push me back to Windows if I can't figure it out. Help!

Permalink | 6 Comments | Tags: Programming | id 6867

17:29 (utc-4)

Comments

Jim wrote:

Using KDE, I simply opened the control panel, went to system administration, and picked font installer. I clicked "administrator mode", entered my password, and clicked "add fonts". Then I picked the downloaded font and clicked OK.

Hey presto, the font was installed, everything worked as it should. No need for messing around typing commands.

∴ Jim | 21-Apr-2005 4:32pm est | #7520

Yeah, Gnome sucks.

∴ Keith | 21-Apr-2005 5:53pm est | http://keithdevens.com/ | #7521

Well, I like it because I was spoiled by using properly hinted and antialiased fonts for years. Back in the day, I used RISC OS, which even in the late '80s had a high-quality outline font manager that did proper anti-aliasing. I'd a good set of programmer's fonts back then (some of which I did myself with FontEd, and they were all nicely hintend and antialiased. Vera's the first decent outline font I've came across on other platforms that comes close to those I used to use. And I hate bitty fonts.

∴ Keith Gaughan | 25-Apr-2005 11:19am est | http://talideon.com/ | #7533

See, I hate antialiasing. I tried to live with it for a few days with Gnome to see if I could get used to it, but everything just looks blurry to me. And, for programming, I love little bitmap fonts.

∴ Keith | 25-Apr-2005 11:25am est | http://keithdevens.com/ | #7534

Ah, but you have never experienced decent antialiasing. Freetype makes a complete hames of it. Cleartype under windows isn't a whole lot better. OSX makes a decent effort, but the RISC OS FontManager is the only one that I've seen that makes the fonts look seamless.

Oh well...

∴ Keith Gaughan | 27-Apr-2005 5:43pm est | http://talideon.com/ | #7551

63.199.26.230 wrote:

XWindowsFontInstall instructions leave out a step. You have to
run "xset fp+ your_font_path" to add your fonts directory.
This should work:

# rebuild font.dir file
mkfontdir ~/.fonts
# add to font path
xset fp+ ~/.fonts
# tell X to reread fonts
xset fp rehash

∴ 63.199.26.230 | 21-May-2006 1:45pm est | #9460

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