hi !
i am aware, that font (compatibility) issues have been discussed here quite often, but i'd like to open it once again ...
recently when i tried to check a couple of my abstractions for cross-platform compatibility, i discovered a huge difference in size when the default font (DejaVu Sans Mono) was used on either windows/osx and linux.
But "DejaVu Sans Mono" on Linux (Ubuntu 19.04) has a much larger spacing than on both other platroms, making text designs in PD patches incredibly difficult to be cross-platform. i'm not talking "not 100% precise", it's way more than that, as you can see on the screenhot i made with the attached patch on 3 different systems. only on linux the text is way too long for the background canvas and becomes invisible (because it's white ...)
(or see the screenshots here:) https://wolke.klingt.org/index.php/s/sAJg9z4VqRaeB9G
Some questions:
1.) Do other Linux users have the same font experience, or is my distro messed up ? 2.) I installed 3 fairly recent PD versions on each system (0.50 in win/osx, 0.49 on ubuntu via apt-get). why do they all use different TK versions ? 3.) why is the windows default font-weight bold ? it looks ... well ... fuzzy to me ... (though it's no big deal as i can change it in the preferences - but what's the design decision here ?) 4.) why "times" ? ;-)
(i won't even bring up the subject that the three standard PD fonts (DejaVu Sans Mono, Helvetica, Times) all look quite different on either platform, but since the spacing is more or less correct - safe for "times" which i never use - i don't really mind.)
thanks for help or clarifications
best
oliver
1.) Do other Linux users have the same font experience, or is my distro messed up ? I have used Debian 9 (xfce) & 10 (lxqt) and it's very close to the same compared to Windows. (your screenshot shows a *huge* difference)
3.) why is the windows default font-weight bold ? Linux and Windows defaults to bold since a long time ago.
it looks ... well ... fuzzy to me ... On Windows "DejaVuSansMono-Bold.ttf" must be loaded or installed. If "DejaVuSansMono.ttf" is forced to "bold" it looks ugly.
:)
Mensaje telepatico asistido por maquinas.
On 9/7/2019 4:56 PM, oliver wrote: hi !
i am aware, that font (compatibility) issues have been discussed here quite often, but i'd like to open it once again ...
recently when i tried to check a couple of my abstractions for cross-platform compatibility, i discovered a huge difference in size when the default font (DejaVu Sans Mono) was used on either windows/osx and linux.
But "DejaVu Sans Mono" on Linux (Ubuntu 19.04) has a much larger spacing than on both other platroms, making text designs in PD patches incredibly difficult to be cross-platform. i'm not talking "not 100% precise", it's way more than that, as you can see on the screenhot i made with the attached patch on 3 different systems. only on linux the text is way too long for the background canvas and becomes invisible (because it's white ...)
(or see the screenshots here:) https://wolke.klingt.org/index.php/s/sAJg9z4VqRaeB9G
Some questions:
1.) Do other Linux users have the same font experience, or is my distro messed up ? 2.) I installed 3 fairly recent PD versions on each system (0.50 in win/osx, 0.49 on ubuntu via apt-get). why do they all use different TK versions ? 3.) why is the windows default font-weight bold ? it looks ... well ... fuzzy to me ... (though it's no big deal as i can change it in the preferences - but what's the design decision here ?) 4.) why "times" ? ;-)
(i won't even bring up the subject that the three standard PD fonts (DejaVu Sans Mono, Helvetica, Times) all look quite different on either platform, but since the spacing is more or less correct - safe for "times" which i never use - i don't really mind.)
thanks for help or clarifications
best
oliver
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Lucas Cordiviola wrote:
1.) Do other Linux users have the same font experience, or is my distro messed up ?
I have used Debian 9 (xfce) & 10 (lxqt) and it's very close to the same compared to Windows. (your screenshot shows a *huge* difference)
after a quick test on debian 10 (xfce) i can confirm that ! so there's likely something messed up in my ubuntu font management, even though i can't really find out what. no exotic dejavu versions found from my font-manager. but then (after temporarily deactivating "DejaVu"-fonts) PD loads "Courier" which i haven't even installed (according to font-manager)
which leads me to another issue i experienced:
PD seems to behave differently (regarding fonts) when called from a bash script with "-noprefs" as opposed to a call from the applications menu.
the latter doesn't seem to care about the "-font-face" flag in .pdsettings. no matter what i put there, always "DejaVu" gets loaded. only from a bash script with the "-noprefs" option, i can try out other fonts with "-font-face", like "Ubuntu Mono", "FreeMono" etc.)
anybody else on UBUNTU who would share experiences in this regard ?
3.) why is the windows default font-weight bold ?
Linux and Windows defaults to bold since a long time ago.
my bad ... i always use a customized font-face startup script on windows (with the .zip version of PD) so i am somehow in my own bubble ;-) >
it looks ... well ... fuzzy to me ...
On Windows "DejaVuSansMono-Bold.ttf" must be loaded or installed. If "DejaVuSansMono.ttf" is forced to "bold" it looks ugly.
For comparison reasons i did a proper PD install on my windows machine (0.50). "DejaVuSansMono-Bold.ttf" is loaded alright, but that looks heavy on the eyes (and yes, ugly) to me. but at least the spacing of boxes, messages, even comments are more or surprisingly consistent across platforms and versions, so that's fine with me.
best
oliver
On 09.09.19 12:06, oliver wrote:
after a quick test on debian 10 (xfce) i can confirm that ! so there's likely something messed up in my ubuntu font management, even though i can't really find out what. no exotic dejavu versions found from my font-manager. but then (after temporarily deactivating "DejaVu"-fonts) PD loads "Courier" which i haven't even installed (according to font-manager)
Pd (or rather: tcl/tk) loads font *families* rather than fonts. you most likely do have a member of the "Courier" family installed on your system.
which leads me to another issue i experienced:
PD seems to behave differently (regarding fonts) when called from a bash script with "-noprefs" as opposed to a call from the applications menu.
hmm, i cannot really reproduce on my Debian/bullseye:amd64 with XFce4.
e.g. using the font "D050000L" (from the fonts-urw-base35) package, i get consistent behaviour no matter if i...
- add "-font-face D050000L" (without quotes) to ~/.pdsettings and
- start Pd from the cmdline without args: "pd"
- start Pd from the cmdline with "pd -noprefs -font-face D050000L"
- start Pd from the Menu
- start Pd by double-clicking on a Pd-patch
- remove the "-font-face D050000L" from ~/.pdsettings and
- start Pd from the cmdline with "pd -font-face D050000L"
the latter doesn't seem to care about the "-font-face" flag in .pdsettings. no matter what i put there, always "DejaVu" gets loaded. only from a bash script with the "-noprefs" option, i can try out other fonts with "-font-face", like "Ubuntu Mono", "FreeMono" etc.)
how do you fill the values into ".pdsettings"? manually, or via tje "Startup-flags" in the "Preferences->Startup..." menu?
a known issue [579] with pdsettings is, that the "startup-flags" must not contain quotes and you therefore cannot use font-faces with spaces. e.g. '-font-face "Ubuntu Mono"' won't work via .pdsettings, although running 'pd -font-face "Ubuntu Mono"' from the cmdline will work (in this case the shell (bash,...) will parse the quotes, and Pd will never even see them).
mfgasdr IOhannes
On 09.09.19 12:45, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:
a known issue [579] with pdsettings is, that the "startup-flags" must not contain quotes and you therefore cannot use font-faces with spaces. e.g. '-font-face "Ubuntu Mono"' won't work via .pdsettings, although running 'pd -font-face "Ubuntu Mono"' from the cmdline will work (in this case the shell (bash,...) will parse the quotes, and Pd will never even see them).
mfgasdr IOhannes
for what it's worth, here's a PR that attempts to fix the quoting issue: https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/pull/741
masdr IOhannes
hi, did some more testing on LINUX and it really seems that UBUNTU is the problem here.
i did a fresh install of UBUNTU 19.04 and DEBIAN 10 on my machine. both with XFCE as desktop and nothing else but PD 0.49.3 installed via "apt-get install"
the font rendering difference is huge (see attachment or here)
https://wolke.klingt.org/index.php/s/VRoJ3e6xTpsoKOD
as you can see, in both situations, the same settings are used and the same fonts are loaded at startup. yet in UBUNTU the spacing between characters is much larger (also in PD's console window) than in DEBIAN.
mmmh ...
best
oliver
On Tue, 2019-09-10 at 20:43 +0200, oliver wrote:
hi, did some more testing on LINUX and it really seems that UBUNTU is the problem here.
i did a fresh install of UBUNTU 19.04 and DEBIAN 10 on my machine. both with XFCE as desktop and nothing else but PD 0.49.3 installed via "apt-get install"
the font rendering difference is huge (see attachment or here)
https://wolke.klingt.org/index.php/s/VRoJ3e6xTpsoKOD
as you can see, in both situations, the same settings are used and the same fonts are loaded at startup. yet in UBUNTU the spacing between characters is much larger (also in PD's console window) than in DEBIAN.
Are you by chance using a HiDPI screen?
Two laptops both having Ubuntu 18.04 installed show different results here (both Pd 0.50.0; Tk 8.6.8).
The rendering of your test patch looks similar to your Debian Buster version on my box that has a 15" 1680x1050px monitor. My other box with a 14" 2560x1440px monitor displays the test patch exactly like your Ubuntu 19.04 version.
I got annoyed by this, too, over a year ago, but found a work-around by manually setting the tk scaling to 1.7 in pd-gui.tcl:289. With that value, the rendering of your test patch on my HiDPI box looks exactly the same as your Debian Buster version.
I somewhat got tired from nagging about this issue, especially since I don't feel enabled to help in any way. Those font rendering issues seem really confusing, complicated, and hard to tackle, but they still bother me, because it is not only a matter of appearance, but sometimes even of functionality.
It appears that the HiDPI detection affects the font size in the menu and the font size in the labels of iemguis, but not "patcher" font in objects and messages. However, changing 'tk scaling' in pd-gui.tcl affects _only_ font size in iemgui labels, but not of menus. Patcher font seems "immune" against any environmental influences (which is good), but iemgui label font seems not. I don't care about the menu, it actually makes sense to scale it according to resolution so that appeared size stays the same.
Roman
On Tue, 2019-09-10 at 22:18 +0200, Roman Haefeli wrote:
On Tue, 2019-09-10 at 20:43 +0200, oliver wrote:
the font rendering difference is huge (see attachment or here)
Are you by chance using a HiDPI screen?
Two laptops both having Ubuntu 18.04 installed show different results here (both Pd 0.50.0; Tk 8.6.8).
I just figured out it is not related to the HiDPI detection, not directly at least. Ubuntu 18.04 comes with Gnome and in the display settings scaling is only provided in steps of 100%, 200%, and 300%. 200% is too large, 100% a bit too small, that's why I went for 100% and 'Large Text: enabled' in 'Universal Access'. It's the 'Large Text: enabled' setting that makes Pd menu and iemgui font sizes larger. When I disable that, your test patch looks consistent with your Debian Buster, Windows and macOS version.
XFCE is also based on GTK+, maybe you find a similar setting in your control panel?
Roman
I just figured out it is not related to the HiDPI detection, not directly at least. Ubuntu 18.04 comes with Gnome and in the display settings scaling is only provided in steps of 100%, 200%, and 300%. 200% is too large, 100% a bit too small, that's why I went for 100% and 'Large Text: enabled' in 'Universal Access'. It's the 'Large Text: enabled' setting that makes Pd menu and iemgui font sizes larger. When I disable that, your test patch looks consistent with your Debian Buster, Windows and macOS version.
XFCE is also based on GTK+, maybe you find a similar setting in your control panel?
Roman, thanks a bunch, you really pointed me in the right direction !
the bad guy was "Custom DPI Setting" in the "Settings/Appearance/Fonts" Section of XFCE. This setting overrides the monitor resolution with a custom DPI size that seemingly also distorts the spacing of fonts, at least for PD's fonts.
Disabled it ... now the test patch looks the way it should !
Case (almost) closed ! (at least for me, at least for now)
This probably should be mentioned in PD's README, so people know where to look for possible culprits concerning font issues.
best & mille grazie again !
Oliver
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IOhannes m zmoelnig -
Lucas Cordiviola -
oliver -
Roman Haefeli