Opened 13 years ago

Closed 13 years ago

#39 closed task (fixed)

Decide on default fonts

Reported by: dmik Owned by:
Priority: major Milestone: RC
Component: general Version:
Severity: Keywords:
Cc: Yoda_Java6

Description

Currently, we set the default Java fonts to Helvetica, Courier and Times New Roman (which are always present in OS/2).

However, these fonts are not perfect. They don't contain Unicode glyphs and look really odd w/o anti-aliasing. We may consider choosing different fonts.

Change History (8)

comment:1 Changed 13 years ago by dmik

One option is the DejaVu? family (which is present on modern eCS systems by default), it has much better coverage in Unicode terms but it has several problems, for example the "g" letter goes below the declared character descent line and as a result it gets cut a bit at bottom. It's also not clear what to do if DejaVu? is absent (e.g. an older OS/2 system) -- unfortunately, the Java font selection mechanism (font.properties) isn't flexible enough to be able to specify font substitutions (in case where a given font is completely missing).

Another option is to use Arial, Courier New and Times New Roman from MS Web fonts. But again, we should somehow provide them with the distribution which may create font duplicates...

comment:2 Changed 13 years ago by dmik

Also, we may want to change JDK so that the DEFAULT anti-aliasing setting means "LCD_HRGB". Currently, it's "OFF" on OS/2 and Windows. This results in non-anti-aliased fonts in custom widgets that don't set anti-aliasing mode explicitly. (Note that standard widgets in AWT/Swing set anti-aliasing mode to "HRGB" on OS/2).

Note that the default anti-aliasing mode may be changed using the 'awt.useSystemAAFontSettings' system property. Useful values are 'ON', 'OFF', 'HRGB'.

comment:3 Changed 13 years ago by Yoda_Java6

Cc: Yoda_Java6 added

Since the project name here is "JAVA 6 for eComStation",
I would assume, that any font delivered with eCS 2.0 can
be safely used.

If people wants to use in on ancient OS'es, they will have to install
all the needed features by themselves.

comment:4 Changed 13 years ago by dmik

As I alreaady wrote, DejaVu? which is shipped with eCS 2.0 also has some problems in appearance (probably due to the way how OpenJDK uses Freetype, since I don't remember it showing problems when I was using this family on Linux).

I will also try Liberation fonts.

comment:5 Changed 13 years ago by dmik

Liberation fonts actually look quite good, at least better than Helvetica and DejaVu?. In r231, I created a fontconfig file for it + added instructions for end users on how to activate it.

comment:6 Changed 13 years ago by jojo

Hi Dmitry,

The Liberation font is available as a convenient WPI package, created by Alex Taylor, from Hobbes: http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/h-search.php?sh=1&button=Search&key=liberation

We will likely include Liberation in an upcoming refresh of eComStation 2.

Regards, Joachim

comment:7 Changed 13 years ago by dmik

Okay. Though given that OpenJDK becomes an RPM one day, we will be able to place an automatic dependency on these fonts anyway and thus make them the default.

comment:8 Changed 13 years ago by dmik

Resolution: fixed
Status: newclosed

This is no issue any longer. Created #70 instead.

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