[ltp] Help with Helvetica (wonderful in GTK1; gruesome in GTK2)

[Richard Neill]

Dear All,

I wonder whether anyone has a solution to getting really good fonts on 
Firefox 1.5? Personally, I can't get it to be anywhere near as good as 
the GTK1-based Mozilla-suite.

Here are some pngs to illustrate my point (30kB):
   http://81.187.40.226/fonts_example.tgz
The files are named:

(1) Mozilla1.7.12_GTK1.part.png
(2) Firefox1.5.1_GTK2_oldfonts.part.png
(3) Firefox1.5.1_GTK2_newfonts.part.png

and are of exactly the same bit of webpage, in respectively:

(1) Mozilla 1.7.12 (mozilla.org binary), in font
     adobe-helvetica-iso8859-1

(2) Firefox1.5.1 (mozilla.org binary) in what should be the same font, 
now known just as Helvetica.
  [I definitely haven't got Microsoft's Helvetica installed]

(3) Firefox1.5.1, this time using Microsoft Verdana.


(1) is stunningly clear and perfect to read. It also has fabulous itallics.

(2) is gruesome!

(3) is tolerable, but not nearly as good.


I can get Helvetica (and the other 100dpi fonts) to look good in KDE, 
just not in GTK2. Also, the Microsoft corefonts are installed and 
working. But I have never found a match for the (1) in terms of clarity.


So, has anyone found out how to make GTK2 applications use the 
old-fashioned fonts without messing them up?  Extra bonus points for 
getting GTK2 to antialias but *only* above 15 point.


Thanks very much for your help,


Richard


-- 
rn214@hermes.cam.ac.uk  **  http://www.richardneill.org
Richard Neill, Trinity College, Cambridge, CB21TQ, U.K.