Re: Very slim Desktop Manager

On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:13:08 +0100
NN_il_Confusionario <pinkof.pallus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The first evident part of the problem is that almost all existing
fonts (even the ones which I have seen on Microsoft or Apple
machines) are quite horrible for my eyes, and at any rate none of
them is sufficiently similar to the good old console font.

Hm, the console font has changed over the years. I was thinking it has
to do with which graphics card you are using, but I don't know.

The only
font i have found with an acceptable shape for me is the vga font
from xfonts-dosemu or something like this, but (a) if I recall
correctly, it does not have all the needed gliphs for iso-1/iso-15
(even less for unicode, but this is not a problem for me); (b) when X
has a resolution better than 640x480, then the font becomes too small
for my eyes (and scaling the font does not geve good results).

Yeah, I remember that font! I also tried to use it for xterm or so, but
afair it didn't have Umlaute and/or other characters I needed.

Isn't it possible to convert/use the console font for X11?

Quite possibly the biggest part of the problem is in my eyes, but I
suspect that it is not only this. If I recall corectly, more than 10
years ago I even tried to take a console font, input it in a program
to "translate" it in a font for X, and then use the resulting X font.
The result was a complete failure.

Oh ... It's not only your eyes, I somewhat have the same problem to
find fonts that are easy to read, and I make them relatively large
--- many websites get messed up because they are so poorly designed
that they can't even deal with a larger font size. But I need things to
be easily readable --- if they are not, it's very straining, and I
change it.

The display device is very important, though. I used to buy used CRTs,
19--24"; and 19" is pretty small. But the last one I had was an Eizo,
the first and only 19" monitor I've seen on which I could use 1600x1200,
and it was better than the same resolution on a 24" monitor from
another manufacturer. Eizo is expensive, but used, they were all
about the same price. --- Now I have a TFT, it's too small, it cannot
display 1600x1200, and it's not very good. I need something better. I'm
still undecided if I like CRTs or TFTs better, but I've seen TFTs I
would prefer any time over a CRT ...

Another unpleasant thing is that I am not able to configure X to have
the same resolution, brightness/contrast and refresh rate as the
console.

That is partly hardware. Black and white --- like white font on a black
background on the console --- is black and white, but with higher
resolutions, higher frequencies are involved. CRTs of not so good
quality can have problems with that. The graphics card is another
factor. There is, for example, a night and day difference between a
NVIDA 5200 and a 7800GFX: The 5200 didn't get the outlines of the
letters sharp, afaik that's a problem with how well they can
handle higher frequencies. In the past, the Matrox G400 and G200 were
known for their ability to display cleaner fonts than other cards ...

Even when I tried modeline generators (there were also good
ones online) and xvidtune, a switch in brightness at least,

It's the hardware what is responsible for the switch in
brightness/contrast. Did you try to use gamma correction to make up for
it?

but almost
always also a small switch in frequencies, appares from the console to
startx. Is it the hardware which does not permit the same settings for
text and graphic modes?

That's a good question ... With CRTs, it was always a big switch in
frequencies; with the TFT, it isn't so noticeable. But unlike a CRT, the
frame rate on TFTs is fixed.

And I would really like to have the console font for X11. All the
others are not as easy to read. Why shouldn't that be possible?


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