[plug] Fonts for LCD monitor

[Adam Ashley]

On Fri, 2006-01-13 at 17:28 +0800, Mike Holland wrote:
> Adam Ashley wrote:
> > I've not found any consistency to manfacturers ordering of subpixels.
> > Just a case of trying each one till you find what looks best. Also if a
> > system is switched from a CRT to an LCD there is a good chance subpixel
> > ordering isnt switched on at all which will result in bad looking fonts.
> 
> Adam,
> That could be me. I've just switched to LCD, and sub-pixel smoothing was
> off until now. Using a magnifying glass (getting old) I see it is RGB.
> So I set that, but can barely tell the difference. Yes, LCDs look awful
> without any anti-aliasing, but should the sub-pixel make a big 
> difference?   Maybe its my font?   Gnome is using the
> "sans serif" system font, which looks good to me on LCD. Firefox is 
> similar. What fonts do you suggest?
>     Is it better to be downloading a non-free font? (or copying from XP?)
> The display is using VGA, but does a very nice job of mapping the pixels.
> 
> 

In my experience it can make a big difference to the read ability of the
fonts but id does tend to be a very subjective thing. Using the fonts
from windows will actually give a worse result. To get the best results
you need to use a font that was designed to give the best results with
the X windows font rendering system, in most cases on linux distros this
is freetype. Bitstream Vera is one such font set. Vera tends to look
very good on freetype systems but pretty crap on windows, and vice versa
is also true. Verada that comes with windows looks good on windows but
tends to be rather chunky under freetype.

But it is a very subjective subject and no two people will come to the
same conclusion, all anyone can do is give recommendations on what works
for them and you have to try them out and figure out whats best for you.

Adam