[PLUG] Libertine fonts - common windows fonts replacement

[श्रीधर नारायण दैठणकर]

On Wednesday 25 Jun 2008 19:46:57 Chetan S wrote:
> I for one hate installing msttcorefonts and turning on the BCI in freetype.

Hmm.. I think I agree.

> Part of the problem - In linux the deja vu and bitstream fonts aren't
> correct replacement for arial / times new roman etc.
> They are placeholders, sure, but not correct from typographical
> perspective.

I don't know typography but I can attest this. I had MS fonts installed for 
few years but one day I erased them and used only deja vu/bitstream vera and 
my desktop is lot more consistent and beautiful again. (May be it is about 
BCI, dunno). 

And I positively think that font rendering on my KDE desktop is lot more 
superior than any windows desktop I have seen although much of that goes to 
clean definition of point on X. In X, bumping resolution has no effect on 
size of letter, i.e. it works as expected. Windows is stuck with either 96 
dpi or 120 dpi. So lot of people with big monitors stick with 1024x768 or the 
letters are too small to read :)

I have written tons of formal documentation in word using times new roman and 
arial. Now whenever I sumbit a print copy of an .odt file with deja 
vu/bitstream vera, I am invariably asked what font it is and how much better 
it looks. My lawyer wife tells me the same and she handles lot more prints 
than I do.

> Now check out the Libertine fonts available from RedHat.  These fonts
> are a superior substitute to windows special fonts like Arial and
> Times New roman.
> Oh and they should be available in your fav distro by now.

I think it already does :) but I am sure trying this. Thanks for pointing it 
out. The fonts are available in archlinux  repo. :)

> The real upside of this -- better and correct layouts in webpages,
> documents from windows world that contain Arial fonts etc.
> I saw the webpages looked more like what they look like in windows + FF

I think this is useless to me because I have set my minimum font size to 11 to 
spare my eyes. And I am now used to webpages misaligned all the time. Funny 
how few pages use a proper css. If it works better, all the more reason to 
joy.

-- 
Shridhar