Catastrafont

You know what's kinda fucked up? Everytime I come back to a Windows machine after using Linux for a stretch, I always think to myself, "Oh yea! Now I remember that the entire Internet doesn't look like DejaVu Sans".

I don't even know where to start when it comes to fonts. Perhaps a quick, simple summary of the current landscape would do us well.

First, you have the X server side fonts. These are the ones that you specify paths for in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Also, once upon a time, you could run a separate X font server, so that you could freeze all your network's X servers by crashing the font server.Sweet! Super useful. I mean, as an admin, you often need automated shutdown of all your machines right? Finally, there were two separate extensions that let you load in truetype fonts into your X server or your font server. Their were based on the same library, but their configuration files had different syntax and they exposed different features. Hurray for choice! Still with me?

Along comes a second font configuration system, based on fontconfig. I'll get to fontconfig later, but because we all love to have choices in our GUI toolkits, you've ended up with the Qt/fontconfig/freetype clusterfuck, and the GTK/fontconfig/cairo/pango/freetype clusterfuck. Now freetype is the thing that actually does the rasterizing, and it can support all kinds of fonts, including bdf and pcf fonts that are old-style server-side fonts. Except that these fonts are disabled by default on most new distributions. Got that?

Now we got multiple toolkits using the font system in different ways so, as well as the old-school server side fonts, so we get a nice collection of apps that have different font settings and inconsistent behavior. Furthermore, because BDF and PCF fonts are disabled by default, the (arguably) greatest contributions to the programming world in terms of free fonts, the "misc-fixed" series, are unavailable in newer apps. Hurray for building upon the past!

Oh but wait, fonts on Linux are named different from Windows fonts, and most webpages only specify fonts for Windows and Mac. So lets throw in layers and layers of font naming aliases that are more tangled than Paris Hilton's semen-encrusted hair after her cameo in a Brazilian vomit porn tape.

I'm not even close to done yet.

Now you see, fontconfig is this really powerful system. Not only are it's config files in XML, it's also a half-baked programming language (please, please, someone show me that it's turing complete). So not only do the config files look like angle-bracket diarrhea, you'd better just stay away unless you understand basic programming. Go usability! Don't believe me? just take a look at your /etc/fonts directory and tell me what the fuck is going on there.

I'd like to examine the reasoning here. People usually use programming language-style constructs for flexibility and human readability. Usually you embed some existing language runtime so that you don't have to write the parser. Others can maybe also embed the same runtime to understand your files, because otherwise it's really hard to handle all the edge-cases of a full programming language. On the other hand, XML is used so that others can parse your files and easily manipulate them, often while sacrificing human readability.

So let's put them together. Brilliant! You get a config file that's a bitch to type manually, is easily parse-able, but impossible to understand by other programs! Really, guys, that's impressive. You've managed to combine the white male and the black male and end up with a double-anus'ed zebra monster that shits all over itself.

I suppose you thought I was finally done, didn't you? On top of this growing shit-pile, now you've got different ways to render your font.

Like choices? well you've got tons here. No antialiasing, grayscale antialiasing, subpixel antialiasing. BGR, RGB, VBGR, VRGB. No hinting, slight hinting, medium hinting (which, if you actually look at the code, does the same thing as full hinting, but you know more options the better right?) and full hinting.

Oh except these things do something different based on whether you have freetype's bytecode interpreter turned on, or whether you have the newest LCD filtering patches. And don't go use those freetard distros, otherwise you're in for a weekend of recompiling packages to get these awesome new features that other platforms have had for years and years.

The best part of this whole damn thing is that you can spend hours and hours navigating this configuration space, and chances are, all your fonts except DejaVu Sans, Mono, and Serif, will still look like ass. And don't fucking tell me about msttcorefonts. Freetype can't render them worth shit, except for in the non-antialiased mode, and even then they sometimes get the spacing wrong. And you know, 1995-era font rendering is so awesome.

Want to add a new font? Have fun restarting all your apps, and even sometimes your entire desktop session. Want to remove a font? You better shutdown X, cuz things can get kinda wonky there too.

You just can't win. I fought the good fight, and got fucked in all orifices, repeatedly. I respectfully suggest that you don't try this at home.

But choice is great, isn't it? I mean who would have known there was so much fun you could have with fonts. I'm sure all these new luser converts are going to have a great time.

And I can already hear it, "who really needs more than a few basic fonts anyways," right?