Terminator

Non-AA Fonts

Asked by Got Slack

My favourite font is ProggyTinyTTSZ. This is a very small font. In mlterm, I can tell it to use the XFT engine and disable anti aliasing. This results in the font rendering with crisp edges. In Terminator, I don't see a way of disabling anti-aliasing. Anti-aliasing ProggyTinyTTSZ results in a poorer quality font, so, I would like Terminator to render this font (all fonts will do, as I only plan on using this one) not anti-aliased.

I realise that this may be an X setting outside of Terminator, or a compilation option, but I don't know how to do it.

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Answered
For:
Terminator Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Chris Jones (cmsj) said : 		#1

We just ask the VTE widget to use a font name/size available to the fontconfig library which it then renders with freetype. I don't think it is able to fall back to Xft

Revision history for this message
Got Slack (i-launchpad2347820-rainslide-net) said : 		#2

I wonder if there's a way I can tell fontconfig to always render this font not anti-aliased (aliased)... TIme for me to do some investigating!

Revision history for this message
Got Slack (i-launchpad2347820-rainslide-net) said : 		#3

Accomplished by cunning edit of .fontconfig.

Revision history for this message
Got Slack (i-launchpad2347820-rainslide-net) said : 		#4

I just noticed that there is an -A (--antialias) flag to vte (which actually disables anti-aliasing), so perhaps there could be an easy way for Terminator to disable anti-aliasing in a future version, after all...

Revision history for this message
Chris Jones (cmsj) said : 		#5

Got Slack: VTE is a library for terminal widgets, not a program in-and-of-itself, where are you seeing this flag?

Revision history for this message
Chris Jones (cmsj) said : 		#6
Revision history for this message
Got Slack (i-launchpad2347820-rainslide-net) said : 		#7

The Slackware vte package contains a sample implementation of it. From the package note:

vte: VTE is a terminal emulator widget for use with GTK+. This package
vte: contains the VTE library and development files and a sample
vte: implementation (vte).

The implementation is a binary that pops up a terminal. It's --help shows a load of options, one of which is -A.

Revision history for this message
Skaperen (skaperen) said : 		#8

Can you tell us what the cunning edit of .fontconfig is, or docs that tell the format?

A nice NO-AA font and terminal emulation would let me get off of my ancient text mode system that uses SVGATextMode and an ancient video card. I'm seeing sufficient speed these days to do most of my shell work through X and a TE but these AA fonts are still annoying.

Revision history for this message
Chris Jones (cmsj) said : 		#9

Skaperen: After seeing Got Slack's reply I've added a config option to terminator to disable AA. It's in trunk now and will be in the next release.

Revision history for this message
Got Slack (i-launchpad2347820-rainslide-net) said : 		#10

Good news, Mr. Jones!

The edit was actually to ~/.fonts.conf:

 <match target="font">
  <test name="family" qual="any">
   <string>ProggyTinyTTSZ</string>
  </test>
  <edit mode="assign" name="antialias">
   <bool>false</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>

Can you help with this problem?

Provide an answer of your own, or ask Got Slack for more information if necessary.

To post a message you must log in.