Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

[Christoph Groth]

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Hello,

I’m having some trouble trying to set up a pleasant font after upgrading
to Emacs 28.  Would someone be so kind to help?

For many years I was happily using the “Terminus” bitmap font in Emacs
and terminal windows on “regular density” displays.  On “HiDPI” displays
I switched to vector fonts, but for low density displays I preferred the
crisp Terminus.

I recently upgraded Emacs from 27.1 to 28.2 as part of upgrading to the
new Debian stable and this broke my font setup.  I have something like
the following in my emacs config.

(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "Terminus-12"))

With Emacs 28.2 the default font is now much too small (I’m not even
sure whether it’s still Terminus).  It is possible to choose Terminus
with M-x menu-set-font, but this shows the same tiny font independently
of the chosen size.

I noticed the following entry in NEWS:

> ** The Cairo graphics library is now used by default if present.
> '--with-cairo' is now the default, if the appropriate development
> files are found by 'configure'.  Building with Cairo is known to cause
> some problems with bitmap fonts.  This may require you to adjust your
> font settings, or to build with Xft support instead.

Unfortunately, this is not very specific.  Do “some problems” mean that
fonts like Terminus no longer work and that I have to recompile Emacs if
I want to use them, or is there some workaround?  I tried to find one,
but so far without success.

----------------------------------------------------------------

So, OK, I thought I’d go with the time and switch to a vector font on
low-density displays as well.  I like how Fira Code Light looks in
xfce4-terminal.

I managed to set it to the size I like through

(add-to-list
 'default-frame-alist
 '(font . "-CTDB-Fira Code-light-normal-normal-*-14-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1"))

(Interestingly, I am not able to obtain this size by simply using “Fira
Code-N”.  The font is either too small or too large!)

Anyway, while with the above the vertical line spacing matches the one in
xfce4-terminal, the horizontal inter-character distance is somewhat
wider.  Is there a way to render the font like in xfce4-terminal?

(I believe that this issue could be related to kerning being handled
differently by Emacs/Cairo, but I did not manage to find any information
on how to adjust it.)

For reference:

----------------------------------------------------------------
(frame-parameter nil 'font-backend)
(ftcrhb x)
system-configuration-features
"ACL CAIRO DBUS FREETYPE GIF GLIB GMP GNUTLS GPM GSETTINGS HARFBUZZ JPEG JSON LCMS2 LIBOTF LIBSELINUX LIBSYSTEMD LIBXML2 M17N_FLT MODULES NATIVE_COMP NOTIFY INOTIFY PDUMPER PNG RSVG SECCOMP SOUND THREADS TIFF TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS X11 XDBE XIM XPM GTK3 ZLIB"
----------------------------------------------------------------

My ~/.Xresources contains

----------------------------------------------------------------
Xft.antialias: 0
Xft.hinting: 0
Xft.hintstyle: hintfull
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
Xft.rgba: rgb
----------------------------------------------------------------

Cheers
Christoph

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Re: Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Christoph Groth <christoph@grothesque.org>
> Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2023 15:15:24 +0200
> 
> I recently upgraded Emacs from 27.1 to 28.2 as part of upgrading to the
> new Debian stable and this broke my font setup.  I have something like
> the following in my emacs config.
> 
> (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "Terminus-12"))
> 
> With Emacs 28.2 the default font is now much too small (I’m not even
> sure whether it’s still Terminus).  It is possible to choose Terminus
> with M-x menu-set-font, but this shows the same tiny font independently
> of the chosen size.
> 
> I noticed the following entry in NEWS:
> 
> > ** The Cairo graphics library is now used by default if present.
> > '--with-cairo' is now the default, if the appropriate development
> > files are found by 'configure'.  Building with Cairo is known to cause
> > some problems with bitmap fonts.  This may require you to adjust your
> > font settings, or to build with Xft support instead.
> 
> Unfortunately, this is not very specific.  Do “some problems” mean that
> fonts like Terminus no longer work and that I have to recompile Emacs if
> I want to use them, or is there some workaround?  I tried to find one,
> but so far without success.

Basically, Cairo dropped support for bitmap fonts.  So I'd expect them
not to work at all in an Emacs built with Cairo.

Re: Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

[PierGianLuca]

I've happily used the DejaVu Sans Mono for many years, with

(set-face-attribute 'default nil :font "DejaVu Sans Mono")
(set-face-attribute 'default nil :height 94)

on my hi-dpi laptop and on non-hidpi laptops. It works seamlessly. Maybe Terminus is not monospaced though. I suppose the other proportional DejaVu fonts would work as well

https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/

Cheers,
Luca


On 230724 15:15, Christoph Groth wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I’m having some trouble trying to set up a pleasant font after upgrading
> to Emacs 28.  Would someone be so kind to help?
> 
> For many years I was happily using the “Terminus” bitmap font in Emacs
> and terminal windows on “regular density” displays.  On “HiDPI” displays
> I switched to vector fonts, but for low density displays I preferred the
> crisp Terminus.
> 
> I recently upgraded Emacs from 27.1 to 28.2 as part of upgrading to the
> new Debian stable and this broke my font setup.  I have something like
> the following in my emacs config.
> 
> (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "Terminus-12"))
> 
> With Emacs 28.2 the default font is now much too small (I’m not even
> sure whether it’s still Terminus).  It is possible to choose Terminus
> with M-x menu-set-font, but this shows the same tiny font independently
> of the chosen size.
> 
> I noticed the following entry in NEWS:
> 
>> ** The Cairo graphics library is now used by default if present.
>> '--with-cairo' is now the default, if the appropriate development
>> files are found by 'configure'.  Building with Cairo is known to cause
>> some problems with bitmap fonts.  This may require you to adjust your
>> font settings, or to build with Xft support instead.
> 
> Unfortunately, this is not very specific.  Do “some problems” mean that
> fonts like Terminus no longer work and that I have to recompile Emacs if
> I want to use them, or is there some workaround?  I tried to find one,
> but so far without success.
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> So, OK, I thought I’d go with the time and switch to a vector font on
> low-density displays as well.  I like how Fira Code Light looks in
> xfce4-terminal.
> 
> I managed to set it to the size I like through
> 
> (add-to-list
>   'default-frame-alist
>   '(font . "-CTDB-Fira Code-light-normal-normal-*-14-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1"))
> 
> (Interestingly, I am not able to obtain this size by simply using “Fira
> Code-N”.  The font is either too small or too large!)
> 
> Anyway, while with the above the vertical line spacing matches the one in
> xfce4-terminal, the horizontal inter-character distance is somewhat
> wider.  Is there a way to render the font like in xfce4-terminal?
> 
> (I believe that this issue could be related to kerning being handled
> differently by Emacs/Cairo, but I did not manage to find any information
> on how to adjust it.)
> 
> For reference:
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> (frame-parameter nil 'font-backend)
> (ftcrhb x)
> system-configuration-features
> "ACL CAIRO DBUS FREETYPE GIF GLIB GMP GNUTLS GPM GSETTINGS HARFBUZZ JPEG JSON LCMS2 LIBOTF LIBSELINUX LIBSYSTEMD LIBXML2 M17N_FLT MODULES NATIVE_COMP NOTIFY INOTIFY PDUMPER PNG RSVG SECCOMP SOUND THREADS TIFF TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS X11 XDBE XIM XPM GTK3 ZLIB"
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> My ~/.Xresources contains
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Xft.antialias: 0
> Xft.hinting: 0
> Xft.hintstyle: hintfull
> Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
> Xft.rgba: rgb
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Cheers
> Christoph

Re: Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

[Hongyi Zhao]

On Mon, Jul 24, 2023 at 9:57 PM PierGianLuca <luca@magnaspesmeretrix.org> wrote:
>
> I've happily used the DejaVu Sans Mono for many years, with
>
> (set-face-attribute 'default nil :font "DejaVu Sans Mono")
> (set-face-attribute 'default nil :height 94)
>
> on my hi-dpi laptop and on non-hidpi laptops. It works seamlessly. Maybe Terminus is not monospaced though. I suppose the other proportional DejaVu fonts would work as well
>
> https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/

An alternative is the following one:

https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/tree/master/patched-fonts/DejaVuSansMono

See the related fonts installed on my OS:

werner@X10DAi:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:    Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS
Release:    22.04
Codename:    jammy
werner@X10DAi:~$ fc-list -b |grep -i 'family:.*dejavu'
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Mono"(s)
    family: "DejaVuSansMono Nerd Font Mono"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s) "DejaVu Sans Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVuSansMono NF"(s)
    family: "DejaVuSansMono Nerd Font"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s) "DejaVu Sans Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Mono"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s)
    family: "DejaVuSansMono NF"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s)
    family: "DejaVuSansMono Nerd Font"(s)
    family: "DejaVuSansMono Nerd Font Mono"(s)
    family: "DejaVuSansMono NF"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVuSansMono Nerd Font Mono"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Mono"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s) "DejaVu Sans Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif"(s) "DejaVu Serif Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif"(s) "DejaVu Serif Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVuSansMono NF"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s) "DejaVu Sans Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Mono"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Math TeX Gyre"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s)
    family: "TeX Gyre DejaVu Math"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif"(s) "DejaVu Serif Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Light"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Mono"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Mono"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif"(s)
    family: "DejaVuSansMono Nerd Font Mono"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans"(s) "DejaVu Sans Light"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif"(s)
    family: "DejaVuSansMono Nerd Font"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Mono"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif"(s) "DejaVu Serif Condensed"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Mono"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Mono"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Sans Mono"(s)
    family: "DejaVu Serif"(s)
    family: "DejaVuSansMono Nerd Font"(s)


And below is my init.el settings:

(custom-set-faces
 ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
 ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
 ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
 ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
 '(default ((t (:family "DejaVuSansMono Nerd Font Mono" :foundry
"PfEd" :slant normal :weight normal :height 160 :width normal)))))

> Cheers,
> Luca

Best,
Zhao

>
> On 230724 15:15, Christoph Groth wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I’m having some trouble trying to set up a pleasant font after upgrading
> > to Emacs 28.  Would someone be so kind to help?
> >
> > For many years I was happily using the “Terminus” bitmap font in Emacs
> > and terminal windows on “regular density” displays.  On “HiDPI” displays
> > I switched to vector fonts, but for low density displays I preferred the
> > crisp Terminus.
> >
> > I recently upgraded Emacs from 27.1 to 28.2 as part of upgrading to the
> > new Debian stable and this broke my font setup.  I have something like
> > the following in my emacs config.
> >
> > (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "Terminus-12"))
> >
> > With Emacs 28.2 the default font is now much too small (I’m not even
> > sure whether it’s still Terminus).  It is possible to choose Terminus
> > with M-x menu-set-font, but this shows the same tiny font independently
> > of the chosen size.
> >
> > I noticed the following entry in NEWS:
> >
> >> ** The Cairo graphics library is now used by default if present.
> >> '--with-cairo' is now the default, if the appropriate development
> >> files are found by 'configure'.  Building with Cairo is known to cause
> >> some problems with bitmap fonts.  This may require you to adjust your
> >> font settings, or to build with Xft support instead.
> >
> > Unfortunately, this is not very specific.  Do “some problems” mean that
> > fonts like Terminus no longer work and that I have to recompile Emacs if
> > I want to use them, or is there some workaround?  I tried to find one,
> > but so far without success.
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > So, OK, I thought I’d go with the time and switch to a vector font on
> > low-density displays as well.  I like how Fira Code Light looks in
> > xfce4-terminal.
> >
> > I managed to set it to the size I like through
> >
> > (add-to-list
> >   'default-frame-alist
> >   '(font . "-CTDB-Fira Code-light-normal-normal-*-14-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1"))
> >
> > (Interestingly, I am not able to obtain this size by simply using “Fira
> > Code-N”.  The font is either too small or too large!)
> >
> > Anyway, while with the above the vertical line spacing matches the one in
> > xfce4-terminal, the horizontal inter-character distance is somewhat
> > wider.  Is there a way to render the font like in xfce4-terminal?
> >
> > (I believe that this issue could be related to kerning being handled
> > differently by Emacs/Cairo, but I did not manage to find any information
> > on how to adjust it.)
> >
> > For reference:
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------
> > (frame-parameter nil 'font-backend)
> > (ftcrhb x)
> > system-configuration-features
> > "ACL CAIRO DBUS FREETYPE GIF GLIB GMP GNUTLS GPM GSETTINGS HARFBUZZ JPEG JSON LCMS2 LIBOTF LIBSELINUX LIBSYSTEMD LIBXML2 M17N_FLT MODULES NATIVE_COMP NOTIFY INOTIFY PDUMPER PNG RSVG SECCOMP SOUND THREADS TIFF TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS X11 XDBE XIM XPM GTK3 ZLIB"
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > My ~/.Xresources contains
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------
> > Xft.antialias: 0
> > Xft.hinting: 0
> > Xft.hintstyle: hintfull
> > Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
> > Xft.rgba: rgb
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Cheers
> > Christoph

Re: Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

[Christoph Groth]

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Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: Christoph Groth <christoph@grothesque.org>
> > Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2023 15:15:24 +0200
> > 
> > I noticed the following entry in NEWS:
> > 
> > > ** The Cairo graphics library is now used by default if present.
> > > '--with-cairo' is now the default, if the appropriate development
> > > files are found by 'configure'.  Building with Cairo is known to
> > > cause some problems with bitmap fonts.  This may require you to
> > > adjust your font settings, or to build with Xft support instead.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, this is not very specific.  Do “some problems” mean
> > that fonts like Terminus no longer work and that I have to recompile
> > Emacs if I want to use them, or is there some workaround?  I tried
> > to find one, but so far without success.
> 
> Basically, Cairo dropped support for bitmap fonts.  So I'd expect them
> not to work at all in an Emacs built with Cairo.

Thanks for the quick clarification!  Perhaps that NEWS entry could be
reformulated to be more categorical?  “Some problems” sounded to me like
there could be ways to work around the problem, and I wasted too much
time trying to find one.  (As strange as it sounds, after staring at
Terminus for a couple of hours on most days for many years I grew
attached to it...)

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Re: Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

[Robert Pluim]

>>>>> On Mon, 24 Jul 2023 17:28:52 +0200, Christoph Groth <christoph@grothesque.org> said:

    Christoph> Thanks for the quick clarification!  Perhaps that NEWS entry could be
    Christoph> reformulated to be more categorical?  “Some problems” sounded to me like
    Christoph> there could be ways to work around the problem, and I wasted too much
    Christoph> time trying to find one.  (As strange as it sounds, after staring at
    Christoph> Terminus for a couple of hours on most days for many years I grew
    Christoph> attached to it...)

This is what it originally said. We canʼt change it now, emacs-28 is
released (and 29 is around the corner).

    ** The Cairo graphics library is now used by default if present.
    '--with-cairo' is now the default, if the appropriate development files
    are found by 'configure'.  Note that building with Cairo means using
    Pango instead of libXFT for font support.  Since Pango 1.44 has
    removed support for bitmapped fonts, this may require you to adjust
    your font settings.


Robert
-- 

Re: Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

[Christoph Groth]

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PierGianLuca wrote:

> I've happily used the DejaVu Sans Mono for many years, with
> 
> (set-face-attribute 'default nil :font "DejaVu Sans Mono")
> (set-face-attribute 'default nil :height 94)

Curiously, DejaVu Sans is rendered in the same width both by Emacs 28.2
and xfce4-terminal.  Would be interesting to know what’s the issue with
Fira Code...

Actually, DejaVu might be a better alternative to Terminus after all.
It exists in a proportional variant as well and as such buffers that mix
proporional and monospaced fonts look more harmonical.

Thanks
Christoph

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Re: Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Christoph Groth <christoph@grothesque.org>
> Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2023 17:28:52 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > 
> > Basically, Cairo dropped support for bitmap fonts.  So I'd expect them
> > not to work at all in an Emacs built with Cairo.
> 
> Thanks for the quick clarification!  Perhaps that NEWS entry could be
> reformulated to be more categorical?  “Some problems” sounded to me like
> there could be ways to work around the problem, and I wasted too much
> time trying to find one.  (As strange as it sounds, after staring at
> Terminus for a couple of hours on most days for many years I grew
> attached to it...)

We actually said that, but in NEWS shipped with Emacs 27:

  ** The configure option '--with-cairo' is no longer experimental.
  This builds Emacs with Cairo drawing, and supports built-in printing
  when Emacs is built with GTK+.  Some severe bugs in this build were
  fixed, and we can therefore offer this to users without caveats.  Note
  that building with Cairo enabled results in using Pango instead of
  libXft for font support, and that Pango 1.44 has removed support for
  bitmapped fonts.

Re: Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

[PierGianLuca]

On 230724 18:10, Christoph Groth wrote:

> Actually, DejaVu might be a better alternative to Terminus after all.
> It exists in a proportional variant as well and as such buffers that mix
> proporional and monospaced fonts look more harmonical.

Indeed. It also has italics, bold, and bold-italics variants, which are neatly used by Emacs's font-lock. I tried several other (mono)fonts over the years, but in the end have always come back to this one because of some or  other deficiency in the other fonts.

It's sad that the DejaVu Fonts project has been abandoned.

Cheers,
Luca

Re: Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

[Manuel Giraud via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Christoph Groth <christoph@grothesque.org> writes:

> Hello,
>
> I’m having some trouble trying to set up a pleasant font after upgrading
> to Emacs 28.  Would someone be so kind to help?
>
> For many years I was happily using the “Terminus” bitmap font in Emacs
> and terminal windows on “regular density” displays.  On “HiDPI” displays
> I switched to vector fonts, but for low density displays I preferred the
> crisp Terminus.
>
> I recently upgraded Emacs from 27.1 to 28.2 as part of upgrading to the
> new Debian stable and this broke my font setup.  I have something like
> the following in my emacs config.
>
> (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "Terminus-12"))
>
> With Emacs 28.2 the default font is now much too small (I’m not even
> sure whether it’s still Terminus).  It is possible to choose Terminus
> with M-x menu-set-font, but this shows the same tiny font independently
> of the chosen size.

Hi,

FWIW, I'm still on "LoDPi" displays and I'm too using a bitmap font
(uw-ttyp0 for me).  I' running current (bleeding edge) Emacs with cairo
and my font are correct.  I do not use 'default-frame-alist but I'm
setting font with: (set-frame-font "Terminus-16") for instance.  Could
you try it?

To see (among other things) the font used font a character, you could
type 'C-u C-x =' on said character.
-- 
Manuel Giraud

Re: Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

[Christoph Groth]

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Manuel Giraud wrote:
> Christoph Groth <christoph@grothesque.org> writes:
> 
> > With Emacs 28.2 the default font is now much too small (I’m not even
> > sure whether it’s still Terminus).  It is possible to choose
> > Terminus with M-x menu-set-font, but this shows the same tiny font
> > independently of the chosen size.
> 
> FWIW, I'm still on "LoDPi" displays and I'm too using a bitmap font
> (uw-ttyp0 for me).  I' running current (bleeding edge) Emacs with
> cairo and my font are correct.  I do not use 'default-frame-alist but
> I'm setting font with: (set-frame-font "Terminus-16") for instance.
> Could you try it?
> 
> To see (among other things) the font used font a character, you could
> type 'C-u C-x =' on said character.

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion.  As said, I’m running Emacs 28.2 from Debian
stable.  When I execute (set-frame-font "Terminus-16") the effect is the
same as choosing Terminus through M-x menu-set-font: the default face
changes into a small monospace font, independently of the actually
requested size.

Using C-u C-x = provides:

ftcrhb:-PfEd-Terminus-normal-normal-normal-*-12-*-*-*-c-*-iso10646-1 (#x33)

I find this strange, because it seems that a bitmap font can be
displayed after all, but only in one fixed size.

Still, as far as I am concerned I have made peace with the switch to
DejaVu Sans... (Which, I hear, is now superseded by the Noto family of
fonts, but hey, one step at a time.)

Cheers
Christoph

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Re: Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

[PierGianLuca]

Take a look at the IBM Plex family too:

https://github.com/IBM/plex

it looks very interesting.

Cheers,
Luca

On 230724 15:15, Christoph Groth wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I’m having some trouble trying to set up a pleasant font after upgrading
> to Emacs 28.  Would someone be so kind to help?
> 
> For many years I was happily using the “Terminus” bitmap font in Emacs
> and terminal windows on “regular density” displays.  On “HiDPI” displays
> I switched to vector fonts, but for low density displays I preferred the
> crisp Terminus.
> 
> I recently upgraded Emacs from 27.1 to 28.2 as part of upgrading to the
> new Debian stable and this broke my font setup.  I have something like
> the following in my emacs config.
> 
> (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "Terminus-12"))
> 
> With Emacs 28.2 the default font is now much too small (I’m not even
> sure whether it’s still Terminus).  It is possible to choose Terminus
> with M-x menu-set-font, but this shows the same tiny font independently
> of the chosen size.
> 
> I noticed the following entry in NEWS:
> 
>> ** The Cairo graphics library is now used by default if present.
>> '--with-cairo' is now the default, if the appropriate development
>> files are found by 'configure'.  Building with Cairo is known to cause
>> some problems with bitmap fonts.  This may require you to adjust your
>> font settings, or to build with Xft support instead.
> 
> Unfortunately, this is not very specific.  Do “some problems” mean that
> fonts like Terminus no longer work and that I have to recompile Emacs if
> I want to use them, or is there some workaround?  I tried to find one,
> but so far without success.
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> So, OK, I thought I’d go with the time and switch to a vector font on
> low-density displays as well.  I like how Fira Code Light looks in
> xfce4-terminal.
> 
> I managed to set it to the size I like through
> 
> (add-to-list
>   'default-frame-alist
>   '(font . "-CTDB-Fira Code-light-normal-normal-*-14-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1"))
> 
> (Interestingly, I am not able to obtain this size by simply using “Fira
> Code-N”.  The font is either too small or too large!)
> 
> Anyway, while with the above the vertical line spacing matches the one in
> xfce4-terminal, the horizontal inter-character distance is somewhat
> wider.  Is there a way to render the font like in xfce4-terminal?
> 
> (I believe that this issue could be related to kerning being handled
> differently by Emacs/Cairo, but I did not manage to find any information
> on how to adjust it.)
> 
> For reference:
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> (frame-parameter nil 'font-backend)
> (ftcrhb x)
> system-configuration-features
> "ACL CAIRO DBUS FREETYPE GIF GLIB GMP GNUTLS GPM GSETTINGS HARFBUZZ JPEG JSON LCMS2 LIBOTF LIBSELINUX LIBSYSTEMD LIBXML2 M17N_FLT MODULES NATIVE_COMP NOTIFY INOTIFY PDUMPER PNG RSVG SECCOMP SOUND THREADS TIFF TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS X11 XDBE XIM XPM GTK3 ZLIB"
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> My ~/.Xresources contains
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Xft.antialias: 0
> Xft.hinting: 0
> Xft.hintstyle: hintfull
> Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
> Xft.rgba: rgb
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Cheers
> Christoph

Re: Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

[Gregory Heytings]

>
> As strange as it sounds, after staring at Terminus for a couple of hours 
> on most days for many years I grew attached to it...
>

You can still use it, you just need to install a vectorized version of 
that font (available here: https://files.ax86.net/terminus-ttf/), and use 
"Terminus (TTF)" as the font name.

Re: Emacs 28: bitmap fonts, vector font character spacing

[Emanuel Berg]

Gregory Heytings wrote:

>> As strange as it sounds, after staring at Terminus for
>> a couple of hours on most days for many years I grew
>> attached to it...
>
> You can still use it, you just need to install a vectorized
> version of that font (available here:
> https://files.ax86.net/terminus-ttf/), and use "Terminus
> (TTF)" as the font name.

What's wrong with Terminus? I've used that since a long time.
The only thing I don't like is that the m looks too close to
an n ...

To use Terminus in a Linux VT, unless it is on by default,
install packages console-setup and console-setup-linux from
the Debian repos, then do

  $ sudo chmod +s /bin/setfont

and now you can set the font like this

  $ setfont Lat7-TerminusBold24x12

More:
  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/conf/vt/console-setup

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal