Bug 192828 - Konsole does not support fake bold when using TrueType fonts which lack genuine bold style.
Summary: Konsole does not support fake bold when using TrueType fonts which lack genui...
Status: NEEDSINFO WAITINGFORINFO
Alias: None
Product: konsole
Classification: Applications
Component: font (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: Compiled Sources Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Konsole Developer
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-05-15 22:41 UTC by Jason Vas Dias
Modified: 2024-03-27 00:23 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

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Description Jason Vas Dias 2009-05-15 22:41:35 UTC
Version:           Version 2.3 - Using KDE 4.2.70 (KDE 4.2.70 (KDE 4.3 >= 20090415)) (using Devel)
Compiler:          gcc-4.4.1 (20090424) glibc-2.10 (20090514) xserver 1.6.9.9 (20090514) xlib 20090514 xcb 20090514 qt-copy (4.5) 20090514
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Compiled sources

Having built & installed KDE 4.2 from SVN ( @ 2009-04-30 ) 
with latest tools of same GIT / SVN / CVS vintage ( May 2009 ) 
I find that konsole :
 o Cannot display the less(1) `nroff -Tlatin1'  "Bold Font" - ie.
   $ man man
   does not display any bold font output -
with font "monospace" or font "Andale Mono", both TrueType
fonts, one system (monospace) containing the Bold face,
and one "Andale Mono" for which an "artificial bold face"
was generated . Konsole DOES display "misc-fixed" bold 
nroff latin1 output.

KDE 3.5 konsole has no problems showing nroff -Tlatin1 output with either font.

Is KDE4 console using some other font path or is it ignoring some
font path elements not ignored by KDE 3.5 konsole?
Comment 1 Robert Knight 2009-05-16 19:37:22 UTC
Monospace is not a real font - can you find out which font it actually refers to using:

fc-match Monospace

The Andale Mono font that I have doesn't appear to have a 'bold' style in the font selector in Qt/KDE applications but it does in Gnome applications.  I'm not sure of the reason for that.  This problem, if it is a bug, is not specific to Konsole though.

My memory is a bit hazy on this but I think that in KDE 3 'bold text' in the terminal might have been rendered by drawing the same text twice with a offset to make the letters look thicker - this would work for any font but didn't look very nice.
Comment 2 Jason Vas Dias 2009-05-17 00:23:11 UTC
Hi Robert - thanks for responding !

Yes, Monospace is in fact an alias to 'Andale Mono' in my .fonts.conf 
that I created ages ago and forgot about:
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<fontconfig>
 <dir>/home/jason/TrueType</dir>
 <alias>
  <family>monospace</family>
  <prefer>
   <family>Andale Mono</family>
  </prefer>
 </alias>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
   <const>rgb</const>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="hinting" >
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
   <const>hintfull</const>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
</fontconfig>



But please, let users be the judge of what "doesn't look very nice" :

RE: Comment #1 :
> KDE 3 'bold text' in the
>  terminal might have been rendered by drawing the same text twice with a offset
> to make the letters look thicker - this would work for any font but 
> didn't look very nice.

I could append screen-shots to this bug report of "xterm",  "gnome-console" 
and KDE-3.5 "konsole" displaying the same manual page or info node, 
all of them except KDE 4.2 konsole nicely doing the fake bolding -
particularly when you are trying to develop and test manual-page
nroff generators, it really is essential that the full range of 
terminal fonts are made available to nroff .
Oh well, I guess I'll have to use xterm in order to test manual pages -
not a major pain - but I'd still vote for konsole bringing back "fake bold face"
, perhaps as a configuration option.
Comment 3 Robert Knight 2009-05-18 12:36:25 UTC
> But please, let users be the judge of what "doesn't look very nice" 

As I'm sure you can understand Jason, I try to make the program look and work well out of the box with no configuration for as many users as possible.  Clearly with this criteria it makes sense to draw bold text 'the correct way' by default.

Leaving that aside, I thought that if a font didn't come with a bold variety that one would be generated automatically which would look adequate, though not as good as a one tuned by a font designer.  This does seem to be happening in gnome applications but not KDE ones.  There are some patches floating around for Qt which add support for this but apparently they have not been reviewed or merged yet:

http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=64029

> Oh well, I guess I'll have to use xterm in order to test manual pages 

Or you could look for a bold version of Andale Mono on the web, a quick Google turns up several results though the publishers do charge about 30$ for it.
Comment 4 Kurt Hindenburg 2024-03-27 00:23:41 UTC
Please try a recent version as a lot has changed since this report.