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fonts
rendering
appearance

Font installation and rendering improvements for Arch Linux.

Essential Fonts

sudo pacman -S \
  ttf-dejavu ttf-liberation ttf-roboto \
  noto-fonts noto-fonts-cjk noto-fonts-emoji \
  ttf-jetbrains-mono ttf-fira-code \
  ttf-font-awesome

Nerd Fonts (icons in terminal)

paru -S ttf-jetbrains-mono-nerd
# or download from https://www.nerdfonts.com/

Font Rendering

Arch's default font rendering can look rough. These tweaks improve it significantly.

Enable good defaults

sudo ln -s /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/
sudo ln -s /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/10-hinting-slight.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/
sudo ln -s /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/11-lcdfilter-default.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/

User fontconfig

Create ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <match target="font">
    <edit name="antialias" mode="assign">
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
    <edit name="hinting" mode="assign">
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
    <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign">
      <const>hintslight</const>
    </edit>
    <edit name="lcdfilter" mode="assign">
      <const>lcddefault</const>
    </edit>
    <edit name="rgba" mode="assign">
      <const>rgb</const>
    </edit>
  </match>
</fontconfig>

Rebuild font cache

fc-cache -fv

Verify Settings

fc-match -v sans | grep -E "antialias|hinting|hintstyle|rgba"

Default Fonts

Set preferred defaults:

<!-- Add to fonts.conf -->
<alias>
  <family>sans-serif</family>
  <prefer><family>Noto Sans</family></prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
  <family>serif</family>
  <prefer><family>Noto Serif</family></prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
  <family>monospace</family>
  <prefer><family>JetBrains Mono</family></prefer>
</alias>

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