Solving the Firefox/Mozilla tiny font problem on Linux
As I mentioned on Wireball.com, I recently suffered a hard drive crash, and took the opportunity to install Debian/GNU Linux on the new disk (I've got to learn sometime - I can't keep using Windows 2000 forever).
Installation went smoothly, and it has some nice software installed by default (including the latest version of the Mozilla browser suite, and the fully functional OpenOffice.org word processing suite). However, one thing I noticed was that once I installed Firefox (just to my /home/wireball/ directory, in its own directory/folder), the fonts were too small. For example, when visiting the Tech Report, the font was so small as to be practically unreadable - 11pt looked like 8pt.
I thought it had something to do with TrueType fonts (and I'm still not entirely sure it doesn't), but after futzing around for nearly four hours trying to install msttcorefonts, running into something about needing to configure Xwindows to use Defoma fonts, and supposedly the easiest way to do that was to use the x-ttcidfont-conf package, which I couldn't figure out how to get working, I had made little progress. I even tried to use alien. At least I learned to use the basics of Debian's apt and apt-get, which is truly a nice package management tool (automatically determines and takes care of dependencies, as well as installing packages so they work).
However, it turned out ultimately that I just had my Firefox dpi resolution setting under Edit->Preferences->General->Fonts and Colors->Display Resolution set incorrectly. I had tried changing it previously, but I hadn't exited and restarted the browser after doing so, which is necessary to see the changes. I found my error when I followed a suggestion and selected the "Other..." setting, measured the onscreen line as accurately as I could with a precise metric ruler, and entered in the value - it told me my display resolution was 96dpi (not 72dpi like it defaulted to). I OKed it, exited, restarted, and the Tech Report rendered at the correct font size.
I haven't installed Thunderbird yet, so if you've e-mailed me and are still waiting for a response, there's my explanation. I'm a packrat - I keep everything - so when I lose my old e-mail archives it drives me crazy. I remember when I lost four years of Eudora e-mail archives (from roughly 1998 to 2002, covering the height of the computer workstation company) - corrupted somehow so no e-mail client could read them - it kills me that I don't have easy access to those records. So much work and information. I still have large blocks of the files, but text editors take forever to load them up and sort through them, so it's impractical to refer to them. Maybe someday I'll find a solution. Hopefully something in Linux can parse through them and produce a usable output.
Installation went smoothly, and it has some nice software installed by default (including the latest version of the Mozilla browser suite, and the fully functional OpenOffice.org word processing suite). However, one thing I noticed was that once I installed Firefox (just to my /home/wireball/ directory, in its own directory/folder), the fonts were too small. For example, when visiting the Tech Report, the font was so small as to be practically unreadable - 11pt looked like 8pt.
I thought it had something to do with TrueType fonts (and I'm still not entirely sure it doesn't), but after futzing around for nearly four hours trying to install msttcorefonts, running into something about needing to configure Xwindows to use Defoma fonts, and supposedly the easiest way to do that was to use the x-ttcidfont-conf package, which I couldn't figure out how to get working, I had made little progress. I even tried to use alien. At least I learned to use the basics of Debian's apt and apt-get, which is truly a nice package management tool (automatically determines and takes care of dependencies, as well as installing packages so they work).
However, it turned out ultimately that I just had my Firefox dpi resolution setting under Edit->Preferences->General->Fonts and Colors->Display Resolution set incorrectly. I had tried changing it previously, but I hadn't exited and restarted the browser after doing so, which is necessary to see the changes. I found my error when I followed a suggestion and selected the "Other..." setting, measured the onscreen line as accurately as I could with a precise metric ruler, and entered in the value - it told me my display resolution was 96dpi (not 72dpi like it defaulted to). I OKed it, exited, restarted, and the Tech Report rendered at the correct font size.
I haven't installed Thunderbird yet, so if you've e-mailed me and are still waiting for a response, there's my explanation. I'm a packrat - I keep everything - so when I lose my old e-mail archives it drives me crazy. I remember when I lost four years of Eudora e-mail archives (from roughly 1998 to 2002, covering the height of the computer workstation company) - corrupted somehow so no e-mail client could read them - it kills me that I don't have easy access to those records. So much work and information. I still have large blocks of the files, but text editors take forever to load them up and sort through them, so it's impractical to refer to them. Maybe someday I'll find a solution. Hopefully something in Linux can parse through them and produce a usable output.
posted by Wireball at 8:15 PM
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