need help: font sharpness and IceWM window positioning

[Member joe04]

I have antiX-17 installed in a VM on Windows 8 with the goals of a) learning Linux better and b) finding a distro to migrate to down the road when I get a new machine. (I don’t want to settle for Win 10.)

I’ve been using v15 dual-boot on my old Vista laptop for 2 years. I don’t use it that often, and it has a small screen so haven’t needed to configure it that much. I found IceWM to be best for me, given its flexible start menu assignments that can mimic my own customized Windows usage. (Win 8 would be terrible without the wonderful Classic Shell program.)

For v17 I have stricter expectations as a potential daily driver on a PC with a large monitor. IceWM has a number of advantages relative to other DEs, but I’ve hit 2 specific items that I need to improve:

1) Font sharpness and clarity (the defaults for Geany and Pale Moon in the attached screenshot are unusable, though the start menu looks fine)

2) the ability to open apps in fixed locations. (In other VMs I’ve set Gnome and Xfce to always open new windows centered; that would be good enough for me if it also exists in IceWM.)

Any help here is appreciated.

• This topic was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by joe04.

Attachments:

1. 

   default-fonts.png
   

[Anonymous]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Not specific to icewm (window manager doesn’t know/care about the fonts displayed within applications):
F2 runner –} lxappearance –} you can choose/change the global font used across gtk applications, plus the hinting/antialiasing applied.

“ability to open apps in fixed locations”
Can do, and plenty of icewm documentation is available.
here’s the top websearch result I got for “icewm window location”: http://www.icewm.org/manual/icewm-14.html

“Geany and Pale Moon in the attached screenshot”
Beyond changing font via lxappearance, you can (should) visit geany preferences and PaleMoon preferences and tweak to suit your system.

FWIW, in firefox, although I disallow “download webfonts” and disallow “pages can specify own fonts”… some sites (e.g. “ghacks.net”) still wind up with blurred text depeding on which font I’ve chosen via lxappearance (can’t recall which) .

Also (I don’t know) running inside a VM may be affecting the (rescaled?) rendered display. Someone else may suggest how to deal with that.

ps: while you’re tweaking, lookit: geany –} View –} Change Color Scheme

[Forum Admin Dave]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I think there is a app linked in the control centre to modify the dpi settings as well which may help.

Also if you are not able to get the window positioning sorted in icewm it may be worth checking one of the *-fluxbox options. Fluxbox seems to handle window position, sizing, style quite well IMHO; both generally and app specific.

Computers are like air conditioners. They work fine until you start opening Windows. ~Author Unknown

[Forum Admin SamK]

Helpful

Up

0

::

joe04 wrote:

In other VMs I’ve set Gnome and Xfce to always open new windows centered; that would be good enough for me if it also exists in IceWM.

Presumably, you then drag them into a preferred location on the screen. If so, you might find it beneficial to look at Wingrid. It ships pre-installed in antiX and offers plenty of flexibility in putting app windows in specific locations. A comprehensive guide and a video summary are available.

Online FAQ guide
http://download.tuxfamily.org/antix/docs-antiX-17/FAQ/wingrid.html

Installed FAQ guide
Main Menu➞Help➞antiX➞antiX FAQ➞Wingrid

Video summary skim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRO-meyYGWg#t=14m19s

[Anonymous]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Fluxbox seems to handle window position, sizing, style quite well IMHO; both generally and app specific.

https://antix-skidoo.github.io/archive/fluxbox-v1-3-8-t6964.html

[Member joe04]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Thanks for the responses.

For window location & size — good to know that IceWM supports a geometry parameter for this. There aren’t that many regularly used programs (browsers, terminal, file mgr, etc.) that I’d need to manually set this for. So that would give me the same thing I have in Windows now, where all browsers and Explorer remember there location & size but other infrequently used programs don’t. And the Wingrid left/right split would come in handy at times for side-by-side comparisons.

For fonts — Thanks for the lxappearance tip. I played with it, and turning off hinting does help a little bit. The fonts are still lacking, though, compared to what I’m accustomed to having. For another comparison, I fired up my antix-15 laptop and its fonts are also a little better than v17. So perhaps it’s a VM thing, but Ubuntu Gnome 3 in a VM has very nice fonts by default.

So I’m going to use my Ubuntu VM going forward (having already tweaked Gnome 3 to suitably co-exist with my Windows workflow). When the time comes for a new PC I’ll be buying only Linux-friendly hardware and thus may revisit antiX for it in a live session. I do like what this distro has to offer and certainly appreciate the new life it’s given my old laptop.

[Author]

Posts