Pixel-perfect font rendering under Wayland and X.org.
Custom Fontconfig rules trying to cover all “web safe fonts” with aliases to similar — ideally metrically-equivalent — high-quality typefaces released under a free-software license.
Uses exquisitely-hinted fonts to enhance text rendering at small sizes for most used “web safe” typefaces on low DPI devices, similarly to Windows pre-ClearType font rendering.
Ideally, most web pages should look sane and keep their character even if your browser doesn't load any external fonts at all. Reasons to avoid loading external fonts, especially on mobile connections: security, privacy, bandwidth. More at https://collinmbarrett.com/block-web-fonts/.
Here's a comparative screenshot taken on Debian 10 with default settings and the PixelPerfect setup:
This setup doesn't include any "color fonts". Emoji symbols, up to and including those from Unicode 15.0, are supported through a regular "black emoji" font. For coloured emoji, install an emoji font supported by your OS and apps. There is currently no acceptable solution to cover all cases.
Automated:
curl -sL https://github.com/dumol/PixelPerfect/raw/assets/install.sh | sh -
Manual:
- Download latest source package from Releases and link or copy/move
its directory as
~/.config/fontconfig. - Download latest font packages from Releases and unpack them to
~/.local/share/fonts/. - Logout and login again.
To set GNOME fonts from command line:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name 'system-ui 11' gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface document-font-name 'ui-serif 10' gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface monospace-font-name 'ui-monospace 10'
Adjust the above sizes if needed. Alternatively, set a scaling factor for text. For example, instead of using sizes of 13 and 12 points for the above, use:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor "1.2"
Beware that text-scaling-factor usually also affects the size of app widgets. For example, UI elements in Firefox, like the address bar and tabs, get bigger.
To have this setup working for Flatpak apps:
flatpak override --user --filesystem=xdg-config/fontconfig:ro flatpak override --user --filesystem=xdg-data/fonts:ro
To have this setup working for a Snap package such as Firefox:
ln -s ~/.local/share/fonts ~/snap/firefox/current/.local/share/fonts
mv -v ~/snap/firefox/current/.config/fontconfig{,.orig}
ln -s ~/.config/fontconfig ~/snap/firefox/current/.config/fontconfig
fc-cache -f -r
Install as instructed above, but replace the stable sources in ~/.fontconfig
with a link to a clone of this repo or your fork. FontConfig rules in master
branch are fully compatible with the latest released font packages.
