Illegible font

[mekineer]

I have I browse the web at 80% zoom, and sometimes encounter fonts that are illegible at that zoom level. Not because they are too small, but because the letters have pieces missing at the lower zoom level. For example, the model number in the attached image is G54S. The 4 looks like a 1. I'm using Windows XP, so that's probably the issue. But if there is an easy fix I'm not aware of, please let me know! Is there some setting in Pale Moon Commander I can use?

ps. I have cleartype font smoothing enabled in windows.

[Moonchild]

Try playing around with Graphics -> ClearType in Pale Moon Commander. Especially try increasing the contrast (try e.g. 300) and perhaps the level (100-150); if font is too "airy" try reducing the gamma to 1800 or 2000.

[mekineer]

What are the default Pale Moon fonts? I changed them and don't know what the defaults are. I set them to viewtopic.php?t=17509, and everything looks fine, but they are not the defaults.

I tried playing around with cleartype, but no amount of any wild change, could I see any difference in what I was viewing. It all looks the same no matter what the setting! I tried refreshing pages after making changes, and I also tried restarting the browser.

I came across an extension called Font Finder, which allows me to disable fonts. The font on the page:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6833162173
was "open sans". After I disabled it, everything was wonderfully legible.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... ont-finder

However, if I refresh the page, open sans is restored. Is there a way to permanently disable specific fonts for all websites? I never want to see "open sans" again! Something like this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... r-foxified, but of course, compatible with pale moon.

Off-topic:
Off topic: The graphic for subscribing to a topic, has a box with a check mark in it. This was confusing for me, because I believed the check meant I was already subscribed. Is there a way to automatically subscribe to any thread I start, or any thread I post in?

[Moonchild]

Off-topic:
See your user control panel -> board preferences -> Edit posting defaults -> Notify me upon replies by default.
If you want to receive e-mail as well, check the appropriate boxes under board preferences -> Edit notification options

[mekineer]

https://collinmbarrett.com/block-web-fonts
Does anyone just use their own fonts? Is there any downside?

[Moonchild]

Does anyone just use their own fonts?

People do -- not recommended.

Is there any downside?

Websites are designed for the use of specific fonts. By forcing a different font, website layouts may break in all sorts of ways because of different font metrics, or become illegible because expected characters don't exist in the standard fonts.

[mekineer]

To try it, I unchecked "enable downloadable fonts", and user interface images were missing on web pages. Also, Ublock Origin user-interface graphics were broken. Definitely not recommended!

[mekineer]

I found another setting in about:config called browser.display.use_document_fonts, which I'm trying now set to zero.
With this setting, ublock origin gui was not crippled.

[mekineer]

Off-topic:
More interesting conversation about web fonts, for anyone curious...
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/1787
I'm going to experiment with the anti-font tracking at https://secure.fanboy.co.nz/filters.html
I have been using use_document_fonts set to zero, and haven't been too displeased. I have yet to notice web breakage (maybe too soon to tell).
The newegg site I mentioned above does not display the open-sans font when I have use_document_fonts disabled

[Moonchild]

Off-topic:
I still don't understand why people want to block document-specified fonts. They pose no danger in terms of being active content, and it seems to me to be a sledgehammer approach to being fearful about certain font providers tracking you (e.g. Google fonts), which is better served by blocking the distrusted font providers rather than blocking custom fonts outright.

Fonts are an important part of document/publication design, similar to ingredients of a gourmet meal. How do you think the chef would feel if you go to a restaurant and replace parts of the dish with your own ingredients you brought from home, just because you fear they might come from a certain farmer/grocer (although you never check if this is the case), and more importantly, would the dish be as-intended (or even gourmet)?...

[mekineer]

My original post was about fixing the broken font (it didn't shrink nicely to 80%) on the newegg page I linked. It was displaying Google's font "open sans", which is a popular web font. That was fixed by setting browser.display.use_document_fonts to a value of zero. I don't care about style, as much as I care about legibility and content. I don't know why "open sans" doesn't shrink well to a zoom level less than unity, but this is my workaround. Plus, I like the idea of not downloading fonts, or advertising to the server what fonts I have on my system.

As for my system being old, I fixed further issues, by installing unicode Dejavu fonts. https://dejavu-fonts.github.io Perhaps not as pretty as Trebuchet, or the default fonts pale moon selects on my Windows, but I'm going to use it for the additional characters that are sometimes missing on web pages. If there is a better choice than Dejavu, please recommend another

[Moonchild]

My original post was about fixing the broken font (it didn't shrink nicely to 80%)

I don't know why "open sans" doesn't shrink well to a zoom level less than unity

I'm sorry for not catching the entire situation until now.

When using aliased fonts, if you zoom down, you will be losing pixel rows/columns with no subpixel compensation. That will result in loss of legibility in a hurry, and without antialiasing cannot be corrected.

That has nothing to do with document fonts, per se, or with page design or with the browser -- it's a general rule of font scaling in an aliased situation. In that case though, disabling document fonts is probably your only workaround because this will impact most fonts in a seriously negative way, and only a font that happens to scale down decently at 80% aliased without losing too much legibility will work in that situation. It still won't be perfect, but "good enough". An alternative that would always scale well would be to choose a defined-enough raster font and avoid truetype/vector fonts altogether -- but those are in very short supply.