The problem with Linux typography isn't a lack of fonts, it's bad rendering. I can buy a font from Adobe. I can't buy a better font renderer for Linux.

... plus, the incredibly good Android "Droid" typeface is available under an open license and looks fantastic on mobile and desktop screens.

So the new Ubuntu font certainly gives them/us something unique, but I'm not yet convinced that it gives them/us greater quality (I'm an Ubuntu member, and have tried this early release).

Plus, you can install Droid on Ubuntu today: ttf-droid.

I did this for my new install of Ubuntu 10.04 and will never go back. I think Google took a lot of time to get that font right, and it looks great on my desktop.

I dislike the look of Droid Serif. I use Droid Sans as my UI font on my netbook (running Ubuntu), though. I'll certainly compare them when the Ubuntu font is released.

+1 This (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1239067) is a question that I posed to Ubuntu brainstorm. The font hinting and rendering patents (held by Apple/Microsoft) are supposedly expired, therefore opening up the way for Freetype to jump ahead by leaps and bounds.

Maybe a little money could be spent on patent due diligence.

The funny part is that all the pieces (FreeType, HarfBuzz, Pango) are really well done, just FreeType isn't tweaked properly. :/

What do you mean, with tweaked properly? Tweaked by developer oder user? BTW I think the droid fonts and dejaWeb look fucking awesome on my loptop. Much better than the fonts on my Windows maschine at work

Tweaked by the packager, who thinks the hinting patents are still valid and hence disables decent hinting during compilation.

How do I configure it myself? Do you have a reference?

Modify the Debian packaging files to provide the correct compilation options - sorry I'm not experienced with this as I've only made RPMs before =- but it should be pretty easy to figure out.

I think that Ubuntu enables hinting on default. According to FreeType's docs/TRUETYPE the TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER macro should be defined, should you want to enable patent encumbered parts.

On a karmic box:

  $ apt-get source libfreetype6
  $ grep -h TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE freetype-2.3.9/debian/patches-freetype/*
  -/* #define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER */
  +#define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER

Yeah, Windows XP's ClearType does things very badly. I was referring to this article that was posted in a different thread:

http://antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/

When you say "bad rendering", do you mean glyph rendering (FreeType) or the layout stack?

It sounds like he is talking about rasterization which is handled by FreeType.

Kerning is a property of the font, not of the renderer.

I replied to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1496177

The problem with Linux typography isn't a lack of fonts, it's bad rendering. I can buy a font from Adobe. I can't buy a better font renderer for Linux.

He couldn't have been talking about individual font properties since he said high quality fonts don't make any difference.

I agree. I think it's remarkable that in taking an overt step to improve Linux typography, they managed to compound their problems by introducing a weak, quirky new default font.

Note the window title uses the bold font which it says is unfinished.

Are you sure?

> The bold weight is still being designed and isn't available yet. [ars]

and

> For now, only the regular is available for testing, bold comes next. [ http://design.canonical.com/2010/07/the-ubuntu-font/ ]

Sounds like it might be another font entirely, especially as the whole font is still in beta, but it mentions bold separately that way. But I could be wrong.

right, i used the wrong article. "a" instead of "the". point being, metacity/gtk-window-decorator by default use "a" bold font for the title bar and therefore is either a) not finished b) not it.

Oh wow, that's bad o_O The text in the main field, which I assume is their font, is better... but IMO still needs a bit of work, especially around "d"s and "i"s.