Huge fonts in KDE 4

steve_c1972 · #1 31st July 2008, 09:32 AM

Hope someone can help.

I've just installed Fedora 9 and some of the fonts are huge in KDE 4. If I run a Konsole it defaults to 18x4 and the font is a good couple of inches high. If I run Xterm, the fonts are normal size and readable. Most of the menu items are ok but if you hover over the volume or network settings then the fonts are huge also. When the system is staring the processes that are being loaded are also displayed in this huge size.

Gnome appears to be fine. Anyone got any ideas?

oneofmany · #2 31st July 2008, 09:36 AM

Start kcontrol then go to Appearance & Themes", then click on "Fonts". You can adjust the font size here for all applications.

***Hlingler*** · #3 31st July 2008, 09:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steve_c1972

Hope someone can help.

I've just installed Fedora 9 and some of the fonts are huge in KDE 4. If I run a Konsole it defaults to 18x4 and the font is a good couple of inches high. If I run Xterm, the fonts are normal size and readable. Most of the menu items are ok but if you hover over the volume or network settings then the fonts are huge also. When the system is staring the processes that are being loaded are also displayed in this huge size.

Gnome appears to be fine. Anyone got any ideas?

Yes: open the system settings GUI and change the font settings.... Same with Konsole (Settings=>Edit Current Profile=>Appearance=>Font)

V

steve_c1972 · #4 31st July 2008, 09:41 AM

Thanks for the replies. I've already tried this (the fonts in systemsettings are also 2 inches high!) and has had no effect

oneofmany · #5 31st July 2008, 09:43 AM

what screen resolution are you using?

as i understand it, the default font size in kde 4 is 11pt whilst in windows it is 8pt. 11pt shouldn't be 2 inches high.

***Hlingler*** · #6 31st July 2008, 09:43 AM

Then open a terminal (probably xterm is better than konsole right now...) and run a general software update:
su -
yum update

V

steve_c1972 · #7 31st July 2008, 10:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oneofmany

what screen resolution are you using?

as i understand it, the default font size in kde 4 is 11pt whilst in windows it is 8pt. 11pt shouldn't be 2 inches high.

The screen res is 1280x1024 and the font sizes are default (11pt).

I did an update first of all hoping that would sort the problem. I just hoped that someone else had come across this and had a fix.

***Hlingler*** · #8 31st July 2008, 10:42 AM

Another usual diagnostic in these cases is to create a new user, then log in as that user and see if same problem exists. If not, your personal settings are borked and should be bagged. If so, must be some other problem....

Or, you could try updating to latest KDE packages in updates-testing repo:
yum --enablerepo=updates-testing groupupdate "KDE (K Desktop Environment)"

V

stefan1975 · #9 31st July 2008, 11:03 AM

what helped for me was setting the DPI to 96 systemwide in the systemsettings and then restarting X. Before that I too found that fonts were way too big in KDE4

besides that I also think that fonts in KDE4 are not very pretty (at least no where near the quality of Gnome fonts) it seems as if AA is not working (properly) does anyone know if this is true and/or something that will be fixed in 4.1 soonish?

stefan

steve_c1972 · #10 31st July 2008, 11:44 AM

Although the problem manifests itself in KDE. i think it may run a little deeper than that. I have just tried a F9 Live CD and get the same problem there. Also the huge fonts appear when the processes are loading, ie: before you select the window manager.

Thanks for the suggestions though.
Steve

stefan1975 · #11 31st July 2008, 12:11 PM

what helped for me was adding the following to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to the "Device" section:

Code:

    Option         "DPI" "96 x 96"

and restarting X

stefan

**rdieter** · #12 2nd August 2008, 05:48 AM

dpi is it. kde depends on X to provide usable and accurate dpi information, and things will look wrong if lied to.

running: xdpyinfo
will give current values (at least as X interprets them to be, whether or not these are accurate is another matter).

steve_c1972 · #13 5th August 2008, 09:38 AM

Fixed it!! Thanks for all your help guys.

I ran xdpyinfo and it turned out that KDE was using a ridiculous DPI. It seemingly thought that I was using a HUGE monitor. Manually specifying the DPI in the xorg.conf had no effect as the generic Intel driver was just ignoring this. What I did was startup in Gnome, go to system-config-display and manually specify the resolution of the monitor I was using. This then created a Monitor section in the xorg.conf file and added a bunch of stuff to the screen section. Then I added the following line to the end of the Monitor section:

Code:

DisplaySize 338 270

Which is the size in mm of the 17" monitor I'm using. All is now fine and I can see everything.

Thanks again,

Steve