The problem

One of the very few things I’ve found unsatisfying with my switch to Ubuntu at work has been poor rendering of the fabled Microsoft core fonts for the Web. Ubuntu’s included free TrueType fonts rendered so well (Vera Sans is a marvel), why did Verdana look like dogfood?

I’ve spent hours trying to get these fonts to render correctly. I would have long ago given up and just removed them to force substitutions, but my company brands with Georgia and uses Trebuchet internally so I must make sure our pages layout well with them. The improperly smudged capital D’s in Georgia and lowercase e’s in Trebuchet were driving me nuts!

At some point, I had installed a “renegade” msttcorefonts package, even though I have legitimate copies of all XP fonts and other TrueTypes right on my hard drive. Eventually, I noticed that the non-core XP fonts I’d copied looked mostly fine in Ubuntu, much better than the core ones. Hmm.

The solution

The msttcorefonts package is evil and must be destroyed. At least, if your rendering is terribly bad, it may be at fault. There are stories on the Ubuntu forums about core fonts being “hinted” twice. I believe this is exactly what was happening in my case, as I found a weird file titled msttcorefonts-something-or-other somewhere under /etc/defoma, even after removing the suspect package. I deleted that file, restarted, and suddenly I could read our publication without pulling my hair out!

I’m still not thrilled with the rendering, as the same old hinting screw-up in Georgia’s D is there, but it’s exactly half as annoying now (pictured, with 2x enlargement). I probably wouldn’t even notice it if I hadn’t been bitterly fixated on the exaggerated faults for two weeks straight. There are (long and complicated) instructions on Ubuntu forums for tweaking TrueType generally, and possibly other ways of working around the problem specific to core fonts, but for me zapping that extra defoma hinting file was the coup de grâce.

Long live Ubuntu, and may Dapper’s fonts be truly dapper!