Font configuration/Examples
See Font configuration for the main article.
Configurations can vary to a degree. Please post Fontconfig configurations with an explanation for why they were done.
Hinted fonts
~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf
true false true hintslight lcddefault rgb
No hinting for italic or bold
true false lcddefault hintslight true rgb 15 lcdlight hintnone medium hintnone lcdlight 0 hintnone lcdlight
Enable anti-aliasing only for bigger fonts or certain fonts
Some users prefer the sharper rendering that anti-aliasing does not offer:
false 12 true 16 true
You might also want to disable anti-aliasing only for fonts that look well without anti-aliasing. See Font configuration/Examples/No anti-aliasing.
Disable bold font
For when a font does not present itself well in bold and you cannot disable bold fonts in the application (st for example).
...... Envy Code R medium medium
Disable ligatures for monospaced fonts
This prevents letter combinations like "ffi" from being squashed into a single-width character in some monospaced fonts. The whole
Disable ligatures for monospaced fonts to avoid ff, fi, ffi, etc. becoming only one character wide Nimbus Mono PS liga off dlig off
Some other fonts may also require disabling features such as calt and/or clig.
You can test the effectiveness of this with the following command:
$ echo -e "| worksheet |\n| buffering |\n| difficult |\n| finishing |\n| different |\n| efficient |" | pango-view --font="Nimbus Mono PS" /dev/stdin
Some programs do not support the fontfeatures tag, so for those replacing the font with another is the only option. See Font configuration#Set default or fallback fonts for details.
Enable typographic features
Some fonts like inter-font support many useful typographic features that are not enabled by default.
Those features can be managed system-wide (for all users) or per user using fontconfig, and/or per application, using applications internal setting. (For those programs which support configuring them internally, like LibreOffice.)
Below is an example of enabling dlig, tnum, ccmp, ss01 and ss02 features for the Inter font. You can substitute them with any other feature of any other font supporting them. A complete list of all possible typographic features can be found at Wikipedia:List of typographic features, but check if your font of choice supports a feature, before trying to enable it.
Enable some typographic features of Inter font, for all applications. Inter dlig on tnum on ccmp on ss01 on ss02 on
Verification of those features being enabled can be done both visually or using fc-match -v fontfamilyname command.
Default fonts
For font consistency, all applications should be set to use the serif, sans-serif, and monospace aliases, which are mapped to particular fonts by fontconfig. See Metric-compatible fonts for options and examples.
48-guessfamily.conf preset and takes precedence over weak aliases for generic family names. Use binding="strong" to override it.The standard names
The standard names are the aliases serif, sans-serif, and monospace. Setting custom values for these aliases will change the defaults for almost all applications, including sway, alacritty, and firefox. This example prefers gnu-free-fonts for everything except fixed-width fonts, for which Source Code Pro is preferred.
serif FreeSerif sans-serif FreeSans monospace Source Code Pro
Arabic
Example fonts.conf which specifies a default font for the Arabic language and keeps western style fonts for Latin letters. You will require either ttf-arabeyes-fontsAUR or noto-fonts for the below to work. You can also choose to install any other Arabic fonts and accordingly change the font name below based on your preference
ar Tholoth
The above should work for most applications but some applications like Chromium do not work with the language match test. If you find some applications not using your selected fonts, you can use the below alias and prefer tags which seems to work.
sans-serif Noto Sans Open Sans Droid Sans Roboto Tholoth Noto Sans Arabic serif Noto Serif Droid Serif Roboto Slab Tholoth Noto Sans Arabic monospace Noto Sans Mono Inconsolata Droid Sans Mono Roboto Mono
Excluding Arabic script from other languages
Fonts using Arabic script but are of other languages can be excluded. For example, the Nastaliq Urdu fonts could be chosen by default for Arabic. Use the following configuration to blacklist them, ensuring the system uses a proper Arabic font.
/etc/fonts/conf.d/66-noto-reject-nastaliq.conf
urn:fontconfig:fonts.dtd">/usr/share/fonts/noto/NotoNastaliq*
Japanese
Example fonts.conf which also specifies a default font for the Japanese locale (ja_JP) and keeps western style fonts for Latin letters.
Noto Sans ja Noto Sans CJK JP sans-serif Noto Sans serif Noto Serif IPAPMincho HanaMinA monospace Noto Sans Mono Inconsolatazi4 IPAGothic sans-serif Noto Sans Open Sans Droid Sans Ubuntu Roboto NotoSansCJK Source Han Sans JP IPAPGothic VL PGothic Koruri serif Noto Serif Droid Serif Roboto Slab IPAPMincho monospace Noto Sans Mono Inconsolatazi4 Ubuntu Mono Droid Sans Mono Roboto Mono IPAGothic
Chinese
~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf or /etc/fonts/local.conf
false serif Noto Serif sans-serif Roboto monospace DejaVu Sans Mono zh serif Source Han Serif CN zh sans-serif Source Han Sans CN zh monospace Noto Sans Mono CJK SC WenQuanYi Zen Hei Source Han Sans CN WenQuanYi Micro Hei Source Han Sans CN WenQuanYi Micro Hei Light Source Han Sans CN Microsoft YaHei Source Han Sans CN SimHei Source Han Sans CN SimSun Source Han Serif CN SimSun-18030 Source Han Serif CN
Chinese in Noto Fonts
Apply Noto Fonts while replacing Microsoft Fonts with WenQuanYi Micro Hei
~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf or /etc/fonts/local.conf
false serif Noto Serif sans-serif Noto Sans monospace Noto Sans Mono zh serif Noto Serif CJK SC zh sans-serif Noto Sans CJK SC zh monospace Noto Sans Mono CJK SC WenQuanYi Zen Hei WenQuanYi Micro Hei WenQuanYi Zen Hei Lite WenQuanYi Micro Hei Lite WenQuanYi Zen Hei Mono WenQuanYi Micro Hei Mono Microsoft YaHei WenQuanYi Micro Hei SimHei WenQuanYi Micro Hei SimSun WenQuanYi Micro Hei SimSun-18030 WenQuanYi Micro Hei
CJK, but other Latin fonts are preferred
Requires noto-fonts-cjk.
You can replace PT Serif/Roboto/Cascadia Code PL with your favorite serif/sans-serif/monospace fonts.
~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf
serif PT Serif sans-serif Roboto monospace Cascadia Code PL system-ui Roboto serif Noto Serif CJK SC ja serif Noto Serif CJK JP ko serif Noto Serif CJK KR zh serif Noto Serif CJK SC zh-hans serif Noto Serif CJK SC zh-hant serif Noto Serif CJK TC zh-cn serif Noto Serif CJK SC zh-tw serif Noto Serif CJK TC sans-serif Noto Sans CJK SC ja sans-serif Noto Sans CJK JP ko sans-serif Noto Sans CJK KR zh sans-serif Noto Sans CJK SC zh-hans sans-serif Noto Sans CJK SC zh-hant sans-serif Noto Sans CJK TC zh-hant-hk sans-serif Noto Sans CJK HK zh-cn sans-serif Noto Sans CJK SC zh-tw sans-serif Noto Sans CJK TC zh-hk sans-serif Noto Sans CJK HK monospace Noto Sans Mono CJK SC ja monospace Noto Sans Mono CJK JP ko monospace Noto Sans Mono CJK KR zh monospace Noto Sans Mono CJK SC zh-hans monospace Noto Sans Mono CJK SC zh-hant monospace Noto Sans Mono CJK TC zh-hant-hk monospace Noto Sans Mono CJK HK zh-cn monospace Noto Sans Mono CJK SC zh-tw monospace Noto Sans Mono CJK TC zh-hk monospace Noto Sans Mono CJK HK system-ui Noto Sans CJK SC ja system-ui Noto Sans CJK JP ko system-ui Noto Sans CJK KR zh system-ui Noto Sans CJK SC zh-hans system-ui Noto Sans CJK SC zh-hant system-ui Noto Sans CJK TC zh-hant-hk system-ui Noto Sans CJK HK zh-cn system-ui Noto Sans CJK SC zh-tw system-ui Noto Sans CJK TC zh-hk system-ui Noto Sans CJK HK
Alternate stylistic sets for fonts
Certain fonts come with alternate stylistic sets for characters through an OpenType feature.
Generally these stylistic sets are named ss0x and contain small changes to individual characters.
This shows how to change the default dotted zero to a slashed zero for the monospace version of ttf-ibm-plex.
~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf
IBM Plex Mono ss03
See What are "Stylistic Sets?" for more information on this.