[Hardy] Mathematica fonts look bad

[Graham Clenaghan]

After upgrading, the fonts Mathematica uses are very ugly, sometimes hard to read.
I don't know what more information is needed for a problem like this, but please ask.

[Greg Grossmeier (greg.grossmeier)]

For clarification:

The fonts changed when you upgraded from Gutsy to Hardy? Or, did they change from an update of Hardy (ie: Hardy was already installed and the fonts were fine, but a daily upgrade made them bad)?

[Greg Grossmeier (greg.grossmeier)]

Also, Mathematica is not provided by Ubuntu, and as such, you may have installed additional fonts in Gutsy which were not upgraded in Hardy.

[Bartek (tschew)]

I can confirm this problem on a fresh install of hardy. Because mathematica has problems with compiz, I ran it with metacity. When the default font (Courier) is set in the workbook (as it is by default, which AFAIK can't be changed) the in- and output is unreadable unless I select it. (see screenshot)

Changing the font provides a workaround as seen in the screenshot.

As IBM Courier is not installed by default anymore, I tried to fix the issue by installing the t1-xfree86-nonfree package, but it did not help.

[Bartek (tschew)]

note: the artifacts in the first line in the screenshot are actually the unreadable text, sorry for not specifying that

[Graham Clenaghan (origin191)]

I can't reproduce everything I had before, the only problem I have now is with MatrixForm, specifically with fractions. TraditionalForm seems not as pretty as I remember it. I want to say that subpixel hinting is no longer working in Mathematica. Notice how nice the integral sign and the d are, thats what everything used to look like! I will try a Windows Mathematica to show what it should look like, and xforwarding to a Gutsy machine, and post more later.

[c_t (chefturner)]

Hi!
I Have exactly the same problem but haven't found any solution yet...

[Graham Clenaghan (origin191)]

This is not a duplicate of 197163, my problem is characters show up, but aren't properly anti-aliased.

My problem is it should (and did in Gutsy) look like the attached screenshot of Mathematica in Windows, but it looks like my previous attachment.

This is a separate problem, as far as I can tell.
The same thing happens in both 64-bit and 32-bit.

[noandrews (noandrews)]

Same problem. Fonts aren't showing up in Mathematica 6.0 after Hardy upgrade. It looks like they're rendering white on white.

[jeromek (jerome-kelleher)]

I have a similar problem.

Immediately after upgrade to Hardy my fonts in Mathematica 6.0 went to the 'biscuit crumbly' look. They are pretty much unreadable. In fact, the fonts were affected during the upgrade process also - I loaded Mathematica while I was running the upgrade from kubuntu 7.10 to 8.04, and the fonts were affected.

I'm running on x86_64.

Here's my font path information:

Font Path:
  /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi,/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType,/home/jk/.fonts,/usr/local/Wolfram/Mathematica/6.0/SystemFiles/Fonts/Type1,/usr/local/Wolfram/Mathematica/6.0/SystemFiles/Fonts/BDF

[Art (grenander)]

I have the same problem as jeromek in an upgrade from ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04, x86_64 with nvidia card. My font path was the same as jeromek and I don't think it changed from 7.10 to 8.04.

I can also confirm Bartek on a 32bit laptop in similar upgrade. My experience with Wolfram support is that they don't have the resources to help debug distribution related bugs.

I have nothing to add. Mathematica can find the ttf fonts. Maybe the switch to Xorg 1.4 from 1.3 did it and some broken interaction with Mathematica's private java jre.

[Art (grenander)]

I see some very minor improvements by adding ~/.fonts.conf (attached). You may also want to look through your /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-* and 53-monospace-lcd-filter.conf. There seem to be a lot of reports of bugs with fonts in Hardy. This doesn't antialias the blue Input unfortunately. There are a number of other remaining problems (just browse the Documentation for a sampling of fonts).

My guess now is that this is an Ubuntu, not Mathematica bug, so hopefully we can fix it as other font issues are resolved.

[Tom Kalvoda (kalvotom)]

It is sufficient to replace Mathematica's Qt libraries, see the end of this bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/197163

For your convenience:

1) Make sure you have libqt4-core and libqt4-gui installed (use synaptics or aptitude),
2) remove (delete or backup somewhere) these files:
PathToMathematica/SystemFiles/Libraries/Linux/libQtCore.so.4
PathToMathematica/SystemFiles/Libraries/Linux/libQtGui.so.4
where PathToMathematica is typicaly /usr/local/Wolfram/Mathematica/6.0
(Substitute Linux-x86-64 for Linux if needed.)

No extra stuff in ~/.fonts.conf is needed.

[Bartek (tschew)]

The bug can be fixed by replacing the QT libraries in Mathematica/SystemFiles/Libraries/ as described by Tom in comment https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/214683/comments/12. Thanks Tom!

[jeromek (jerome-kelleher)]

Confirmed fix: thanks!

[Greg Grossmeier (greg.grossmeier)]

This was not fixed, only a workaround was provided.

Setting to Triaged so a developer can make the changes in the package so the work around is no longer needed.

[zaphodBeeblebrox (iyavin)]

The solution kindly provided above by Tom Kalvoda worked for me as well!!!
Thanks

[Matthew D. Mower (mdmower)]

Please see post in related bug #197163: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/197163/comments/73

[Thomas Hotz (thotz-deactivatedaccount)]

Ubuntu 8.04 is EOL on the Desktop. Does this happen with a newer and supported Ubuntu version too? Thank you for telling us!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Ubuntu because there has been no activity for 60 days.]