{"id":15240,"date":"2014-02-15T10:50:38","date_gmt":"2014-02-15T15:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=15240"},"modified":"2014-02-15T10:50:38","modified_gmt":"2014-02-15T15:50:38","slug":"pure-but-minor-geek-stuff-font-problem-ubuntu-chrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/pure-but-minor-geek-stuff-font-problem-ubuntu-chrome\/","title":{"rendered":"Pure (But Minor) Geek Stuff: Font Problem (Ubuntu, Chrome)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently running Ubuntu 12.04 as my main operating system, and primarily use Google Chrome for Web browsing. (The &#8220;About Chrome&#8221; page says it&#8217;s version 32.0.1700.107.) I haven&#8217;t added any goofy font-management packages &#8212; or goofy fonts, for that matter. And I&#8217;d never noticed any problems with the same setup on my older computer, replaced last summer: same OS, same browser.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; font-size: 85%;\"><em>For the record: Chrome under Windows did\u00a0not display the same problematic behavior.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>But on\u00a0this computer, <em>oy<\/em>. On certain pages, particularly Wikipedia pages, I could see a very vexing problem. (The problem occurred <em>only<\/em> with Chrome, not with Firefox or Opera.)\u00a0To illustrate, here&#8217;s a partial screen capture of a current Wikipedia article as I saw it when I first browsed there a little while ago (click to enlarge); the red ellipses highlight problematic areas on the screen:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/webtext_ubuntu1204_chrome_arial.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"Egad.\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/webtext_ubuntu1204_chrome_arial_sm.png?resize=600%2C213&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"600\" height=\"213\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As you can see, especially (but not only) on lines containing boldface text, adjacent characters &#8212; sometimes entire words &#8212; appeared to overlap. I could sorta-kinda read this text, but it was getting very, very tiresome to puzzle it out when I was really in a hurry to get to a page&#8217;s\u00a0<em>content<\/em> without having to fight its\u00a0<em>form<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I did some research, saw that others had experienced the same problem, but the specific solutions proposed (often involving the installation of new software and\/or fonts) didn&#8217;t interest or even apply to me. Yet the focus on fonts\u00a0<em>did<\/em>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Short answer:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In Chrome, go to the Settings page and click on the <em>Show advanced settings&#8230;<\/em> link at the bottom.<\/li>\n<li>Scroll down to the section headed <strong>Web content<\/strong>. Click on the <em>Customize fonts&#8230;<\/em> button.<\/li>\n<li>Look at the default sans-serif font. Does it say <em>Arial<\/em>? If so, use the drop-down list to change it to one of the generic substitutes; I picked FreeSans.<\/li>\n<li>Reload the problematic Web page.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At least in my case, the improvement was immediate (click to enlarge):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/webtext_ubuntu1204_chrome_freesans.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"All RIGHT!\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/webtext_ubuntu1204_chrome_freesans_sm.png?resize=600%2C213&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"600\" height=\"213\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;\">I can&#8217;t promise you identical results if you&#8217;ve got a similar problem. This one just worked for me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And now, at last: back to researching minor planets, Chthonian planets, hot Jupiters, trojan planets, Lagrangian points, and yes, planetary cores&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently running Ubuntu 12.04 as my main operating system, and primarily use Google Chrome for Web browsing. (The &#8220;About Chrome&#8221; page says it&#8217;s version 32.0.1700.107.) I haven&#8217;t added any goofy font-management packages &#8212; or goofy fonts, for that matter. And I&#8217;d never noticed any problems with the same setup on my older computer, replaced [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,23,21,19],"tags":[1471,3735,3736,3737,3738,3739,3740,3741],"class_list":{"0":"post-15240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-04_technology","7":"category-linux","8":"category-oses","9":"category-internet","10":"tag-ubuntu","11":"tag-ubuntu-12-04","12":"tag-pangolin","13":"tag-precise-pangolin","14":"tag-chrome","15":"tag-overlapping-text","16":"tag-font-problem","17":"tag-sans-serif","18":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3XO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15240"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15245,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15240\/revisions\/15245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}