Ugly LibreOffice font

Question

I have been experiencing this super annoying bug with fonts in LibreOffice. Please see below screenshot. The spaces between letters are just messed, no matter what font or level of zoom I choose. When I change the zoom level, the spacing is actually changing but still looks very ugly.

I have a pretty much default instalation of Ubuntu. I installed a couple of fonts (droid, mscorefonts). I did not change any font settings.

Fonts in other applications looks great. When I open the very same text in Google Docs or MS Web Word, it looks perfect.

I would appreciate any help concerning this issue. Thanks!

Solution 1

I answer this old thread because I experienced the same problem and I just solved it with a different method. I run Ubuntu 16.04 and LibreOffice 5.1.4.2.

Essentially, I took the answer proposed by Fitoschido in this thread: https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/7127/calibri-font-not-rendering-correctly/

In short, one has to edit (or create) ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf and add the following block:

<match target="font" >
  <edit name="embeddedbitmap" mode="assign">
    <bool>false</bool>
  </edit>
</match>

This has the effect of bypassing the bitmaps of the characters embedded in MS fonts and getting Ubuntu/Linux to apply anti-aliasing as I should. Now, MS fonts look much, much better in LibreOffice.

Solution 2

This worked for me on Ubuntu 16.04 with KDE

Open KDE System Settings > Fonts > set Use anti-aliasing: field into Enabled > click Configure > dialog Configure Anti-Alias appears > set Sub-pixel rendering type: field into RGB > set Hinting style: field into Slight > press OK > press Apply > restart your programs (LibreOffice etc.).

Credit goes to http://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2016/03/how-to-fix-ugly-libreoffice-font-rendering-kde.html

Comments

[Glutanimate]

The font rendering in your example looks a but different but you might be facing a similar issue to the one I was facing a year go. Please try and see if the solution outlined in this Q&A works for you.

[suupic]

@Glutanimate Thank you! Before applying the solution, the fonts looked like bitmaps... low resolution ones at that, after perfect.

[tuhyk]

Thank you very much for your reply. My eyes are actually imploding every single time... I tried all the options and suggestions (apart from downgrading) and none of them help. Apparently all fonts are plagued with this issue. Some are worse, some better, but neither of them is actually good-looking and usable. The situation changes with the level of zoom which is strange. I do not understand this very well, but it seems to me that Libre Office just use a different setting for antialiasing or any similar font feature. AbiWord looks much better.

[Lorenzo Ancora]

Maybe I have a better solution. I'll edit the answer in a moment...

[Lorenzo Ancora]

No, you can't force the hinting behaviour for one application only; this is alien technology and we can't have it, sorry. :-D But, you can do a good thing by going to your system --> window style options and select the font options to change the hinting level; it's graphic enviroment dependent and the effect also depends also on your (I hope LCD) monitor. (wait a few seconds after every change) ... if you still have problems we can make a script to enable/disable hinting on the fly, and it can also help other users, but the final solution is of the LibreOffice developers, not ours. :(