Arch Linux User Repository

The following yields a bitmap-based desktop and browser, with MS Sans Serif-based proportional fonts and GNU Unifont monospace fonts (installable via unifont-otb). The cyrillic variants in the traditional xorg-fonts packages are based on these popular fonts, and this package converts them to OTB and reduces the font size range to allow for anti-aliased fonts at larger sizes. For greater size variation in monospace fonts (Unifont contains only 1 size), use 'Fixed Cyrillic Web (OTB)' instead of Unifont below.

Recommended, general-purpose English or Cyrillic settings: uncheck 'Allow pages to choose their own fonts' in Firefox settings, and manually set the following in about:config (or similar, depending on localization):

font.name.monospace.x-western   Unifont (OTB)
font.name.sans-serif.x-western  Helvetica Cyrillic Web (OTB)
font.name.serif.x-western       Times Cyrillic Web (OTB)

For greater alphabet coverage, use 'Helvetica Web (OTB)' instead.

Although Unifont is not necessarily good for the web because it only offers one size variant, it works better than 'Fixed Cyrillic Web (OTB)' if the default zoom used is > 100% since it scales better within a narrow point size range. In the desktop UI, use either 'Helvetica Cyrillic Web (OTB)' or 'Helvetica Cyrillic (OTB)' from xorg-fonts-75dpi-otb and xorg-fonts-100dpi-otb.

For Qt apps that do not fully support OTB fonts (eg, pcmanfm-qt), install xorg-fonts-cronyx-75dpi and xorg-fonts-cronyx-100dpi and select 'cronyx Helvetica'.

Define fallback fonts in ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf to fill in the larger sizes:

<alias>
    <family>serif</family>
    <prefer>
        <family>Liberation Serif</family>
    </prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
    <family>sans-serif</family>
    <prefer>
        <family>Liberation Sans</family>
    </prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
    <family>sans</family>
    <prefer>
        <family>Liberation Sans</family>
    </prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
    <family>monospace</family>
    <prefer>
        <family>DejaVu Sans Mono</family>
    </prefer>
</alias>

Also add the following to userContent.css in Firefox for better spacing, and to disable monospace italics (for Unifont):

* { letter-spacing: normal !important; }

code, pre, i { font-style: normal !important }