Smoother X11 fonts

Something I found a long time ago and now had to lookup again so it's time to write it down here.

In order to enable smoother (and nicer, IMO) fonts on X11 you have to have the following in your ~/.fonts.conf:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
 <dir>~/.fonts</dir>
 <match target="font">
  <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
</fontconfig>

On Debian things are easier - the global settings for the entire system can be enabled by running the following as root:

# ln -s ../conf.avail/10-autohint.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d

And re-startting the X server (not sure a logout/login is enough).