[GLLUG] Frustration with fonts...

[Bilal Qayum]

Hi all. I've done the usual rounds of forum and google searches in vain, 
thought I'd post here before before an Ubuntu forum post. Apologies in 
advance if this isn't the correct place to ask this.

I've had a pretty frustrating few days trying to fix up fonts in Unity. 
I most definitely broke it myself, but am finding it unusually difficult 
to fix.

I have a few KDE apps lying about in Unity and in an attempt to 
integrate them better, I followed instructions on changing the fonts, 
themes etc. Changing the fonts results in a pretty awful mess, text is 
now universally thin, pixelated and jagged. Retracing my steps hasn't 
helped and neither has resetting to defaults in various setting 
applications, hinting, anti-aliasing etc.

The problem isn't exactly unknown after messing with KDE settings in 
Unity, but all instances I've found have been solved by running 'sudo 
dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig' which doesn't do a single thing for me. My 
wife's account, running Cinnamon rather than Unity, is as smooth and 
pleasant to look at as ever through all this.

I'm almost resigned to having to reinstall 12.10 or doing a fresh 
install of 13.04 next month, but would really prefer to avoid it to 
avoid causing marital strife, my wife is very much in love with her 
Cinnamon account and isn't a fan of repeating all her tweaks and 
changes. I'm hoping there might be something I'm either overlooking or a 
method to completely wipe all font data from Unity, beyond reconfiguring 
fontconfig, that might reset my system to default. Any possible leads?