[ft] Poor font rendering with or without hinting

[Joel Feiner]

I am using Freetype 2.1.10 on Linux (have used previous versions as
well with the same results) and I find that the fonts are rendered
just terribly.  I have not been able to figure out what the problem
is, despite playing with as many settings as I can get my hands on.  I
know it's not my computer because I previously had Fedora installed
and the fonts looked nice (nicer than in Windows, in my opinion).

Basically, the problem is this.  When I turn off hinting (usually via
the KDE control center, but also in /etc/fonts/local.conf and
~/.fonts.conf), the letters are a little blurry and some of the glyphs
have extra gray patches around them.  When I turn on hinting, for some
of the fonts, the glyphs are clearer, but the kerning is off.  And for
other fonts, the glyphs are very misshapen.  They have lumps in places
and are too thin in others.  And when I turn off anti-aliasing
altogether, the glyphs are grainy and terribly misshapen.

What I find interesting is that for apps that do not use Freetype, I
can get the fonts to look perfect.  I set my gtk1 apps to use verdana
at size 9 and the fonts look *perfect*.  I believe that non-Freetype
fonts don't use anti-aliasing or hinting or any of that other
(supposedly) good stuff.  Yet they look much better.  That's basically
what I want.  But turning off anti-aliasing with Freetype actually
makes the problem ten times worse.

Here is a screenshot illustrating the different font issues:
http://www.unc.edu/~feiner/fonts.png
A - antialiasing on, autohinting on, hinting level none
B - antialiasing on, autohinting on, hinting level medium
C - antialiasing off
D - same as B but with Arial as the font (instead of Bitstream Vera Sans)
E - same as B and D, but showing a webpage with some of the
not-quite-so-goodly shaped glyphs and kerning problems
F - fonts with XMMS (which like proper)

There are obviously many more combinations I could have shown (and I
have certainly tried them all), but I hope this illustrates the main
issues I have been facing.  I will be glad to take more shots if these
do not do a good job of showing the problem.

Basicallly, I know that Windows can do it.  I know that Linux can do
it because Fedora did have nice fonts.  I saw somebody's Ubuntu that
had fonts that looked exactly as nice as in Windows.  So it is
possible.  But I cannot for the life of me make it happen.