Re: [ft] Tweaking/Improving FreeType Antialiasing

[Tor Andersson]

On 8/27/06, address@hidden <address@hidden> wrote:
> Tor,
>
> Thanks for taking the time to respond, and sorry for the double post.
> I accidently sent from the wrong email address, but apparently
> somebody was nice enough to approve it for posting.
>
> If I'm reading your post correctly, you're basically saying that
> getting text that looks the way I want is hopeless. I'm very
> sensitive to font appearance, but I'm not intimately familiar with
> all the terminology. It sounds like Linux has an API limitation? And
> this API limitation is what in turn makes the fonts look so
> miserable? (In my view.)

The primary API limitation is the integer only coordinates.
That is because when Xft was designed, the primary concern
was being able to port over old apps quickly, and all old X11 apps
assume that font metrics are snapped to integer coordinates.

Why Gtk+ and KDE also do so, you'll have to ask someone else.
I had hoped that Pango would be able to do the right thing, but no...

> Regarding turning off hinting, wasn't that the default setting under
> FC5? I'm fairly sure I experimented around with turning on hinting
> (auto/bytecode) because the FC5 default was off. I wasn't happy with
> the FC5 default settings, not by a long shot.

I seriously doubt that FC5 (or any distro, for that matter) would default
to unhinted. Last time I installed Ubuntu, even the option in the GUI
preference dialog that says "best shapes" gave me hinted text. I had
to resort to hacking my own .fonts.conf.

> If true, this sucks for me, because frankly, fonts are a big deal to
> me. I have to stare at them nonstop. I would nearly kill to get a
> browser that looks like Safari (or another OS X WebKit-based browser)
> under Linux. Even under OS X, Mozilla-based browsers have horrendous
> kerning - particularly of italic serif fonts. I love the feature set,
> but the kerning turns me off - despite using the system anti-aliasing
> - so I can't stand to use Mozilla more than the bare minimum.

FWIW, Safari also snaps text to pixel coordinates (because the KHTML
base did so) and as a result Safari text looks more uneven than text using
the native Cocoa APIs for text drawing.

> Maybe I'm an idiot, but I think one the largest barriers to using
> Linux on the desktop for me is the maddening font rendering quality.
> Where precisely is the problem coming in? Would it be possible to use
> an alternative desktop or window manager to get around it?

Aye. It's the number one reason I don't use Linux very much. Can't stand
the text rendering :( That, and the lack of margins in the terminal emulators.
My pet hate is text that bumps up right against the window border.

> I did look at the examples you showed me. The first example looks
> somewhat better than what I normally see under Linux. The kerning is
> pleasant and the anti-aliasing appears to be strong enough to offer
> an accurate rendering of the text for that point size, although it
> has a distinctly soft/blurry look compared to 10.4's subpixel anti-
> aliasing, much like fonts looked under earlier versions of Mac OS X.
> I would be curious how well those settings work across a wide range
> of fonts.

That's because it is the same blurry fonts as earler versions of Mac OS X.

Mac OS X also used to apply (so I have discovered by empirical
testing) a gamma of 1.4 to its text, which significantly improves the
appearance of
black text on a white background (and also fucks up white text on a black
background). I haven't looked into 10.4, so I can't say for sure there.

> Any additional thoughts/suggestions?

Start a campaign. I think there may be enough people interested in
good font rendering that we can make a change if we put our hearts
in it. (But don't hope for too much)

Feel free to contact me on or off this list if you have any further
questions. I don't follow the usual linux mailing lists very much.

Tor