[ft] rendering changes 2.1.10 -> 2.2.1

[Gordon Messmer]

I noticed that there was a conversation earlier (before I was on the 
list) about FC6 users filing bugs against freetype which might be cairo 
or fontconfig bugs, and I'm wondering if this is or isn't one of those.

Font rendering on FC6 differs from FC5.  I'm testing using a copy of 
libfreetype.so.6 that I copied from an FC5 system into ~/freetype.  I'm 
using LD_LIBRARY_PATH to load one copy of a Gnome application, and then 
loading a separate copy of the application with the usual library path. 
 When I select "None" or "Full" hinting in the font configuration 
panel, the two applications look identical.  However, if I select 
"Slight" or "Medium" the two applications may look different.

Luxi Sans looks the same at medium hinting, but Courier and Luxi Mono 
differ at both Slight and Medium.  I can't find any font that is 
rendered differently by the LD_LIBRARY_PATH hack when None or Full is 
selected.

Since the only difference between the two applications is the version of 
the freetype library (and anything statically linked?), it seems like 
there changes are probably therein.  The question is, what else can I do 
to find the problem?  I don't like the shapes of characters with Full 
hinting (never did), as it seems to squish characters horizontally. 
However, where Medium hinting used to provide very pleasing results, it 
now seems to squish characters vertically, and they're fuzzy.