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phonky

Member

Registered: 2008-12-19

Posts: 78

Weird font issues with ATI Radeon and i3

I have really strange fonts issues.
I followed the Fonts and FontConfig threads to no avail so far (I have a .fonts.conf in my home).

Some fonts appear to be fine. For example bold ones, in white color or green.
But red text appears really but really ugly, nearly scrambled.

Also, on menus, text sometimes appears undeterminalistically blue-ish and black as it should be.

Don't know how to upload pics here otherwise I'd post a few screenshot parts.

Thanks to @karol, here a few pics:
red-green difference

another example

menu issue (note how the first few menu items appear blue-ish and the rest is black)

Last edited by phonky (2014-02-26 16:01:05)

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Weird font issues with ATI Radeon and i3

Don't know how to upload pics here otherwise I'd post a few screenshot parts.

Upload pics to some online hosting service like imgur and post links to them https://bbs.archlinux.org/help.php#bbcode

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,722

Re: Weird font issues with ATI Radeon and i3

Are you using hinting?  Perhaps your sub pixels are not a conventional triade of RGB subpixels.   Run the tests in the linked article, or get out a magnifying glass and look at your subpixel configuration on your display.  You might also try a different display.

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phonky

Member

Registered: 2008-12-19

Posts: 78

Re: Weird font issues with ATI Radeon and i3

I am using hinting in the .fonts.config , check my file:

?xml version="1.0"?>
   <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
   <fontconfig>
   <match target="font" >
     <edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
       <const>rgb</const>
     </edit>
   </match>
   <match target="font" >
     <edit mode="assign" name="hinting" >
       <bool>true</bool>
     </edit>
   </match>
   <match target="font" >
     <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
       <const>hintslight</const>
     </edit>
   </match>
   <match target="font" >
     <edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
       <bool>true</bool>
     </edit>
   </match>
   <match target="font">
     <edit mode="assign" name="lcdfilter">
       <const>lcddefault</const>
     </edit>
   </match>
 </fontconfig>

I was using Mint before, with MATE. I never was 100% happy with my display, maybe there's something with my monitor as well. But it certainly never was that bad.
I played with amdcccle a bit, and if I lower the "Saturation" to 0, the fonts appear very sharp, also the "red" ones - but there's actually no color...

korn36

Member

Registered: 2014-01-14

Posts: 111

Re: Weird font issues with ATI Radeon and i3

Your screenshots look good for me, so your monitor probably has a different subpixel layout. Try changing <const>rgb</const> to <const>bgr</const>

Last edited by korn36 (2014-02-26 19:11:41)

phonky

Member

Registered: 2008-12-19

Posts: 78

Re: Weird font issues with ATI Radeon and i3

I just changed the subpixel layou to bgr and it looks exactly the same....

I used to use the monitor as an external monitor for my netbook with linux mint,
and, ok, it never was perfect, but it certainly was not that bad...

phonky

Member

Registered: 2008-12-19

Posts: 78

Re: Weird font issues with ATI Radeon and i3

In fact if I go the test site linked in @ewaller 's post, I appear to have a rgb subpixeled monitor...

phonky

Member

Registered: 2008-12-19

Posts: 78

Re: Weird font issues with ATI Radeon and i3

It only now occurred to me I could go and check those images with another computer - it all looks great!

So maybe my monitor is damaged?

phonky

Member

Registered: 2008-12-19

Posts: 78

Re: Weird font issues with ATI Radeon and i3

For the records:
Using a VGA cable instead of HDMI improved immensely the situation.
Now idea why, but I'll stick to the VGA cable for the time being...