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#1 2006-04-30 00:09:38

Gullible Jones
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Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

See this screenshot:

screenshot1ic.th.png

Some letters jammed too close together, quite fuzzy, generally hard to read. This happens no matter what level of hinting I set in gnome-font-properties, and no matter what hinting preferences I turn on or off in about:config.

Funnily enough, though, the page looks fine in Firefox under E17. I suppose that might have something to do with E17's "bytecode" antialiasing option (on by default), whatever the hell that is.

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#2 2006-04-30 02:00:08

raskolnikov
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From: France
Registered: 2006-01-08
Posts: 100

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

Works fine here (Gnome + Firefox, everything up to date). I have Pango disabled and some tweaks in my local.conf, maybe that can help.


Excessive showering, grooming, and toothbrushing is not only vain, it wastes valuable coding time.

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#3 2006-04-30 02:43:29

Gullible Jones
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Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

Got Pango disabled here too... Wait a minute, do you use an LCD screen?

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#4 2006-04-30 09:54:44

raskolnikov
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From: France
Registered: 2006-01-08
Posts: 100

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

Yes.


Excessive showering, grooming, and toothbrushing is not only vain, it wastes valuable coding time.

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#5 2006-04-30 14:07:14

Gullible Jones
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Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

Mine is a CRT. Supposedly can't use subpixel AA; however, it is a Trinitron, which means that the subpixels are arranged similarly to those in an LCD monitor, so I can't help but wonder if subpixel antialiasing would work on it.

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#6 2006-04-30 14:35:42

raskolnikov
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From: France
Registered: 2006-01-08
Posts: 100

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

Hm you can try replacing "rgba" with "none" or comment this section, so. I use this local.conf on my desktop (one LCD panel and a CRT monitor, with Xinerama) and didn't notice any difference between rgba and none on the CRT. Of course the LCD looks better with rgba wink


Excessive showering, grooming, and toothbrushing is not only vain, it wastes valuable coding time.

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#7 2006-04-30 16:08:10

Gullible Jones
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Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

I'll try it I suppose... BTW, what exactly is "bytecode antialiasing"?

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#8 2006-05-01 16:37:37

raskolnikov
Member
From: France
Registered: 2006-01-08
Posts: 100

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

If I remember correctly, the bytecode interpreter uses data located in the font file (if available) to do antialiasing whereas the autohinter use generic algorithms to perform this. The only thing I'm sure is the autohinter looks hideous to me, so I disable it. Feel free to experiment, this file is the result of more X restarts than I do in a month wink


Excessive showering, grooming, and toothbrushing is not only vain, it wastes valuable coding time.

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#9 2006-05-01 19:25:01

Gullible Jones
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Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

Ah... Yes, autohinting looks hideous here too. So, how do I enable bytecode AA? :twisted:

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#10 2006-05-01 21:02:48

iBertus
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From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

You have to tweak the autohinter so that things look good on your system.

Note that the DPI should be changed for your monitor and this is for an LCD display.

{local.conf}

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#11 2006-05-01 21:15:40

Gullible Jones
Member
Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

Okay...

Question one: how do I find my monitor's DPI?

Question two: are you saying that it is not possible to enable bytecode antialiasing?

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#12 2006-05-01 22:05:56

raskolnikov
Member
From: France
Registered: 2006-01-08
Posts: 100

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

For DPI : xdpyinfo | grep -i resolution

For the bytecode interpreter, it must be enabled at compile time. I think it's ok on Arch, tough I have not checked.

iBertus, I am interested with your method to tweak the autohinter, but aren't some things missing to your local.conf (match and edit tags do not have arguments, and doctype/xml declarations are incomplete roll ) ?


Excessive showering, grooming, and toothbrushing is not only vain, it wastes valuable coding time.

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#13 2006-05-01 22:13:45

Gullible Jones
Member
Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

Okay, res is 98x108 DPI.

raskolnikov wrote:

For the bytecode interpreter, it must be enabled at compile time. I think it's ok on Arch, tough I have not checked.

Enabled in what, Xorg? If so, then it's enabled in Arch since E17 uses it... The question is what I'd put in /etc/fonts/conf.d to enable it manually.

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#14 2006-05-01 23:05:18

iBertus
Member
From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

Looks like phpbb doesn't like the tags in the local.conf file. I uploaded it to a temporary webspace.

As for bytecode in freetype, the technology has some license issues. It was compiled into the Arch freetype libs awhile back, so just disable autohint and it should work.

For DPI you should take the resolution of your monitor and divide by the physical size. So, for a 15" LCD: 1024 / 11.96 (inches) = 85.6DPI.

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#15 2006-05-02 00:05:37

Gullible Jones
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Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

iBertus wrote:

As for bytecode in freetype, the technology has some license issues. It was compiled into the Arch freetype libs awhile back, so just disable autohint and it should work.

I think autohint is disabled by default but I'll try it... BTW, what would those license issues be?

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#16 2006-05-02 00:11:03

iBertus
Member
From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

Apple owns the patents for most of the bytecode technology. See link

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#17 2006-05-02 00:16:03

Gullible Jones
Member
Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

Ouch... Boo to software patents. And as it happens, the autohinter is disabled by default.

(And for good reason too, it blurs and distorts things to an utterly ridiculous extent.)

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#18 2006-05-02 00:39:21

byte
Member
From: Düsseldorf (DE)
Registered: 2006-05-01
Posts: 2,046

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

Re. DPI setup:

X calculates the dpi setting from the visible area of your monitor/LCD. Most CRTs/displays should provide their geometry via DDC automatically, if not, take a ruler and create a proper DisplaySize entry (millimeters!) in the Monitor section of xorg.conf.


1000

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#19 2006-05-02 00:45:22

Gullible Jones
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Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

DDC works for my monitor, so I don't think that will be a problem.

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#20 2006-05-02 01:48:55

raskolnikov
Member
From: France
Registered: 2006-01-08
Posts: 100

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

Autohinter is as hideous as before, even with your tweaks iBertus. But at least when setting DPI to correct value (75 for my laptop), my monospace font looks better roll


Excessive showering, grooming, and toothbrushing is not only vain, it wastes valuable coding time.

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#21 2006-05-02 04:50:02

iBertus
Member
From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

Yeah, the autohinting is still blurry here. But it's not as bad for me as the defaults.

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#22 2006-05-02 11:01:45

Gullible Jones
Member
Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: Fonts on Wikipedia look hideous in Gnome

I'm going to have to file a bug asking for a bytecode AA script in /etc/fonts/conf.d...

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