freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

UnrealX · 2006-05-21 20:43:14

It seems my problem resolved itself.
I rebooted and got nice fonts again.

iBertus · 2006-05-21 22:05:54

Gullible Jones wrote:

(So far, the only way I know of to get bytecode AA is to use E17 - its session manager seems to be the only one that doesn't prohibit the use of bytecode antialiasing, and I couldn't find a way to do it with text files. )

Bytecode used to "just work" when the autohinter was disabled. The advantage of bytecode is that fonts can store hinting info, which allows some fonts to render better. Freetype is moving away from the bytecode stuff, however, because Apple owns lots of patents dealing with it.

Gullible Jones · 2006-05-21 23:55:59

Now that is annoying.

(I do wonder, why does it still work with E17?)

jani · 2006-05-22 00:21:19

I've managed to get back to my nice looking fonts (in KDE) without needing to downgrade. It seems there's some sort of problem in KDE's font handling, which got resolved when I went to Control Centre, Appearance and Themes, Fonts. I chose Defaults, then reconfigured the anti-aliasing setttings to disable the excluded range, enable sub-pixel hinting RGB and Full hinting style. Restart X, and the fonts are just like they used to be. The names of all the fonts changed from Bitstream Vera to Sans Serif or Monospace, but now the mismatched line widths are gone, and the fonts themselves haven't changed. I really don't know why, but it seems all this problem was the result of the way KDE accesses the fonts from freetype2, rather than any degraded performance due to patent concerns (I was already considering compiling freetype2 by myself and enabling the patent affected bytecode interpreter stuff).

Anyway, the good news is that there seems to be no reason to downgrade or otherwise modify your system to enjoy good fonts.

cascat · 2006-05-22 00:40:13

I use kde and have my font settings in control center set as in the previous post. After installing the upgraded fontconfig and freetype2 (not the new fontconfig from JGC) my fonts were blocky, thicker, and with uneven texture on my TFT screens. I use the Deja Vu font family as my default fonts in KDE. I simply downgraded freetype2 and my crisp fonts returned. Why not configure the new freetype2 the same as the previous package? I thought the new package was required because of a security issue.

Gullible Jones · 2006-05-22 02:25:12

It is.

ozar · 2006-05-22 02:53:47

Friggin' fonts have always kicked my ever-lovin' Linux ass! :evil:

iphitus · 2006-05-22 04:01:51

jani wrote:

I've managed to get back to my nice looking fonts (in KDE) without needing to downgrade. It seems there's some sort of problem in KDE's font handling, which got resolved when I went to Control Centre, Appearance and Themes, Fonts. I chose Defaults, then reconfigured the anti-aliasing setttings to disable the excluded range, enable sub-pixel hinting RGB and Full hinting style. Restart X, and the fonts are just like they used to be. The names of all the fonts changed from Bitstream Vera to Sans Serif or Monospace, but now the mismatched line widths are gone, and the fonts themselves haven't changed. I really don't know why, but it seems all this problem was the result of the way KDE accesses the fonts from freetype2, rather than any degraded performance due to patent concerns (I was already considering compiling freetype2 by myself and enabling the patent affected bytecode interpreter stuff).
Anyway, the good news is that there seems to be no reason to downgrade or otherwise modify your system to enjoy good fonts.

What if I don't use KDE?

jani · 2006-05-22 04:07:18

My fonts in Firefox never went bad to start with, and from earlier in the thread apparently it was quite easy to get Gnome to return to the nice looking fonts. Dunno about other WM, they haven't really been mentioned. I was going to try a new user with an empty configuration to see if KDE automagically makes a new user's fonts look nice.

Edit: yep, a new user will get nice KDE fonts with no effort on the part of the user.

jw · 2006-05-22 06:17:13

To those wondering how to set font hinting w/o KDE:

I think KDE just writes a ~/.fonts.conf file, which apparently most applications obey. For those that haven't got one, here's mine:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
   <const>none</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>hintfull</const>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
</fontconfig>

iphitus · 2006-05-22 06:33:43

The thing is.. I shouldnt need to set my fonts to one particular setting to have them looking half decent. As they are now, all the various settings work fine, and give me reasonable fonts of varying conditions. It's the sort of thing that should work out of the box, and they did before the update.

Any other solution than an upstream fix is simply a workaround.

James

http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/4680

yi · 2006-05-23 02:39:51

Ok, looks like JGC updated the freetype2 packages to turn the bytecode interpreter back on. I think the fonts still look worse than before but much more tolerable. Please upgrade and see what you think.

iphitus · 2006-05-23 08:46:28

reopen the bug then

cascat · 2006-05-23 20:47:05

Upgraded to the new freetype2 this morning and still have blocky, chunky fonts in KDE. The fonts in Firefox are good. It appears there is a problem between KDE and the new freetype. I use all KDE apps so back to freetype2-2.1 until resolved.

slackhack · 2006-05-23 21:13:55

upgraded today, noticed the horrible fonts right away, came here and saw all the posts and felt better that at least i wasn't alone this time. but i don't think it's a KDE problem, because i don't use KDE and i still have the problem. i reverted to the earlier freetype2 and fontconfig, and that's fixed it for now. i think it's just going to take some work to play around with the ~/.fonts.conf file. btw, i have DVI and a samsung LCD monitor. i wonder if the problem is mostly people with LCDs, or if CRT people are noticing differences, too.

sux to see this problem cropping up again in linux, you'd think the freetype people could get their act together by now.

jani · 2006-05-23 23:29:13

Slackhack,
here's my ~/.fonts.conf file (after I got the new packages working with nice fonts) for you to try if you want:

<?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>hintfull</const>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
</fontconfig>

slackhack · 2006-05-24 00:55:58

jani wrote:

Slackhack,
here's my ~/.fonts.conf file (after I got the new packages working with nice fonts) for you to try if you want:

thanks jani. that's pretty much what i have already, except with "none" in the rgba field (which seems to work better on LCDs). i also picked up these additions somewhere, back when i was having all these freetype problems the first time, if anyone needs them:

<!-- Autohinter is not turned on automatically. Only disable this if you have recompiled Freetype with the bytecode interpreter, which is run automatically. Although to be honest, Freetype are right, there isn't much difference between the two. Note that OpenOffice is built against the bytecode interpreter, so even if you have compiled it and override it with the autohinter, OOo will still use the bytecode interpreter -->
 <match>
  <edit>
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>

<!-- Helvetica is a non true type font, and will look bad. This replaces it with whatever is the default sans-serif font 
 <match>
  <test>
   <string>Helvetica</string>
  </test>
  <edit>
   <string>bitstreamverasans</string>
  </edit>
 </match>

 <match>
  <test>
   <string>Times</string>
  </test>
  <edit>
   <string>timesnewroman</string>
  </edit>
 </match>

after rebooting, the smudginess is gone, but what annoys me the most about these font problems is how freetype changes the shape of the fonts. you can see the difference in these two shots:

notice in the second example how the ascender (the part of the letterform that rises above the body of the letter) in letters like "h," "l," "k," and "d" is way too high, especially easy to see in "Thursday." the lower case "h" is almost 50% taller than the capital T! or look at the word "York" in both versions, and notice how the first one looks more smooth and natural, whereas the "k" at the end distracts you in the second example. it just kind of sticks up awkwardly, distracting the eye. it's not supposed to look like that. and notice the weird shape of the upper case W in Wednesday.

i used those shots b/c they're the first thing i noticed when i upgraded, and there's not much text there so it's easy to compare. but when you're looking a whole block or page of text and the letters are malformed like that, it really makes reading the text annoying and difficult. all the letterforms should be balanced and proportional, like in the first example, not sticking up out of the plane like that, with lower case letters taller than capitals.

anyway, i'm not sure what the freetype people are doing to keep having that happen to the fonts, but it really hurts readability even more than the bluriness, imho. when i first had the problem a year or so ago, it was solved by using the ~/.fonts.conf, but now that doesn't seem to be working. so i don't know what the fix will be this time, but it's getting really annoying to have to keep dealing with it.

JGC · 2006-05-24 06:18:01

Try to get rid of all weird font configuration things and upgrade to the fontconfig package I posted in this thread. The new fontconfig comes with a hinting blacklist for certain fonts.

slackhack · 2006-05-24 13:50:21

apoikos wrote:

I already upgraded fontconfig to 2.3.95 and it didn't make any difference. The only way to get properly-positioned greek letters on Arial with freetype 2.2.1 was to turn hinting completely off from KDE's control center, but then again the fonts looked fuzzy and were very tiring to read. I suspect there's something wrong with hinting in 2.2.1.

definitely. here are more shots, one with hinting and one without. if you load them in the same browser window one after the other and then switch back and forth (alt + < >), you can see the difference pretty dramatically.

http://datalink.homelinux.com/fontprob/ … t-true.png
http://datalink.homelinux.com/fontprob/ … -false.png

JGC: your package didn't change anything on my system. i didn't reboot, only restarted X, but there was no difference. i had to mess around with the autohinter settings to get the fonts to change back to normal proportions.

phildg · 2006-05-24 20:59:17

slackhack wrote:

if CRT people are noticing differences, too.

I'm a CRT type of person, and I can't tell any difference. Having seen this thread I was a bit worried about the update and took a screenshot beforehand to compare, but its been fine. Not to gloat or anything

shaurz · 2006-05-25 07:06:43

Build 2 - the fonts look better than build 1 but still different than older versions, and arguably worse (bold fonts still too thick, anti-aliasing is too heavy).

shaurz · 2006-05-25 17:57:20

I was sure I'd seen fonts like this before... ahh they look the same in Fedora Core. Argh!

Gullible Jones · 2006-05-27 02:35:32

Exactly the same problem, new version is no fix at all. Bytecode AA is still not used at all, anywhere, unless you happen to use Enlightenment DR17. AA fonts are extremely blurry and distorted unless full hinting is used, and full hinting has its own problems.

It should be noted that, before this problem arose, the same effects on fonts could be achieved by enabling the autohinter, and that enabling the autohinter as of now gives you the same trouble as medium or slight hinting. Perhaps the autohinter is being forced on when it shouldn't?

Gullible Jones · 2006-05-27 02:43:40

Also, I've found that you need to refresh the font cache after making config changes in order for those changes to take effect. If, for example, you install a set of bitmap fonts, and then enable bitmap fonts in /etc/fonts/conf.d, you have to run fc-cache for those fonts again after enabling bitmap fonts, or X will not see them.

unixguru · 2006-05-27 14:38:13

Is the problem due to freetype itself or packaging? I can't belive they actually made a new version which is horrible compared to the previous version.

Arch Linux

#51 2006-05-21 20:43:14

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#52 2006-05-21 22:05:54

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#53 2006-05-21 23:55:59

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#54 2006-05-22 00:21:19

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#55 2006-05-22 00:40:13

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#56 2006-05-22 02:25:12

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#57 2006-05-22 02:53:47

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#58 2006-05-22 04:01:51

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#59 2006-05-22 04:07:18

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#60 2006-05-22 06:17:13

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#61 2006-05-22 06:33:43

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#62 2006-05-23 02:39:51

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#63 2006-05-23 08:46:28

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#64 2006-05-23 20:47:05

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#65 2006-05-23 21:13:55

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#66 2006-05-23 23:29:13

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#67 2006-05-24 00:55:58

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#68 2006-05-24 06:18:01

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#69 2006-05-24 13:50:21

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#70 2006-05-24 20:59:17

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#71 2006-05-25 07:06:43

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#72 2006-05-25 17:57:20

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#73 2006-05-27 02:35:32

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#74 2006-05-27 02:43:40

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

#75 2006-05-27 14:38:13

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

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