Arch Linux

stefan

Member

Registered: 2013-03-22

Posts: 104

[solved] Fontconfig, blurry again

I've spent the better part of this afternoon trying to fix what the recent fontconfig update has caused (again).  The fonts are blurry.  As the screenshot shows, the fonts are blurred horizontally in emacs, xterm and firefox.  Also affected are the menus of gimp, FVWM, inkscape.

Although `/etc/fonts/local.conf` reads

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>

  <match target="font">
    <edit name="rgba" mode="assign">
      <const>none</const>
    </edit>
  </match>

  <match target="font">
    <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">
      <bool>false</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>

  <match target="font">
    <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign">
      <const>hintfull</const>
    </edit>
  </match>

</fontconfig>

and it is loaded:

$ fc-conflist | grep local
+ /etc/fonts/local.conf: No description
+ /etc/fonts/conf.d/51-local.conf: Load local customization file

I was pretty sure that `hintfull` should fix this, but it did not.

Any advice?

Thanks,
Stefan

Last edited by stefan (2020-09-27 08:42:33)

netnoob44

Member

Registered: 2020-08-31

Posts: 8

Re: [solved] Fontconfig, blurry again

I  can't help you but i've always had issues with fonts in arch.
Doesn't help that most of the freetype packages in AUR are broken due to dead keys.

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 50,957

Re: [solved] Fontconfig, blurry again

a) wayland? https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=259286
b) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … eter_(BCI) and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … LCD_filter
There seems too much subpixel rendering (notably for hintfull) and maybe geared towards a RGB subpixel hinting.

nb. that FREETYPE_PROPERTIES will only apply to processes started from the shell where the value is available/changed and generally fontconfig updates only apply to *processes* started after the change (esp. relevant for firefox which might keep a daemon lingering around)

There's also a recent complaint about (isolaetd) blurriness here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=259276

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stefan

Member

Registered: 2013-03-22

Posts: 104

Re: [solved] Fontconfig, blurry again

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … eter_(BCI)

nb. that FREETYPE_PROPERTIES will only apply

Oh, look!  That's where it failed:

$ diff filesystem-2020.08.21-1-x86_64.pkg/etc/profile filesystem-2020.09.03-1-x86_64.pkg/etc/profile | head 
6,7c6,8
< # Append our default paths
< appendpath () {
---
> # Append "$1" to $PATH when not already in.
> # This function API is accessible to scripts in /etc/profile.d
> append_path () {
16,19c17,20
< appendpath '/usr/local/sbin'
< appendpath '/usr/local/bin'

The `filesystem` package changed the name of the function `appendpath` in `/etc/profile`.  But since I have tweaked my profile (umask), this ended up in a `.pacnew`.

As a result, `profile` failed before reaching `profile.d/freetype2.sh`, failing to set up `FREETYPE_PROPERTIES`.

Thanks for helping seth!

Cheers
Stefan