[NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

shining · 2007-08-27 21:35:17

saneone wrote:

Luckily for me (but it is also hard to explain why) it doesn't affect Opera or Konqueror...
Both screenshots (Opera and FF) taken in "autohint true" setting, so I don't have any ideas why Firefox's spacing is so different...

I remember I had many issues with that a while ago when I played with fonts settings.
Every apps reacted differently to fontconfig settings, not only qt vs gtk ones, but also between different gtk apps (maybe cairo vs non cairo ones, ...)

You might also want to check the output of

xrdb -q |grep Xft

to check if any settings are set there, that might override the ones from ~/.fonts.conf .

saneone · 2007-08-27 21:41:08

shining wrote:

You might also want to check the output of
xrdb -q |grep Xft
to check if any settings are set there, that might override the ones from ~/.fonts.conf .

the output of this command is "nothing"... is it bad?

shining · 2007-08-27 21:58:39

saneone wrote:

the output of this command is "nothing"... is it bad?

No, it's good, it means you don't have conflicting settings there.

saneone · 2007-08-27 22:10:40

I don't want to reinstall my whole system...
There must be a working solution...

Last edited by saneone (2007-08-27 22:11:07)

jskier · 2007-08-28 18:23:25

saneone wrote:

I don't want to reinstall my whole system...
There must be a working solution...

The problem for me was MS fonts... I need them but getting rid of the ttf-ms-fonts package makes everything look flawless. I must have installed them while doing a term paper

jinn · 2007-08-28 18:32:28

I have the same thing with gtk apps in kdemod.. firefox fonts are really big, with more spacing.

saneone · 2007-08-28 19:44:46

jinn wrote:

I have the same thing with gtk apps in kdemod.. firefox fonts are really big, with more spacing.

I use kdemod too...

The problem occurs even when I create new account...

Last edited by saneone (2007-08-28 19:45:21)

saneone · 2007-08-30 00:14:15

I've just found a working solution

I've added one line:

export MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1

to /etc/profile.d/kde.sh

and it works like a charm

Thank You All for your answers!

Last edited by saneone (2007-08-30 00:14:58)

FeatherMonkey · 2007-08-30 00:41:44

I may be wrong but I just know I install it when i have problems and it seems to solve it for me is to install gtk-qt-engine, perhaps I'm wrong though I'm intrigued by the above solution.

saneone · 2007-08-30 18:10:59

Does anyone know how to disable Pango for all GTK2 applications?

I get correct font rendering in Mozilla apps (due to disabling Pango), but I still don't like the way The Gimp and Azureus render fonts...

Last edited by saneone (2007-08-30 18:14:22)

kagerato · 2007-09-10 04:35:53

Pango (the text internationalization library) is a required dependency of GTK2, so I doubt there is a means of disabling it. What that MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO environment variable probably does is switch the font rendering backend. Pango has two -- Xft2 (default) and a direct freetype mode. (Source: http://www.gtk.org/api/2.6/gtk/gtk-building.html , dependencies section.) As I understand it, Xft relies on fontconfig and hence uses its configuration (usually at /etc/fonts/fonts.conf and associated files), and the other mode does not. To disable Xft you might try another environment variable, GDK_USE_XFT . Set it to 0 to disable. The default is on, however, and generally you do want Xft and fontconfig enabled.

I see that you've already tried toggling the autohinter (fontconfig "autohint" property). The other major freetype settings are the sub-pixel rendering (fontconfig "rgba" property) which makes a significant difference in the anti-aliasing, the strength of the hinting (fontconfig "hintstyle" property), and whether anti-aliasing and hinting are enabled at all (fontconfig "hinting" and "antialias" properties). See http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/XOr … figuration .

This is an educated guess on my part, but I think your original configuration (the old "very nice" look) was TTF bytecode interpreter on (autohinter off), anti-aliasing and hinting on, and sub-pixel rendering on with a 'medium' hint style. In order to get TTF bytecode interpretation, keep in mind that your freetype binary has to be compiled with it enabled (there are three patents by Apple on its procedures). I don't know whether Arch's build includes it; most distros do not. (The relevant define should be TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER .) Whether the bytecode interpreter gives better looking results than the autohinter is a matter of taste.

There are some PNGs at http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/2033?opened=399 to do some comparison of font appearance with and without the bytecode interpreter.

In any case, good luck.

schivmeister · 2007-09-29 15:40:04

xrdb -q |grep Xft

That outputs:

Xft.dpi:        96

Does that mean some component has a different DPI setting like GTK+?

Am I lucky to stumble upont this thread or what? I have been slapping my face these few days trying to figure out why QT and GTK+ can't get along in the same platform it was meant to run on.

Previously I did not care much about font rendering (no, I mean I gave up hope), but recently it caught my attention that other people's fonts (judging from all those screenshots and guides available on better fonts in Linux) looked WAY better. Last week I read up on Gentoo's Xorg and Fonts wiki again and I think I missed the part on BCI and Xft Autohinting before. That time my fonts looked not-so-nice, but all my applications had the same unified look for fonts, regardless of widget toolkit.

I then found out that all those while on Arch I'd been running with BCI on, since in the Arch's version of the Xorg and Fonts wiki it mentions the distro ships with BCI compiled in by default. This interested me to the extent that I went ahead and tried out autohinting. I copied the LCD example from the Gentoo wiki and pasted it in .fonts.conf, downloaded libxft-lcd, then restarted X. Upon re-entry, I was instantly amazed. I had never before seen such beautiful rendering of fonts on an LCD, and definitely not in Windows. Take a good look, view a Windows system with an LCD from different angles and benchmark this - you'll know Xft's autohinting for LCDs is superior.

I was so happy. Really.......And then I clicked on the Firefox icon sitting in Kicker. I was sad again. Such disappointment could only be expressed through bare-fisted punches to the face of the one who questions that very emotion. I checked out all other GTK+ applications, and true enough to my horror the font rendering was even uglier than my previous environment with BCI.

So I figured out that:

BCI + Full-hinting = Unified

Xft Autohinting + Xft's LCD patches + Medium-hinting = Beautiful in one half, uglier than ever before in the other

Somebody please prove me wrong

fwojciec · 2007-09-29 15:50:51

I think you might need cairo-lcd as well, but I don't know - I don't use KDE. There is also freetype2-lcd package available on AUR.

schivmeister · 2007-09-30 15:16:47

Heh thanks! cairo-lcd and linking the autohint did some magic, although there is still a significant difference between QT and GTK+ fonts. I don't think freetype2-lcd is needed though, because my current fonts in KDE (QT-based apps) look awesome, and I didn't see any visual difference after replacing the normal freetype2 package for either QT or GTK+ apps. Anyway, at least now my fonts look better than when I was ignorant

saneone · 2007-09-30 21:34:47

did u install libxft-lcd?
if no, then do it...

schivmeister · 2007-10-01 14:45:28

Yes I had libxft..Anyway I think it was some sorta placebo..now I'm happy and satisfied Don't think it can get any better than this:

Opera (QT) rendering: http://img.flashtux.org/img1324259280a2x9f822ad3.png

Firefox (GTK+) rendering: http://img.flashtux.org/img132425927fa8x3eabc41a.png

Font: Lucida Grande
Monospace Font: Arial
Size: 16
Minimum size: 12

saneone · 2007-10-01 14:58:29

spacing is different in Firefox (IMO worse and less readable)... try to disable pango

schivmeister · 2007-10-01 18:51:33

Yeah and the sizes don't match up =/ I need pango to render those squares!

Arch Linux

#26 2007-08-27 21:35:17

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#27 2007-08-27 21:41:08

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#28 2007-08-27 21:58:39

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#29 2007-08-27 22:10:40

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#30 2007-08-28 18:23:25

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#31 2007-08-28 18:32:28

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#32 2007-08-28 19:44:46

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#33 2007-08-30 00:14:15

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#34 2007-08-30 00:41:44

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#35 2007-08-30 18:10:59

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#36 2007-09-10 04:35:53

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#37 2007-09-29 15:40:04

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#38 2007-09-29 15:50:51

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#39 2007-09-30 15:16:47

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#40 2007-09-30 21:34:47

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#41 2007-10-01 14:45:28

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#42 2007-10-01 14:58:29

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

#43 2007-10-01 18:51:33

Re: [NEARLY SOLVED] font rendering in gtk apps problem after last upgrade

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