[SOLVED]Very strange red fonts, 3d effect-ish?

speng · 2009-01-22 01:29:29

I find red fonts to be quite hard to read. I use Gnome, I'm not sure if it has something to do with my monitor?

Here is the best way I can explain it, there is a very thin black/gray-ish 3d effect kind of thing around the red text, it becomes quite obvious when I zoom on. Because of this, when the red text is small, it looks very ugly and is hard to read.

my.php?image=redistox3.png

This is the effect, does it seem slightly distorted to other people? If it is, it's probably a wrong font setting.

Last edited by speng (2009-01-24 11:46:28)

sokuban · 2009-01-22 01:32:35

It looks completely normal to me. (Aside from being red)

It could be my nice CRT monitor though.

Post a pic of when it is small?

Last edited by sokuban (2009-01-22 01:33:00)

speng · 2009-01-22 01:36:29

That's it being small. Hmm, so the graphics card is rendering them right, it must be a wrong setting or something wrong with my monitor.

LG M2294D <-- Monitor/TV.

It is connected via DVI-D (GPU) to HDMI (Monitor).
Here is my Xorg.conf:

# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings:  version 1.0  (buildmeister@builder62)  Tue Jan  6 09:44:34 PST 2009

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 1.0  (buildmeister@builder62)  Tue Jan  6 09:43:54 PST 2009

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
#    Load           "type1"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section    "InputDevice"
    Identifier    "Mouse0"
    Driver        "mouse"
    Option        "CorePointer"
    Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/mice"
    Option      "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
    Option        "Buttons"        "7"
    Option        "ZAxisMapping"        "4 5"
    Option      "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 6 7"
    Option      "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
    Option      "Resolution"    "1600"
EndSection


Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "LG M2294D-PZ"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 75.0
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 8800 GT"
    Option "NoLogo"    "True"
    Option "RenderAccel"    "True"
    Option "NoRenderExtension"    "False"
    Option "TripleBuffer"    "True"
    Option "NvAGP"    "0"
    Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals"    "True"
    Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "True"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TripleBuffer" "True"
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-0"
 
 SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
    Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

Is there anything that stands out as being wrong? I had another monitor before this one, I kept the Xorg file but made a few changes.

cerbie · 2009-01-22 03:17:13

It does look fine, for what it is. What you describe reads quite a bit like the monitor not displaying at the native resolution, and being poor at resampling (alternatively, the GPU doing it), or sending a badanalog signal (but, that'd be silly going DVi->HDMI, wouldn't it?). Can you verify that the monitor is getting sent its native resolution? If not that...

You may need to enable anti-aliasing. Think of each pixel not being a square, but rather, three bars: |||. Anti-aliasing with subpixel hinting will adjust each one separately, since each main color component is in a physically different position.
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=62851
In that thread, check the two images (it happened to be handy and open):
http://www.2and2.net/files/496a6e620038f.png
http://www.2and2.net/files/496a6ecb31471.png
Do either of those screenshots look better than your current fonts? If so, that's probably it.

Else, your monitor may have some sharpness adjustments that need resetting/disabling.

speng · 2009-01-22 03:53:10

Hmm this is very weird. Been playing around with it for a bit, got a nice crisp picture now:

http://img240.imageshack.us/img240/5889 … ot4ve8.png

Pic quality isn't very good but oh well, the "DejaVu Sans" font renders great. I am still having -some- "issues" with small red fonts but I doubt there is much I can do.
Thanks for the links, I'll try the XML script out. For now I've just left sub-pixel smoothing on with full hinting, my desktop font doesn't use it but the firefox fonts do.

What I realised is that sharpness was on 50 and I read on the internet that I should lower it to 0 because of how GPUs work which makes sense, never had to adjust the sharpness on a normal monitor before.

The small red font is readable, but not very aesthetically pleasing. Oh well.
I've also been playing some CS, I've noticed that the slightly degraded red font quality was also present there, I'm starting to think there might be an issue with how it renders the colour red, but I don't notice anything being off in videos or on my Xbox.

It can't be an issue with fonts. Even pictures with very small red fonts in them appear like how I mentioned in my first post.

One thing that caught my attention was that "Aspect Ratio" was set to 16:9 in the television menu with no way of changing it to 16:10 which was strange.

speng · 2009-01-22 06:29:39

I found a dead thread with someone having the same problem as me I think.

My red text looks a bit messed up like not, not as much, but it becomes obvious with bigger fonts.

Edit, The link: http://forums.tweaktown.com/f15/red-tex … ted-28114/
Another link: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/53417-3-distortion

Last edited by speng (2009-01-22 06:34:02)

cerbie · 2009-01-22 06:44:51

I don't know if 16:9 v. 16:10 means anything or not (does the monitor OSD tell you the resolution it is receiving?). One thing, though, Dejavu fonts are the best ever. They are based on Bitsream Vera, which was painstakingly tweaked for good rendering (I think they add a lot more non-Latin characters in Dejavu). On Windows, I make everything I can Bitstream Vera, and Dejavu on Linux (or Bistream Vera, depending on how diffult the distro makes dealing with fonts ).

speng · 2009-01-22 18:12:13

I ordered a DVI-D to DVI-D cable.
Do you think it would work better? Btw I am 100% definitely sure that it is running in 16:10 mode atm, everything is clear and so perfect.

My graphics card supports DVI-I but if I'm correct DVI-D works fine?
Once I have it, I will report back.

Thanks for the help.

speng · 2009-01-24 11:46:11

DVI-D to DVI-D cable was my solution.

I can now use 1680x1050 framebuffer graphics in the CTRL+ALT+Fx terminals perfectly and red text is as perfect as ever.

Solution: This monitor only supported PC mode with RGB/DVI-D.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-01-22 01:29:29

[SOLVED]Very strange red fonts, 3d effect-ish?

#2 2009-01-22 01:32:35

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange red fonts, 3d effect-ish?

#3 2009-01-22 01:36:29

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange red fonts, 3d effect-ish?

#4 2009-01-22 03:17:13

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange red fonts, 3d effect-ish?

#5 2009-01-22 03:53:10

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange red fonts, 3d effect-ish?

#6 2009-01-22 06:29:39

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange red fonts, 3d effect-ish?

#7 2009-01-22 06:44:51

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange red fonts, 3d effect-ish?

#8 2009-01-22 18:12:13

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange red fonts, 3d effect-ish?

#9 2009-01-24 11:46:11

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange red fonts, 3d effect-ish?

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