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whoops

Member

Registered: 2009-03-19

Posts: 891

[solved] Compiz - bad font / texture in windows until refresh (nvidia)

Hi!

After I use any sort of effect (like zooming out in expo or using scale plugin), most of the text and lines are badly rendered until the window gets refreshed. Text in some areas of the screen (mostly inactive windows) looks slightly darker, thinner and fuzzier + sort of pixel'ish, like a texture with bad resolution / rendering. Giving the window focus makes it normal again. So does "wiping" it with a different window - the parts of the screen I "wipe" look fine afterwards.

I had this problem before a looong long time ago. Since then, until a days or two ago, compiz has worked flawlessly... Can't remember how I fixed it the last time and can't figure out why it's back. Might have changed some (compiz & nvidia) settings before the problem occurred and also began to compile compiz0.9 (but did not finish / install it) -  as far as I can tell I reverted all of those changes (+ removed build deps for compiz0.9 that weren't there before) but the problem persists.

Any hints?

Last edited by whoops (2013-01-26 09:18:58)

magemaster

Member

From: Brasil

Registered: 2010-11-24

Posts: 16

Re: [solved] Compiz - bad font / texture in windows until refresh (nvidia)

Was happening here too, And I don't use compiz or any effect, just xfce.
I think the combination xorg + nvidia is in a bad moment, too buggy, may previous 7300 card support dropped, switched to 8400gs and got full system locks(just the mouse keeps moving), so I switched to nouveau for a while, and if I don't find any problem will make it permanent.

whoops

Member

Registered: 2009-03-19

Posts: 891

Re: [solved] Compiz - bad font / texture in windows until refresh (nvidia)

Hmmm... couldn't find a bug report upstream and couldn't find anything on the nvidia forums. Then again - not sure what I'm looking for or what's causing the problem. How do you call this sort of stuff? "Font rendering bug"? Does it have something to do with harfbuzz, should I look there?

Also: Still haven't found a workaround yet. Nouveau isn't working well for me, nvidia-beta didn't seem to fix the problem (and also I need to use custom kernel + a few custom modules at the moment due to problems with other hardware... which makes trying around with nouveau / nvidia versions a huge PITA). Any hints before I waste another half of a day (re)compiling stuff & (re)booting around?

Last edited by whoops (2012-12-17 14:05:33)

whoops

Member

Registered: 2009-03-19

Posts: 891

Re: [solved] Compiz - bad font / texture in windows until refresh (nvidia)

Did not manage to figure out how to install nouveau.
Also have not been able to find a bug report that fits and can't believe there are so few people affected if this really isn't a problem caused by bad configuration (on my end).

Anyone else had problems with this by now?
Any other ideas? It's really starting to get annoying.

I have very bad / hardly readable text when I scroll in firefox, too, until I shift focus somewhere else and back. Problem disappears if I switch to a XFCE4 WM without compositing.

whoops

Member

Registered: 2009-03-19

Posts: 891

Re: [solved] Compiz - bad font / texture in windows until refresh (nvidia)

Still the same problem. Still no idea how to get to the bottom of this.

whoops

Member

Registered: 2009-03-19

Posts: 891

Re: [solved] Compiz - bad font / texture in windows until refresh (nvidia)

Can someone tell me where else to look? I have no idea what this problem is and I don't know what to search for.

Tried random cairo patches... freetype patches... antialiasing settings in different places... changing my fonts (a lot)... messing around in my font configs in /etc/fonts...

Last edited by whoops (2013-01-24 15:06:26)

whoops

Member

Registered: 2009-03-19

Posts: 891

Re: [solved] Compiz - bad font / texture in windows until refresh (nvidia)

Managed to capture it on a screenshot (which isn't easy, because making screenshots refreshes the windows most of the time, getting rid of the "extra light / unreadable" text...). The square in the upper right quarter is an area refreshed by proximity to the mouse pointer, where text looks sort of normal (but somehow still not quite right... not sure).

It it somehow possible to see there at which step in the font rendering stuff it's broken?
Looks a little like sharpening, but I have texture sharpening set to off...

Last edited by whoops (2013-01-25 09:53:44)

whoops

Member

Registered: 2009-03-19

Posts: 891

Re: [solved] Compiz - bad font / texture in windows until refresh (nvidia)

*sigh*

Turned out that FXAA is kind of broken. And not only that - the button for FXAA in nvidia-settings didn't do anything, so only thought I tried disabling it while it was active all along. Not sure if the "real" name of the corresponding setting is "FSAA" or what's up with that... but I grabbed an nvidia settings file from a backup and did some more random stuff... and after I somehow managed to really disable FXAA, the problem is FINALLY gone.

Last edited by whoops (2013-01-26 09:19:12)