Arch Linux

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

Well it was a security fix release... But yes this is extremely weird.

Any more news on this? FWIW, certain fonts (e.g. Bitstream Vera Sans) also look hideous with full hinting, there's some kind of color separation or something going on... And yes I mean grayscale hinting.

lanrat

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2003-10-28

Posts: 1,274

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

I guess everybody is just waiting for a new version.

mouse256

Member

From: Antwerpen, Belgium

Registered: 2005-08-24

Posts: 247

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

Same problems here too, haven't updated this box for 2 weeks (no internet) and updated it today. Fonts are way too fat in gnome.
I'm using a 19" CRT.
Setting font hinting to full (it was medium) doesn't help

elahav

Member

From: Ottawa, ON

Registered: 2005-04-18

Posts: 90

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

Why was bug 4680 closed? James (iphitus), can you please re-open it?

Thanks,
Elad

SuiRIS

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2006-04-15

Posts: 18

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

Since the last update of fontconfig, the fonts in Openoffice are looking fuzzy.
Please look at the following screenshot in contrast to the fonts in other GTK-apps, like Thunar:

Any Solutions?

PS: I enabled full hinting in Gnome.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

I've noticed that too... Right now I think the only solution is to use bitmap fonts for OpenOffice.

test1000

Member

Registered: 2005-04-03

Posts: 834

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

patches for all this stuff is here: http://www.freetype.org/freetype2/patch … tches.html

if you check around at http://www.freetype.org/ you will get all explained aswell, i think.

---

KISS = "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein

augustob

Member

From: Florianópolis, Brazil

Registered: 2006-03-17

Posts: 135

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

Wow, I thought I had managed to completely duck this sh*tstorm, until I opened OpenOffice and it looked like.. well, you know.

Glad it's being worked on, from that link test1000 posted.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

patches for all this stuff is here: http://www.freetype.org/freetype2/patch … tches.html

if you check around at http://www.freetype.org/ you will get all explained aswell, i think.

I am going to append this to the bug report. Like, right now.

Oh, right... And just FWIW: the bytecode interpreter still cannot be used.

lanrat

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2003-10-28

Posts: 1,274

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

Because of legal or technical problems ?

test1000

Member

Registered: 2005-04-03

Posts: 834

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

because of technical naivety; it's explained at the site.

the new kde 3.5.3 doesn't fix the "times new roman looks like crap in konqueror" bug. maybe it isn't tnr which looks crap i'm not sure... Does anyone know if 3.5.3 merged the fix?

---

KISS = "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

Furthermore, can the devs actually hear what we're saying about the "Rogue" patches?

Because of legal or technical problems ?

I don't know, but I think it's an Arch bug - JGC said he reenabled the BCI but it pretty clearly did not get enabled. A typo in the PKGBUILD perhaps?

test1000

Member

Registered: 2005-04-03

Posts: 834

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

hmm my "times new roman looks like crap" problem fixed itself when i copied /etc/fonts/fonts.conf.pacnew over /etc/fonts/fonts.conf

Maybe that will fix your issues too?

96 dpi x server might be important too.

---

KISS = "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein

slackhack

Member

Registered: 2004-06-30

Posts: 738

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

patches for all this stuff is here: http://www.freetype.org/freetype2/patch … tches.html

if you check around at http://www.freetype.org/ you will get all explained aswell, i think.

did those patches work for you? how/where does one apply them in arch? thanx.

aquila_deus

Member

From: Taipei

Registered: 2005-07-02

Posts: 348

Website

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

Has anyone else noticed that their fonts are rendered differently now with the latest freetype2 update?  Personally I think it looks much worse now.

Bitstream's and M$'s fonts look great with autohint, hintheavy.

Adobe's fonts and many chinese fonts looks much better with autohint now, hintslight.

I can't find anything that look worse than before.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

Has anyone else noticed that their fonts are rendered differently now with the latest freetype2 update?  Personally I think it looks much worse now.

Bitstream's and M$'s fonts look great with autohint, hintheavy.

Adobe's fonts and many chinese fonts looks much better with autohint now, hintslight.

I can't find anything that look worse than before.

Try setting the autohinting to medium or slight, and watch the bitstream and MS fonts become hideous, smudged monstrosities.

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

then dont use medium or slight Gullible.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

then dont use medium or slight Gullible.

The problem is that strong hinting will also distort some fonts. It's not major but it's a little annoying.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

Okay this is screwed up, it appears that the autohinter cannot be disabled. It also looks like part of Gnome is screwing up part of X...

slackhack

Member

Registered: 2004-06-30

Posts: 738

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

Okay this is screwed up, it appears that the autohinter cannot be disabled. It also looks like part of Gnome is screwing up part of X...

yep, same here. gnome is definitely screwing up X. i always use XFCE, but i installed linux on a friend's computer that's using gnome, so i switched my arch box into gnome to see something. when i switched back, all the fonts were screwed up worse than before, and the "user interface" was all the wrong colors and widgets. when i tried changing the UI settings in the XFCE settings panel, none of them worked until i rebooted. before rebooting, i noticed a gnome-settings-daemon running, i guess a leftover from being in gnome, so i killed that and it totally wasted my GUI settings. it looked horrible and it wouldn't revert back to normal, so i had to reboot.

btw, the gnome and fonts on the FC5 computer i installed look totally amazing, the best i have ever seen on either windows or a mac. :shock: i noticed an xfs thing running on FC, i wonder if that's the difference? or if implementations like in FC, whatever they are doing, could be studied and implemented in arch? i would gladly have a little more overhead if that's what it takes to get nicer fonts.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

XFS thing? You mean the X Font Server? I think that's pretty much essential for Arch Linux too... No sure though.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

FWIW Slackhack, that's not the sort of screwing up I see... Basically, when Gnome is installed it becomes completely impossible to use bitmap fonts, even when you explicitly enable them. In order to actually get the fonts working, you have to reinstall fontconfig.

(Interestingly, xfontsel sees the bitmap fonts and can use them properly, as can gtk-theme-switch (i.e. gtk1). GTK-theme-switch2 and GTK-chtheme can't select bitmap fonts either though. Since GTK2 uses XFT, it appears that something in Gnome completely breaks XFT for bitmap fonts.)

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

I dont think i've ever seen bitmap fonts selectable in GTK2, in my  years using linux.

James

slackhack

Member

Registered: 2004-06-30

Posts: 738

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

FWIW Slackhack, that's not the sort of screwing up I see... Basically, when Gnome is installed it becomes completely impossible to use bitmap fonts, even when you explicitly enable them. In order to actually get the fonts working, you have to reinstall fontconfig.

(Interestingly, xfontsel sees the bitmap fonts and can use them properly, as can gtk-theme-switch (i.e. gtk1). GTK-theme-switch2 and GTK-chtheme can't select bitmap fonts either though. Since GTK2 uses XFT, it appears that something in Gnome completely breaks XFT for bitmap fonts.)

what's an example of a bitmap font, as opposed to a non-bitmap font?

i uninstalled gnome to see what would happen, and omg, what an unholy mess. :shock: after i reinstalled, the fonts in xfce4 were even different than before. whatever is wrong, or whatever gnome has to do with it, it's clear that fonts are the achilles heel of arch linux. for some reason they just don't look as good as they do in other distros.

JGC

Developer

Registered: 2003-12-03

Posts: 1,664

Re: freetype/fontconfig, new behavior

These things are caused by Freetype2. Debian has the problem too, Gentoo has it buggy also since a day or so and other distributions will follow.

I'll try to make some time to revert to 2.1.10 and apply some security patches from "open"SuSE (they're not really open, you have to look for SRPMs and their bugzilla has the security bugreports locked out, even Sun is more open than this)