Arch Linux

weystrom

Member

Registered: 2019-12-29

Posts: 1

Improving font rendering

Hi, I'm looking for a way to fix some of the font rendering issues, here's an example:
https://i.imgur.com/kKiAinK.png

I get a lot of these subpixel rendering artifacts all over the system where the fonts are small, not just the browser.
I've followed the ArchWiki article on font rendering and, confusingly, the same issues are not present in ftview utility output (screenshot) for the same font, even though my /etc/fonts/conf.d parameters should result in pretty much the same config as displayed in this test environment:

Hoping that you guys have any advice on how to improve the rendering situation in the rest of the system.

Steps I've already taken:

• Checked that my subpixel pattern is set to RGB

• Played with different levels of hinting

• Ensured that lcddefault filter is enabled

• Tried freetype2-cleartype package from AUR

• Tried different DPI values

• Have set FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="truetype:interpreter-version=40"

My setup is 32"@2560x1440 (about 92ppi), KDE 5.17.4 (Xorg), freetype2 2.10.1-1

Thank you!

Mod Edit - Replaced oversized image with link.
CoC - Pasting pictures and code

Last edited by Slithery (2019-12-29 21:24:46)

afader

Member

Registered: 2013-09-12

Posts: 207

Re: Improving font rendering

If you haven't tried it yet, worth trying the following package set. It's the best font rendering I've been able to get on Arch purely in terms of subjective visual quality. I will warn you that there was a period of time when the packages were broken, had harfbuzz/icu issues, weren't maintained well, etc., and I had some crashing a while back when freetype and fontconfig were out of sync with some other package. But for my money it's the best treatment of font rendering, and you can configure it to be more Apple-like or more Microsoft-like, etc.

cairo-infinality-remix 1.17.2+17+g52a7c79fd-1
fontconfig-infinality-remix 2.13.91+24+g75eadca-2
freetype2-infinality-remix 2.10.1-1
lib32-freetype2-infinality-ultimate 2.9.1-2

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,734

Re: Improving font rendering

Did you check http://www.spasche.net/files/lcdfiltering/ from https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … _rendering ?

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ronmon

Member

Registered: 2011-04-15

Posts: 48

Re: Improving font rendering

This made me a little nostalgic, though not quite teary eyed, thinking of the old Font De-uglification guide in the official Linux HOWTO list from way back.

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/archived/FDU/

Last edited by ronmon (2019-12-30 20:12:57)