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#1 2007-12-25 20:27:17

sfdsafds
Member
Registered: 2007-03-17
Posts: 5

Open Office renders fonts differently (with screenshot)

Open Office renders fonts much more differently from the rest of my Gnome apps.
I have the three LCD packages from AUR/community and my fonts look great on my LCD, but OO is different.

Here is the menu bar of Writer with the menu bar of Firefox on top of it:

OO-badfonts.png

Last edited by sfdsafds (2007-12-25 20:50:56)

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#2 2007-12-25 21:36:52

buttons
Member
From: NJ, USA
Registered: 2007-08-04
Posts: 620

Re: Open Office renders fonts differently (with screenshot)

Yes.  This is because OOo doesn't use freetype.  Yes, it's stupid.  Yes, it's a bug.

No fix in sight, either.  Use abiword and other alternatives if it really bothers you.

EDIT: This might be misleading.  OOo does use a freetype, it's just not yours.  It's got a built-in version.  There was one happy time you could LD_PRELOAD your own freetype and escape this, but it doesn't work anymore.

Last edited by buttons (2007-12-25 21:38:12)


Cthulhu For President!

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#3 2007-12-25 21:40:23

Mantaar
Member
Registered: 2007-12-17
Posts: 70

Re: Open Office renders fonts differently (with screenshot)

AFAIK, OOo uses it's very own toolkit to render anything. Must be one of the worst design-decisions I've ever come across...

Anyways, no fix for it, but you might want to try KOffice - I hear it's slowly maturing into something better than OOo...


Guy #1: I'd totally hit that.
Guy #2: Dude, I'd hit that so hard whoever could pull me out would become the King of England.
--College Walk, Columbia University (Overheard in NY)

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#4 2007-12-25 21:54:16

sfdsafds
Member
Registered: 2007-03-17
Posts: 5

Re: Open Office renders fonts differently (with screenshot)

Interesting, thanks for the reply guys.. I will see if OO comes with a compile flag to use external freetype2..

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#5 2007-12-25 22:15:09

Mantaar
Member
Registered: 2007-12-17
Posts: 70

Re: Open Office renders fonts differently (with screenshot)

sfdsafds wrote:

Interesting, thanks for the reply guys.. I will see if OO comes with a compile flag to use external freetype2..

You're gonna compile OOo yourself? Have fun. I did that once or twice, just for the fun of it - it's not fun. Will not take less than 6 hours and is bound to fail in the last stage...


Guy #1: I'd totally hit that.
Guy #2: Dude, I'd hit that so hard whoever could pull me out would become the King of England.
--College Walk, Columbia University (Overheard in NY)

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#6 2007-12-25 23:29:48

buttons
Member
From: NJ, USA
Registered: 2007-08-04
Posts: 620

Re: Open Office renders fonts differently (with screenshot)

sfdsafds wrote:

Interesting, thanks for the reply guys.. I will see if OO comes with a compile flag to use external freetype2..

It doesn't.  Really, there isn't any fix right now.  Google for open office and font rendering, and you'll see what I mean.  Sorry.

Don't bother compiling the SVN, either.  They're not in any rush.


Cthulhu For President!

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#7 2008-05-04 02:55:14

fede
Member
Registered: 2007-06-29
Posts: 126

Re: Open Office renders fonts differently (with screenshot)

Several distros have included a fix for this, including Ubuntu Hardy and latest Fedora. There is a patched version for archlinux available. See here:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=47420

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