mozilla: no freetype support?

slackhack · 2004-08-18 13:49:25

i was just noticing in about:buildconfig that arch mozilla was not built with freetype2 support, and i was wondering why that was. is freetype2 disabled in arch xfce4, too? if so, which modules would i have to rebuild to get it?

i3839 · 2004-08-18 16:34:04

probably because it's compiled with "--enable-xft".

slackhack · 2004-08-18 16:42:46

i3839 wrote:

probably because it's compiled with "--enable-xft".

but the two aren't incompatible, are they?

i3839 · 2004-08-18 16:59:58

I think freetype2 support is old, for when X didn't had freetype support. It's not incompatible, but it doesn't make much sense to not use the new interface.

slackhack · 2004-08-18 17:59:06

i3839 wrote:

I think freetype2 support is old, for when X didn't had freetype support. It's not incompatible, but it doesn't make much sense to not use the new interface.

it does if fonts suck and it could be because freetype2's not enabled. w-t-f? that is a major problem, it seems to me. in fact i think freetype2 uses Xft, or vice versa, so i don't think it's an either/or proposition.

anyone else have any input on this? this could be the source of all the font woes. then again, it might not be, but i think there's a good chance it is for the reason that last night i installed FVWM for the first time and was looking it over. the menubars in mozilla looked totally different, with huge antialiased text (good fonts, just needed to be smaller), while the fonts inside mozilla still looked the same old crappy way (ie., disabled FT2). so if FVWM has freetype2 support by default or compiled in while xfce4 doesn't, that would explain everything (wouldn't it?) it seems to me that it might, and since it's not likely to *hurt* anything to compile mozilla and the other apps with FT2 support, i don't see why that isn't done.

maybe i'm off base about this, i'll have to experiment with rebuilding mozilla or firefox or something with freetype2, and then seeing how it looks in FVWM (if fvwm in fact has the FT2 support, as it seems to). i'm just really surprised, because i've never seen one screenshot of arch with the good fonts. it seems like a cutting edge distro would have all the bells and whistles enabled, esp. if it didn't add any overhead to do so.

:?:

shen · 2004-08-18 18:05:58

Just to add a little input on the mozilla freetype issue. After reading this post I got curious if your concept would work. So I recompiled firefox with Frieetype2 enabled. I saw no difference in the fonts at all. If you would like to try out and don't want to compile your own let me know and I can make it available to ya for d/l. Anyways just thought I would post that my findings are no different with or without freetype build in.

nggalai · 2004-08-18 18:19:12

Short answer:

"freetype2" as a compile time option is deprecated. It's a thing from the past when there was no --enable-xft around to do the job.

You will se absolutely no difference between builds with freetype2 enabled or disabled, as long as you have xft enabled and your X environment supports xft. If it doesn't, you'll have non-antialiased fonts.

93,
-Sascha.rb

slackhack · 2004-08-18 18:31:01

d@mn, i thought that could be it. well the search for good linux fonts continues.

i3839 · 2004-08-18 19:55:38

Preferences->fonts-> change all fonts to bitstream vera and it should look great. I changed the Western, Unicode and User defined fonts to Bitstream and that seems to work for me.

Make sure the display resolution is correct too, and enabling "always use my fonts" might help too.

slackhack · 2004-08-18 21:07:02

no, it's not about the preferences, but thanks anyway.

do you have a screenshot by any chance? i'd like to see what yours look like since you say they are okay.

xerxes2 · 2004-08-18 21:11:59

I don't know exactly how it works, but bitstream makes both fonts and rendering engines for Linux.
Maybe you could get a free trial version.....

slackhack · 2004-08-18 21:19:50

i HAVE bitstream fonts, they just don't LOOK like bitstream fonts.

i3839 · 2004-08-18 21:20:28

Sure, here you go. It's a full-screen-shot, as you can notice everything is tweaked for optimal screen usage.

i3839 · 2004-08-20 12:36:42

Well? Do you consider them ok or are they also crappy in your opinion?

slackhack · 2004-08-20 15:02:35

i3839 wrote:

Well? Do you consider them ok or are they also crappy in your opinion?

they're about the same as mine = the spindly version, but not too bad. the bitstream serif tends to look a little better than the sans, but look what happens to them in fluxbox:
http://datadump.homelinux.com/fontconfig/serif_flux.png

notice the uneveness of the letterforms, especially the 2, y, v, W, and the bold characters.

we can mostly "get away with it" because the bitstream fonts are just so good, but overall the font system is still "broken," i.e., not rendering 100% correctly. if you switched to a different non-bitstream font (or maybe even bitstream sans) it would probably show up as spindly and distorted, e.g., blanked out diagonals on x and k, weird 2, wrong x-height on the a, too high ascenders (l, i, etc.), and so on, ex:
http://xfce.org/images/screenshots/Xfce-curve.png

what wm are you running, btw?

i3839 · 2004-08-20 15:31:10

I'm using the CVS version of Fluxbox. Luckily I don't have that uneveness of those fonts, not with bitsream vera anyway. Maybe it helps to enable AA fonts in the Fluxbox settings, although it's only for the Fluxbox fonts, perhaps it has side-effects. Probably not though..

Here a screenshot of my Firefox font settings, if they matter at all.

I recently switched from Xfree86 to Xorg, and didn't notice any difference in my fonts.

slackhack · 2004-08-20 16:32:42

what i'm trying to convey is that although those are acceptable and do not look especially bad, it's still not the way they are *supposed to look.* they don't look the way they're supposed to look because something in the font system is "broken" somewhere. the fact that the font system is broken somewhere has usability consequences that detract from the ability to use linux freely.

for example, my bitstream sans fonts in firefox look exactly like yours:
http://datadump.homelinux.com/fontconfi … ox_bvs.png

but if i wanted to use times new roman or verdana or some other font i couldn't do that, and that hinders my ability to use linux the way i want to:
http://datadump.homelinux.com/fontconfi … _serif.png

i have been trying to find out what's wrong so we can all use whatever font we want and have it look great, rather than being limited to just one or two fonts that merely look "okay" or "passable." since most people are content with "merely okay," it hasn't been easy, but maybe as people want to branch out more from using just bitstream fonts all the time momentum will build toward figuring it out.

> btw, here are the luxi sans fonts when everything is working properly:
http://datadump.homelinux.com/fontconfi … xisans.png
you can obviously see the difference!

i3839 · 2004-08-21 13:56:46

Yes, those serif fonts look horrible. I think it's a matter of installing more nice fonts than just bitstream vera. Those luxisans fonts are rendered alright, but I prefer the Bitstream fonts, those are much nicer IMHO.

slackhack · 2004-08-21 18:04:20

i prefer the bitstream over luxi, also. that's just an example to show how fonts other than the bitstreams look.

but here's an update: my roommate has been wanting to get into linux, so last night i installed slackware 10. the fonts look unbelievable :shock: -- i don't think i've ever seen fonts look that good even on a mac. i compiled a stripped-down kernel taking out all the stuff i usually take out just to make sure it's not some stupid miscellaneous kernel option causing the problem, and everything is still good.

then i installed arch on the same computer: base install, xfce4 + dependencies, mozilla. the fonts were all wonky again.

so that leads me to conclude it is some sort of hardware/software conflict. it's not totally software, b/c neither the fonts in arch nor in slack 10 work right on my computer. and it's not totally hardware, because fonts *used* to look good on my hardware (radeon, DVI LCD) before slack 10, so something must have changed somewhere in the software as it relates to certain hardware. :?: confusing.

a few weeks ago i switched my radeon for a matrox, but i saw no improvement in arch or in slack. so i don't think it's that. i guess that just leaves either some problem linux now has with DVI . . . or maybe nvidia nforce2 is the culprit? something to do with the agp bus or chipset? my roommate's computer is a via chipset, and an nvidia gf4mx, i believe (i used the vesa drivers).

i guess what i should do is put my matrox or radeon in that computer and see what the LCD looks like. if it looks bad, then it's the DVI. if it looks good, then it's probably the nforce2 mobo chipset causing the problem (in slack -- that still doesn't fix arch, though ).

i3839 · 2004-08-21 19:54:53

It's not a hardware problem, if it was then the screenshots would look good while it's ugly onscreen. I still think it's a matter of fonts installed and configuration.

slackhack · 2004-08-21 23:02:18

i3839 wrote:

It's not a hardware problem, if it was then the screenshots would look good while it's ugly onscreen. I still think it's a matter of fonts installed and configuration.

i'm not sure what you mean, "configuration." it's the same configuration: a full/default slackware install. why would a default configuration look different on two different computers if it weren't somehow related to the hardware? :?:

the screenshot is a static image of how the fonts are rendering at a particular point in time. those are going to look the same no matter what.

aCoder · 2004-08-22 02:13:39

Well, could it be that Arch's freetype2 pkg is version 2.1.7? In Slackware, I use 2.1.8, and it fixes my damn k's and x's, so you could try that.

nggalai · 2004-08-22 05:55:22

Just a short warning in regards to libfreetype > 2.1.7:

Libfreetype changed lots from version 2.1.7 to 2.1.8. There shouldn't be any migration problems with most GNOME and KDE applications, but e.g. GNUstep 's art backend wouldn't compile. That was the status a couple of weeks ago; it's likely that by now most if not all freetype-enabled applications should work just fine.

93,
-Sascha.rb

slackhack · 2004-08-22 13:34:18

i'm using freetype 2.1.9, no problems at all except for the bad fonts. i've tried all freetypes back to 2.1.3 on arch, with a variety of bytecode interpreter and chester hint options selected/deselected, with no major difference at all. some looked a little worse than usual, some about the same.

aCoder · 2004-08-22 15:55:20

I'm using freetype 2.1.9 now, do my fonts suck?

http://conveyableflow.com/images/fontscreenie.png

Arch Linux

#1 2004-08-18 13:49:25

mozilla: no freetype support?

#2 2004-08-18 16:34:04

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#3 2004-08-18 16:42:46

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#4 2004-08-18 16:59:58

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#5 2004-08-18 17:59:06

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#6 2004-08-18 18:05:58

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#7 2004-08-18 18:19:12

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#8 2004-08-18 18:31:01

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#9 2004-08-18 19:55:38

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#10 2004-08-18 21:07:02

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#11 2004-08-18 21:11:59

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#12 2004-08-18 21:19:50

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#13 2004-08-18 21:20:28

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#14 2004-08-20 12:36:42

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#15 2004-08-20 15:02:35

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#16 2004-08-20 15:31:10

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#17 2004-08-20 16:32:42

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#18 2004-08-21 13:56:46

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#19 2004-08-21 18:04:20

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#20 2004-08-21 19:54:53

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#21 2004-08-21 23:02:18

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#22 2004-08-22 02:13:39

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#23 2004-08-22 05:55:22

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#24 2004-08-22 13:34:18

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

#25 2004-08-22 15:55:20

Re: mozilla: no freetype support?

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