Arch Linux

elflord

Member

From: France

Registered: 2008-11-09

Posts: 51

what's the advantage of the cairo-lcd package ?

Hi all

I've followed the wiki on the lcd font config and installed cairo-lcd etc
and it seems that the fonts are better
but it's so subtle that i suspect it's purely pysochological feeling

so i'd like to know the advantages of this lcd thing

thx

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: what's the advantage of the cairo-lcd package ?

Yes it's subtle, but it can make a great improvement, depending on many things - e.g. the quality and size of the LCD screen, and even the quality of the user's eyesight. This is why it's impossible to please everyone with a single font-rendering configuration.

berbae

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-02-12

Posts: 1,302

Re: what's the advantage of the cairo-lcd package ?

I used the -lcd packages with my old desktop machine and I felt an improvement with the fonts rendering then.
But I have now a new desktop PC and a new screen (Samsung SyncMaster), I installed recently Arch x86_64 on it.
I use KDE 4 with Fonts Setting : anti-aliasing Enabled, Use sub-pixel rendering RGB, Full Hinting style.
I chose to use the dejavu fonts in KDE and Firefox.
And now I am satisfied with the official freetype2, fontconfig, libxft and cairo packages.
My fonts are nice enough without the patched packages.
So I subjectively feel no more the need to do otherwise for now.

Edit : I forgot to mention I also followed the wiki with :
cd /etc/fonts/conf.d
ln -s ../conf.avail/10-autohint.conf

Last edited by berbae (2009-04-13 21:59:11)

Teoulas

Member

From: Athens, Greece

Registered: 2009-03-21

Posts: 70

Re: what's the advantage of the cairo-lcd package ?

To me, the *-lcd packages seem to have less colour fringing than the normal ones. The colour subpixels are much less obvious. I wonder if it's possible to have libxft and cairo use the Anti-Grain Geometry algorithm. It looks much better than anything else, (OS X and Windows included, of course).

I've also noticed that OpenOffice uses its own font rendering library, no matter if I have the *-lcd, *-cleartype or the original packages installed.

Last edited by Teoulas (2009-04-13 23:02:35)

litemotiv

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2008-08-01

Posts: 5,026

Re: what's the advantage of the cairo-lcd package ?

I wonder if it's possible to have libxft and cairo use the Anti-Grain Geometry algorithm. It looks much better than anything else, (OS X and Windows included, of course).

that's really awesome, great background info too. thanks for the link

---

ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ