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#1 2009-07-12 03:56:08

adam.ec
Member
Registered: 2009-06-23
Posts: 9

Font smoothing in XFCE

For some reason I seem to have lost the nice font rendering I had in XFCE. I followed another thread in the forums to install an Ubuntu configuration of Cairo and Freetype2. Everything was peachy until I went away on Wednesday and returned on Saturday, suddenly finding that XFCE was displaying various shades of red, blue and yellow on most text that was blue or black on a white background. A quick check in the settings revealed I was now on full hinting, in colour.

I used to use Gnome in Ubuntu which gave me the option of "Best Contrast" which, after searching the web for a while, seems to be a a combination of Full Hinting in Greyscale. Does anybody know how to get the same settings in XFCE?

It offers full-hinting, but ther doesn't seem to be anything the same as "Best Contrast". I presume there should be a way of getting the same effect in the configuration files but I'm not sure where to start looking.

Thanks all.

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#2 2009-07-12 08:13:25

djszapi
Member
From: Cambridge, United Kingdom
Registered: 2009-06-14
Posts: 1,439
Website

Re: Font smoothing in XFCE

Have you seen this thread?
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=47844

I would search here too:
http://www.xfce-look.org/content/search.php

Hope this helps.

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#3 2009-07-12 15:24:12

adam.ec
Member
Registered: 2009-06-23
Posts: 9

Re: Font smoothing in XFCE

Thank you djszapi. I have tried both links and any solutions in them. Unfortunately this seems to still concentrate on switching on and off the hinting but nothing about greyscale/color hinting. The "Best Contrast" setting in Ubuntu sets hinting to full, but leaves the type of hinting as greyscale. XFCE provides no control over this and I was wondering if there are any files that can be configured manually, rather than using the GUI controls.

Thanks again.

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#4 2009-07-12 19:45:47

brebs
Member
Registered: 2007-04-03
Posts: 3,742

Re: Font smoothing in XFCE

~/.fonts.conf provides the flexibility, along with cairo-respect-fontconfig.patch (my patch for cairo)

Huge thread:  http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-511382.html

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#5 2009-07-13 16:07:01

adam.ec
Member
Registered: 2009-06-23
Posts: 9

Re: Font smoothing in XFCE

Thank you brebs, but you weren't kidding its a long post..... now split into two threads. I've tried to follow this but even struggled to find the link to your patch. The people leaving posts on there are jumping all over the place. I think I got your patch installed eventually (there was talk of the Arch patch but I ended up sorting out the Gentoo one because I just couldn't find the beginning of where Arch was discussed) and it does make some of the text more bearable but I still have the smoothing being done with color sub-pixel hinting, and it still leaves a rainbow effect on my letters.

What is annoying is that Ubuntu has an option in Gnome where you can select full hinting, with grayscale smoothing, more commonly known as "Best Contrast". As XFCE and Gnome seem to be using the same rendering engine I just can't understand why there isn't a configuration file somewhere in XFCE where you can achieve exactly the same thing. Either that, or XFCE just cannot render fonts to the same standard as Gnome and I don't know why.

I might try going back to a CRT at this rate.

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#6 2009-07-14 20:51:58

brebs
Member
Registered: 2007-04-03
Posts: 3,742

Re: Font smoothing in XFCE

Greyscale is, I think:

<edit name="rgba" mode="assign"><const>none</const></edit>

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#7 2009-07-14 20:57:44

adam.ec
Member
Registered: 2009-06-23
Posts: 9

Re: Font smoothing in XFCE

Which file do I put this in? I seem to have a choice of three with font rendering settings in.

If this works you'll make me a very happy man.

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