freetype-2.3.2 font rendering glitches

frostschutz · Advocate Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 2977 Location: Germany

Hi all,

on my ~x86 Gentoo installation portage updated my freetype-2.3.1 to freetype-2.3.2 yesterday. Except for the world update, I didn't change anything else about my configuration. Now after a reboot, I'm seeing all sorts of font rendering errors. Here are two screenshots of a web page rendered by Firefox so you get the picture:

http://666kb.com/i/amj1gs4swusnz7ofs.jpg
http://666kb.com/i/amj20dveeaqvvgtx4.jpg

Both show the same webpage (http://www.guidetojapanese.org/), in the second one I changed the font size using CTRL+Mousewheel. The rendering glitches look different for every font size. Not all text is affected (as you can see on the screenshot, 'Summary' and 'Table of Contents' looks fine), I don't know why.

Anyone else have this issue?

Regards
frostschutz

swanson · Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 10:25 am Post subject:

Yes, the same occurs for me when I test that web page but I haven't seen any problems with any other web pages.

Checking the HTML source shows that it is the rendering of the Luxi Sans font, as selected by the stylesheet, that is the problem. This is probably something that should be reported to the Freetype folk to investigate.
_________________
Alan.

widremann · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2005 Posts: 1314

It's fine* for me, but I'm not using anti-aliasing or autohinting. Perhaps turn off autohinting?

*I say "fine" because Luxi Sans looks terrible without anti-aliasing. But that's to be expected for some fonts.

frostschutz · Advocate Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 2977 Location: Germany

Thanks for the suggestion. I turned off autohinting (by setting Firefox about:config FreeType2.autohinting to false and restarting Firefox, I hope that is sufficient). The problem persists. Firefox doesn't offer an antialiasing switch, it's probably in the xorg.conf. I'll meddle with that later.

morbid · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Mar 2003 Posts: 90

It not only affects firefox, but any package that uses freetype. IBM Workplace Managed Client (yes, I run ~x86 on my work laptop) also displays the messed up fonts. I downgraded to freetype-2.3.1 and everything is good.

albright · Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 12:18 pm Post subject:

FWIW, the page renders perfectly on my system using
freetype-2.3.2 with autohinting off and antialiasing on.
I had followed the guide found here:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-511382-highlight-.html

frostschutz · Advocate Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 2977 Location: Germany

overkll · Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 11:42 pm Post subject:

Just curious...

Why not just use the latest Gentoo stable freetype-2.1.10-r2?

frostschutz · Advocate Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 2977 Location: Germany

You could just as well ask 'Why update at all?' :roll:

I use ~x86 Gentoo because the stable x86 Gentoo had other issues for me. It works flawlessly most of the time.

Of course, when a problem arises with a new version of a package, you can probably always fix it by downgrading. This isn't what this thread is about, though. I was merely curious wether other people are seeing this behaviour as well and wether anyone found a way to fix this problem for the 2.3.2 version of freetype yet or not.

Somebody has to start using new software, otherwise issues will never get discovered and it will never get stable, resulting in no progress at all. :-)

~x86 Gentoo is still far away from 'bleeding edge'.

albright · Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 2:09 am Post subject:

hephooey · n00b Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 74

Werner LEMBERG just sent a letter to ft-devel maillist claiming that 2.3.2 has a serious regression in the TrueType handling, and 2.3.3 is coming soon

loki_val · Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2007 8:36 pm Post subject:

Just posted fix for this in bug 170532. Ripped from upstream cvs.