Font AA Troubles - HowTo: The Best Solution.

suwalski · n00b Joined: 22 Feb 2003 Posts: 12

Ever since I emerged -u world for the first time since Christmas, I have been having huge font problems. They looked exactly like they do here: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=34039

I read all the threads. People said to downgrade and reupgrade. Others said that I just have to rebuild freetype with the latest version, USE=smooth, and comment out the hinting.

I liked this. It looked very good, except two things:
1) Without hinting, stems were sometimes rendered too fat
2) Times New Roman looked very fat and ugly.

Good things:
1) Luxi and all Sans fonts looked awesome.
2) Some fonts looked a little 'fuller', as they tend to when not hinted.

However, after playing for 8 hours, trying every possible configuration permutation, and still not having the ideal system, I realized that the normal base Freetype build worked quite nicely on everything not Luxi.

So, I have found the best balance solution. As far as I can tell, my fonts are now like they were before I upgraded.

Just emerge Freetype just as always, do not USE=smooth, and leave the hinting on, it's worth it.

Next, to make those Luxi Sans Serif fonts look normal, I turned off the hinting only for the Sans font group (which is everything that's not specifically something else, by default).

This is done by adding the following to /etc/fonts/fonts.conf near the end, before all the Unicode definitions:

suwalski · n00b Joined: 22 Feb 2003 Posts: 12

I have a small clarification.

By "hinting," I of course mean, bytecode interpreter (BCI), and not subpixel hinting.

I am using subpixel hinting, and it works quite nicely, as does the BCI, just not for Luxi*.

Elm0 · Apprentice Joined: 24 Nov 2002 Posts: 281 Location: UK

Well, I edited my fontconfig file as you suggested, and my san-serif fonts have come out looking much 'fuller' looking and also seem a bit better spaced (easier to read). kinda like the ones in Redhat 8.0, which I really quite like (all this font stuff seems to be pretty subjective, i know some people who prefer the crisp edges of non-AA fonts!).

I looked on the freetype website and I saw some mentions of auto-hinting, and patent issues to do with Adobe and Apple. You appear to be more knowledgeable on this issue; what exactly has freetype done internally?

perry · Posted: Tue Feb 25, 2003 1:31 am Post subject:

I'm not sure what it did, but it fixed a problem I was having. Downstrokes on "k" were messed up in some fonts, and "O" (the letter) looked kinda pulled and stretched out in a different font. I had previously tried unmerging xft, freetype, and fontconfig, and then emerging them again, but it didn't make a difference. I did that again, and included the change to fonts.conf that you posted, and badda-boom... everything looks perfect now!

I don't understand any of that smoothing stuff, or hinting, or sub-pixel rendering... I just wanted nice looking fonts, and now I'm as happy as a clam!

grom · n00b Joined: 13 Feb 2003 Posts: 17

Ok, I did what you said, It definately did some good things, but Somethings are still a bit out there. When I open something like the KDE control center, the fonts are nice and AA and pretty. It all looks super sweet. However the titlebars (on windows, the top thing that says what window is) is still all chunky. Its really quite strange. Somehow my purely KDE apps are getting some of the AA, but not the KDE base system. Phoenix is AA'd and looks pretty good except for some wierd font resizing issues, which aren't a big deal. Tooltips are also not AA'd. This really does confuse me, and I have been trying to make it all look good for days. Thanks for any help
Peace.
max

UPDATE:! Ok, so i logged out and Restarted my X-server and Its all super pretty now, All thats left is to maybe do some tweaking with my phoenix and try and get all its fonts working right. Tricky tricky kde and fonts. At least they look good now.
_________________
Umm, yeah.

suwalski · n00b Joined: 22 Feb 2003 Posts: 12

zypher · Posted: Thu Feb 27, 2003 6:24 pm Post subject:

Just a quick note:
I tried freetype-2.1.4-r2.
Just did a ./configure --prefix=/usr && make && make install
No changes to any config files made.
And my fonts look really acceptable.
Try it out if you like.
_________________
linux user 65882

abracadaver · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 03 Feb 2003 Posts: 125

i followed the first directions and my fonts look superb, except for the menu bars (that say File Edit View etc..) none of those are antialiased. this happend just after i upgraded to Xfree 4.3.0 (before, with 4.2.1 everything was antialiased and swell) I'm hoping it's kind of a common problem and someone can tell me exactly what i need to reemerge or tweak.
thanks

and i've reemerged freetype (2.1.4rc2) and fontconfig (2.4.1) neither had any effect.

also, I use Openbox, not gnome or kde

edit:: i think i've narrowed my problem down to GTK apps, (GTK2, look great..) is mozilla by any chance gtk? if so that would probably prove my theory

kermitjunior · Apprentice Joined: 04 Aug 2002 Posts: 167

I'm actually rebuilding from Stage1 right now and I'm on xfree.

Is the Xfree 4.3 working well for all of you? Should i just go ahead and emerge it instead?

This is also a place marker since it's such good info. Thanks for writing it all out. THIS is why I love Gentoo!
_________________
-----
Toshiba Satellite A15-S157, 2.2 Celery, 40GB, 512MB
AMD Athlon XP 1900+, 640MB PC2100, ABIT KG-7R
IBM 120GB (Linux), WD 30GB (WinDoze), ATI All-In-Wonder 128 Pro PCI

abracadaver · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 03 Feb 2003 Posts: 125

xfree 4.3 is working great so far no problems emerging or running yet, i literaly just emerged it though. the new cursor (whiteglass) is all the rage

remember to use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=~x86 otherwise it'll complain about dependancies

grom · n00b Joined: 13 Feb 2003 Posts: 17

i'm pretty sure Mozilla isn't a GTK app, it seems to be something on its own entirely, but I could be wrong.
_________________
Umm, yeah.

MarkWPiper · n00b Joined: 02 Jun 2002 Posts: 30

The latest Mozilla builds will use GTK 1.x themes for SOME of the UI when the normal theme is used (as opposed to modern).

Therefore, SOME parts of Moz won't be antialiased (like menubars), while others, (like the page view) will be, due to the nice hacks enabled in the gentoo build. :-)

Does anyone know a way to get GTK 1.x apps antialiased?

jbrown · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 17 Feb 2003 Posts: 81

MarkWPiper · n00b Joined: 02 Jun 2002 Posts: 30

I never noticed gdkxft, since it's masked. Very 8-)

!

I tried emerging it, but I got some compile errors. Anyone happen to have suggestions??

stustill · Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2003 3:20 am Post subject:

On the AA Howto under Document, Tips and Tricks, the HOWTO details a problem with the Xft.h, it is outdated. You can download a replacement from http://userportal.iha.dk/~01876/xft.h.good (hosted by lovechild)

hope this helps

Stu

billatq · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Jun 2002 Posts: 96

Wow, this works great--the font deal was the only thing really annoying me that I didn't have that red hat users did. This is awesome

.

Supermule · Guru Joined: 05 Mar 2003 Posts: 510 Location: /denmark/fyn

billatq · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Jun 2002 Posts: 96

Oh, the first one, though I'm going to try to get the other one working with gtk+ (1) apps.

RedBaron · n00b Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Posts: 12

billatq · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Jun 2002 Posts: 96

I just used the latest ones. Also, gdkxft works wonderfully, though I had to write a tiny wrapper script to selectively turn it on for gtk+ stuff, since it doesn't work with gtk2 stuff at all.

dbd · n00b Joined: 20 Oct 2002 Posts: 12

I always thought I would be stuck with worse font than WinXP's Cleartype on my other partition..., but, no! With this, I have much more beautiful font than I imagined! Thank you SO MUCH :D
I <3 this font.

Craigo · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2003 4:40 pm Post subject:

billatq,

Interesting use of method there to get GTK1 dress up in AA. I did this early last year and then we all moved on to GTK2.

However, I wouldn't mind starting to use this again but looking at your desktop, am I right seeing gnome 2 mixed with a few gtk1 applications? Gcombust, gaim and mozilla if I am correct?

-/Craigo/-

billatq · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Jun 2002 Posts: 96

trinity · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2003 Posts: 74

Hi,

I'm new with Gentoo and I'd like my fonts in my gnome's desktop looks like this:

http://calvin.resnet.tamu.edu/images/screenshot-6.png

Can anyone tell me "step by step" how billatq did that?

Thanks

billatq · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Jun 2002 Posts: 96

Follow the instructions above, then follow mine and you can have it look like that also.

--Bill