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barlad l33t
Joined: 22 Feb 2003 Posts: 673
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 5:29 pm Post subject: New freetype 2.1.4 |
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Just installed the new freetype... and well, "woah!". Changes are huge, to be honest right now I am not sure wether everything is b0rked or working. I cannot say wether or not fonts look good... it is just, different.
Arial looks more flattened at small sizes and as a whole fonts look "bolder" and maybe a bit more big than usual.
Sometimes I just think it looks much more regular and that it tends to be the best fonts I have ever seen (far superior to windows) but err... I am not sure.
Anyway, the reason of my post is that this update wasted the week-end I spent trying to get fonts working under Phoenix since now I am back to some more or less good fonts but way too bold and maybe even too big.
Let me know if any of you encounter the same problem please and if you get any solution
Oh, on a side note... freetype 2.1.4 does not work with the Liquid window style for me, I get a small space between window title and window menu. |
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Damasz Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 24 Apr 2002 Posts: 91 Location: Groningen, the Netherlands
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 5:49 pm Post subject: |
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It seems in this release the Bytecode Interpreter is disabled by default.
According to http://www.freetype.org/freetype2/2.1.3-explained.html#bytecode it is not needed anymore and the auto hinter should give better results.
I've just rebuild my freetype (2.1.4) with the Bytecode Interpreter enabled ( USE="cjk" emerge freetype ) and I find the results a lot better with bold text.
I'm staying with the Bytecode Interpreter for now!
(the USE="cjk" is normaly used for eastern language support, but in the freetype ebuild it is only used for the Bytecode Interpreter, so you don't have to edit the ebuild to get the BI ) |
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barlad l33t
Joined: 22 Feb 2003 Posts: 673
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 6:17 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks, re compiling with the bytecode interpreter put everything back to where it was. Only mosfet liquid is not working but that is not such a big loss. That said... I cannot say if it is really better with the BI or not. What a dilemna .
That was easier before... font sucked so we could just complain, now we have to chose between good looking fonts and... good looking fonts. |
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Evangelion Veteran
Joined: 31 May 2002 Posts: 1087 Location: Helsinki, Finland
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 6:19 pm Post subject: |
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screenshots? Preferrably before/after ones _________________ My tech-blog | My other blog |
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floam Veteran
Joined: 27 Oct 2002 Posts: 1067 Location: Vancouver, WA USA
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 6:43 pm Post subject: |
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i wonder why the auto-hinting looks so bad, it supposed to be far superior to the bci |
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barlad l33t
Joined: 22 Feb 2003 Posts: 673
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 6:45 pm Post subject: |
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hehe, thanks for being the judge... you are the one who is going to decide what font I will stick to
Here are two huge screenshots with/without bytecode interpreter (sorry, it's really big but I put no compression to ensure fonts would still be displayed correctly in png, its about 700ko each picture). I put two pictures of Phoenix, one of Konqueror, one of Kmail and one of the KDE menus. You can see the icons too on the left part.
with bytecode on : www.europaguild.com/pixmaps/screenbyte.png
without bytecode: www.europaguild.com/pixmaps/screennobyte.png |
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Damasz Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 24 Apr 2002 Posts: 91 Location: Groningen, the Netherlands
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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IMHO the bytecode version looks a lot better, the fonts are a lot crisper for bold letters (look at your nick in the gentoo forums). Then again, the normal letters are sometimes a bit to thin... (for instance, the kxwz letters) |
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qnx l33t
Joined: 25 Jun 2002 Posts: 638 Location: Göteborg, Sweden
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 7:20 pm Post subject: |
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Ohhh gosh..Thanks for that tip about bytecode interpreter... The new 2.1.4 messed up all my fonts, it was almost unreadable...And I have to work with a school essey tonight =) Thanks a lot!
Cheers,
Jacob _________________ Registred Linux user #191143!
Abit NF7-S rev. 2.00 (BIOS v. 2.7)
AMD AthlonXP 2500+ (Barton)
PATA Seagate ST3120022A
SATA Seagate ST3200822AS & Silicon Image 3112 chipset
Gentoo Linux |
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Evangelion Veteran
Joined: 31 May 2002 Posts: 1087 Location: Helsinki, Finland
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 7:31 pm Post subject: |
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The one WITH bytecode looks better IMO. The one without looks.... messy _________________ My tech-blog | My other blog |
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yokem55 Guru
Joined: 18 Apr 2002 Posts: 360 Location: Oregon
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 7:55 pm Post subject: |
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On this laptop, with subpixel hinting enabled, with the bytecode interpreter on, smaller sized normal fonts look too "thin," while bolded and larger fonts look fine. With the bytecode interpreter off, then the small, normal fonts don't get rendered too thin, but bold fonts are over smudged and blurry.
Sigh..... |
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Lovechild Advocate
Joined: 17 May 2002 Posts: 2858 Location: Århus, Denmark
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 7:56 pm Post subject: |
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Funny, I hate the bytecode hinter... I LOVE the fonts the native hinter renders.. |
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JohnY Guru
Joined: 26 Jul 2002 Posts: 305
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 9:41 pm Post subject: |
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On my system with a g400 16mb @ 1024x768 and x at 100dpi I like the bytecode interpreter turned off. With bci on the font stems are uneven and the antialiasing looks bad. Both in freetype 2.1.3 with the smooth hack and 2.14 without it. I can't seen to get my fonts looking like the screenshot with bci turned on.
JohnY |
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dreambox Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 09 Mar 2003 Posts: 137
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 10:00 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.angelfire.com/linux/dreambox/index.html
Others screenshots 2.1.3-r2 vs 2.1.4. In 2.1.4 byte interpreter is off. Antialias is disabled for fontsize < 10. I leave judgment to gentooers... _________________ Toshiba Tecra 8200
PIII 750Mhz 512Mb 20Gb Hdd
Trident CyberBladeXP 16Mb
Windows Where do you want to go today? MacOS Where do you want to be tomorrow? Linux Are you coming... |
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fca Guru
Joined: 22 Feb 2003 Posts: 346 Location: Netherlands
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 10:45 pm Post subject: |
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I had been working with 2.1.4 rc2 for a while, on which I base that the bci is still better than the auto-hinter for most fonts.
As no big improvements have been done from rc2 to final, I think this is still the case. |
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kappax Apprentice
Joined: 30 Aug 2002 Posts: 273 Location: The Moon
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 11:00 pm Post subject: |
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do i have to do anything other than emerge it?
I am comeing from a normal emerge of
freetype-2.1.3-r2.ebuild
to a
USE="cjk" emerge freetype-2.1.4.ebuild
and i dont see any difference :/ _________________ My Box
glxgears - 4083.400 FPS
OS: GNU/Linux
Distro: Gentoo
kernel: 2.6.0-test9-mm2
----------------------
vi makes me :wq in word pad |
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jagerman Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 104 Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
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Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 6:43 am Post subject: |
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kappax wrote: | and i dont see any difference :/ |
Yup, that's the point - going from 2.1.3 to 2.1.4 _without_ that USE="cjk" makes things look really ugly. |
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kappax Apprentice
Joined: 30 Aug 2002 Posts: 273 Location: The Moon
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Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 7:45 am Post subject: |
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jagerman wrote: | kappax wrote: | and i dont see any difference :/ |
Yup, that's the point - going from 2.1.3 to 2.1.4 _without_ that USE="cjk" makes things look really ugly. |
i used the USE="cjk" _________________ My Box
glxgears - 4083.400 FPS
OS: GNU/Linux
Distro: Gentoo
kernel: 2.6.0-test9-mm2
----------------------
vi makes me :wq in word pad |
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asimon l33t
Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 979 Location: Germany, Old Europe
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Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 8:05 am Post subject: |
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I found this in the Changelog of the freetype ebuild:
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Disabled bytcode interpreter for anything but cjk use flag, using
the autohinter instead as suggested by the freetype team.
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But in the source tarball I found this in docs/TRUETYPE:
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If you are using TrueType fonts on your system, you most probably
want to enable it [the bytecode interpreter] manually by doing the following
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So does the freetype team suggest to enable and disable the bytecode interpreter at the same time? |
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Koon Retired Dev
Joined: 10 Dec 2002 Posts: 518
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Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 8:39 am Post subject: |
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asimon wrote: | So does the freetype team suggest to enable and disable the bytecode interpreter at the same time? |
In fact, the Gentoo freetype team used to enable the bytecode interpreter by default, so in the ebuild changelog they talk about enabled -> disabled change.
In the vanilla sources, the Freetype team disables the bytecode interpreter by default (for copyright reasons), so in their docs they talk about disabled -> enabled change...
- EDIT - Rereading your post, my mistake : I think it's just that the changelog is more up-to-date than the docs |
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dreambox Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 09 Mar 2003 Posts: 137
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Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 9:34 am Post subject: |
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http://www.angelfire.com/linux/dreambox/index.html
Now, 2.1.3-r2 vs 2.1.4 vs 2.1.4 Byte Code enabled. Antialias is disabled for fontsize < 10.
The most ugly fonts I had were with Mozilla. 2.1.4 BC enabled looks the best
In my opinion, 2.1.4 BC disabled is not bad at 100%, for example the gdm login screen fonts looks better than 2.1.3-r2. May be applying the ft_smooth hack (when available) could make results better _________________ Toshiba Tecra 8200
PIII 750Mhz 512Mb 20Gb Hdd
Trident CyberBladeXP 16Mb
Windows Where do you want to go today? MacOS Where do you want to be tomorrow? Linux Are you coming... |
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puntium n00b
Joined: 14 Mar 2003 Posts: 24
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Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 10:49 am Post subject: |
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Quote: | So does the freetype team suggest to enable and disable the bytecode interpreter at the same time? |
If you look at the release notes from freetype.org, the freetype team actually recommends that people now use the autohinter instead of the bci. I think people who work on freetype are much more wary of patent issues than the general desktop public (who just care that their fonts look nice).
The reason why it is still enabled for "cjk" is that some Asian fonts actually somehow cleverly use the bci to generate the shapes for symbols (sorry I don't know the details.. hopefully that was a vague enough description to not be wrong)
Also, Arial, happens to require several features of the BCI for it to be able to be rendered "correctly".
I guess if you're willing to take the risk in defying a software patent, then you can go ahead and turn the BCI on.. it seems to me the autohinter will always sort of be a "black magic" solution. Seems like it tries to automatically reverse engineer how a font was "supposed" to look, when the bytecode hints explicitly record how its supposed to look.
With the case of cjk though, you don't even get correct characters for some fonts, which is far greater of a problem. (though there was some mention on the freetype mailing list about a interpreter that avoids the patents..)
Lets just hope someone doesn't patent sorting. ;-P |
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Gnufsh Guru
Joined: 28 Dec 2002 Posts: 400 Location: Portland, OR
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Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 12:03 pm Post subject: |
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For some reason, having the BCI on makes about 1/3 of my fonts either exceedingly ugly or simply unreadable. I'm glad it's off, before I had to edit the ebuild. For some reason, this new freetype isn't using smooth... But it does look a little better than the last one. |
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trumee Guru
Joined: 02 Mar 2003 Posts: 551 Location: London,UK
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Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 12:08 pm Post subject: |
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Allright i emerged freetype, with bci disabled which i understand is by default. Now how do i enable bci in the freetype ebuild? I want to compare the results.
Thanks |
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piquadrat Guru
Joined: 18 Feb 2003 Posts: 301 Location: Switzerland
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Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 12:51 pm Post subject: |
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my fonts look so much better without BCI! Some sites with dark background and light text where a pain in the a.., mhm, eyes to read and now it looks really beautiful!
BTW: I use a IBM ThinkPad TFT |
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trumee Guru
Joined: 02 Mar 2003 Posts: 551 Location: London,UK
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Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 1:00 pm Post subject: |
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how do we enable bci, again please? |
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