[HOWTO]New freetype subpixel font rendering for lcd monitors

billydv · Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 3:31 pm Post subject:

I thought I had seen something about qt4 apps in this thread and the newer freetype, I am having a problem with a qt4 app named servant, after updating freetype, servants fonts look horrible.
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billydv · Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2007 5:54 pm Post subject:

Also, will there be a cairo update in xeffects? There are two newer versions in portage currently.
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boniek · Guru Joined: 26 Mar 2005 Posts: 373

There is tarball with newer version of cairo on previous page. I don't know about XEffects as I don't have commit rights to tree anymore. I'm not user of qt4 so I can't help you with your problem.
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[HOWTO]New freetype subpixel font rendering for lcd monitors

billydv · Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 6:06 am Post subject:

I heard something about pdf rendering problems with the newer cairo version, any truth to that?
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m.s.w · Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 6:34 am Post subject:

I compiled cairo using ebuild from boniek on previous page. No problems with pdf.
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punkid · Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2007 3:14 pm Post subject:

The newer cairo with newspr patch has been commited into gentoo-china overlay
I'm emerging it right now

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boniek · Guru Joined: 26 Mar 2005 Posts: 373

For all this to work you will need patched cairo AND patched libXft. hopefully gentoo-china got both

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[HOWTO]New freetype subpixel font rendering for lcd monitors

punkid · Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 4:11 am Post subject:

billydv · Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 4:49 pm Post subject:

Could someone with fonts working well please compare this and let me know what if anything is different on their system

eselect fontconfig list
Available fontconfig .conf files ( * is enabled ):
[1] 10-autohint.conf *
[2] 10-no-sub-pixel.conf
[3] 10-sub-pixel-bgr.conf
[4] 10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf *
[5] 10-sub-pixel-vbgr.conf
[6] 10-sub-pixel-vrgb.conf
[7] 10-unhinted.conf
[8] 20-fix-globaladvance.conf *
[9] 20-unhint-small-vera.conf *
[10] 25-unhint-nonlatin.conf
[11] 30-metric-aliases.conf *
[12] 30-urw-aliases.conf *
[13] 40-nonlatin.conf *
[14] 45-latin.conf *
[15] 49-sansserif.conf *
[16] 50-user.conf *
[17] 51-local.conf *
[18] 60-latin.conf *
[19] 60-liberation.conf *
[20] 65-fonts-persian.conf *
[21] 65-nonlatin.conf *
[22] 69-unifont.conf *
[23] 70-no-bitmaps.conf
[24] 70-yes-bitmaps.conf *
[25] 80-delicious.conf *
[26] 90-synthetic.conf *
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boniek · Guru Joined: 26 Mar 2005 Posts: 373

billydv · Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 10:25 pm Post subject:

I have made a couple of changes overall. After changing all my kde fonts to verdana 13 with the exception of fixed width which is set to Dejavu sans mono 13, I set firefox and konqueror both to use verdana. Then my final eselect fontconfig was this

Available fontconfig .conf files ( * is enabled ):
[1] 10-autohint.conf *
[2] 10-no-sub-pixel.conf
[3] 10-sub-pixel-bgr.conf
[4] 10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf *
[5] 10-sub-pixel-vbgr.conf
[6] 10-sub-pixel-vrgb.conf
[7] 10-unhinted.conf
[8] 20-fix-globaladvance.conf *
[9] 20-unhint-small-vera.conf *
[10] 25-unhint-nonlatin.conf
[11] 30-metric-aliases.conf *
[12] 30-urw-aliases.conf *
[13] 40-nonlatin.conf *
[14] 45-latin.conf *
[15] 49-sansserif.conf *
[16] 50-user.conf *
[17] 51-local.conf *
[18] 60-latin.conf *
[19] 60-liberation.conf *
[20] 65-fonts-persian.conf *
[21] 65-nonlatin.conf *
[22] 69-unifont.conf *
[23] 70-no-bitmaps.conf
[24] 70-yes-bitmaps.conf *
[25] 80-delicious.conf *
[26] 90-synthetic.conf *

and my .fonts.conf was left at

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
<const>rgb</const>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="hinting" >
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
<const>hintmedium</const>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="autohint">
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>

This setup gives me reasonably good font rendering. Still qt4 apps don't render real well but what can I say. I'm not sure there is a real solution.
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bluesurfer · Posted: Thu Dec 27, 2007 10:42 pm Post subject:

I use the cairo-1.4.12 ebuild from gentoo-china and libXft-2.1.12 from xeffects overlay. Looks great!
What about the quantization patch for freetype - why do I not need it?

BTW I think the ubuntu guys have already implemeted the patches in gutsy according to this:
http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Schriftbild_verbessern
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=555964
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natros · n00b Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 70

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7310

Hooray, Ubuntu's patches look great

Better than xeffects, I think.

paladin-zero · Guru Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 322

paladin-zero · Guru Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 322

billydv · Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2007 1:56 am Post subject:

That did it, changed my font to verdana in qtconfig and now it shows up beautiful.
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neuron · Advocate Joined: 28 May 2002 Posts: 2371

swimmer · Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2007 1:40 pm Post subject:

Hmm - are there already ebuilds available to test this stuff? Or do I need to patch it manually?

Since xeffects seems to be unmaintained I have to look for another solution to keep those great looking fonts :-/

Greetz
swimmer

elkhunter · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Sep 2004 Posts: 138

Is this howto still accurate? Should I emerge xeffects or gentoo-china and what USE flags are needed (I saw posts indicating to use newspr and one indicated to use filter_* instead). Also, what should I put in /etc/fonts/local.conf and in ~/.fonts.conf and what fontconfig scripts do I want enabled for an LCD (RGB) monitor? Any help appreciated.

mwhitlock · Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2008 10:36 am Post subject:

mwhitlock · Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2008 11:32 am Post subject: Screen shot

I have to say, my fonts look really freakin' good now, IMHO.

Screen shot:
http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/1892/screenshotvf2.png

In looking through this thread, I see a lot of posts saying that bold fonts are "too bold." Could someone comment on my screen shot? Bold fonts look totally correct to me. (For example, look at the selected window button in the Kicker.)

Incidentally, to clear up the apparent confusion out there:

fontconfig : merely selects a font file according to some given attributes; does no rasterization or rendering!
freetype : rasterizes vector font glyphs into bitmaps; does no LCD filtering!
libXft : renders glyph bitmaps on an X display; performs LCD filtering
cairo : renders vector graphics and FreeType-rasterized text; also performs LCD filtering

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7310

fontconfig-ubuntu is required, to compile cairo-ubuntu. Otherwise:

bluesurfer · Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2008 1:45 pm Post subject: