New freetype 2.1.4

wzzrd · Apprentice Joined: 18 Jul 2002 Posts: 245

Personally, I think the old way it looked better and kudos to Damasz for showing us the way to re-enable it

Edit, just toe explain the above: the problem was / is not that I didn't like the way the fonts looked, but here, it seemed as if the fontspacing and the linespacing suddenly became larger. THAT'S what I didn't like. The fonts themselves looked sweet, though bold fonts were a bit too bold by my standards

idl · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 6:13 pm Post subject:

looks horrible without USE="cjk"! glad i'm back to normal now.

Gedit: http://w0r.mine.nu/gentoo/gedit-fonts.png
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Evil Dark Archon · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 6:47 pm Post subject:

I prefer the new way because it looks smoother than the bci does, when i first saw the bci rendered fonts with 2.1.3, i went and got the sources for 2.1.4rc2 and did my own compile (too lazy to edit ebuild), i have the release 2.1.4 now and am glad they switched to the auto-hinter.

jagerman · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 7:00 pm Post subject:

Bobbie · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 21 Jul 2002 Posts: 77

I wonder everyday how people can stand AA'd fonts at common sizes...after 5 min the bluriness gives me a headache...

jagerman · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 9:23 pm Post subject:

Zalator · n00b Joined: 11 Aug 2002 Posts: 42

Am i the only one who prefers the fonts w/ the bytecode interperter off thats not using a laptop?
i think my fonts look 100 times prettier now

yagami · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 10:01 pm Post subject:

nop your not the only one

i also prefer fonts without bci.

and also does the xft hack

d3c3it · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 10:35 pm Post subject:

What version of freetype starts to stop inc the bytecode interperter at compile? because imo the way ive got my fonts atm ilove idont want them to change
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jagerman · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 10:41 pm Post subject:

jessew · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 10:52 pm Post subject:

At first, I logged in and saw the absolutely appalling font rendering in Fig. 1... then I read this forum to find some people who prefer the new rending. I thought to myself, "what flavour crack are these people smoking?"

Note in Fig. 1 and somewhat Fig. 2 that the spacing of monotype fonts is way too close... quite illegible... especially in the text input fields.

Now I see that the fonts actually do look better if you have anti-aliasing turned on (Fig. 2).

I've recompiled freetype and I'm quite relieved that my fonts look like they do again in Fig. 3.

Fig. 1 - No Anti-Aliasing, Bytecode Compiler Off
Fig. 2 - Anti-Aliased, Bytecode Compiler Off
Fig. 3 - No Anti-Aliasing, Bytecode Compiler On

I you use AA for your fonts (not for me, thanks), the new rendering does look better IMHO. Since we can't all seem to agree which way we like it, it's a good thing we're using Gentoo, or we'd be stuck with someone else's preference.

d3c3it · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 11:04 pm Post subject:

Damasz · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 11:17 pm Post subject:

Ok,

I've made a side by side comparision of the bytecode interpeter and the auto hinter on my system. I grabbed pieces of sites that I thought clearly showed the differences between the two. You can probably see why I prefer the bytecode version.

The top bit in the screenshot is from the dutch news site http://nu.nl , the bottom bit is from this forum.

[img:f960820293]http://www.xs4all.nl/~brinkg/freetype-compare2.png[/img:f960820293]

I've tweaked the auto hinter version as far as I could by using the tips from this thread and playing with the gnome font settings menu. (I think the screenshot is using medium hinting)

Does anybody have anymore tips on how I can improve the autohinter version? I have a tft screen, so I like my fonts to be sharp.

Thnx,
Gert-Jan.

d3c3it · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 11:25 pm Post subject:

Damasz · Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2003 9:26 am Post subject:

Ok,

I'm looking at my screenshot today at work on a normal crt monitor and the difference is a lot less than I see at home on my tft. I can see why a lot of people would prefer the auto-hinter version if they are using a crt monitor.

So it's not a "one size fits all" solution, you have to play arround to find the best setup. If you have a crt monitor, the gentoo defaults will give you pretty good results!

Gert-Jan.

sgaap · Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2003 2:02 pm Post subject:

When I use freetype with BCI enabled I can use my default font verdana, but without the BCI it will always use my default sans font (vera bitstream), is teher a way to fix this (because I do like the fonts even without BCI)

d3c3it · Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2003 2:17 pm Post subject:

could someone answer me these questions?
why upgrade freetype because its marked as masked ie isnt that unstable? also who do you enable/disable Anti-Aliased on your fonts?ive read loads of theads on this and never really got what they all meant*newbie confusion*
but mostly why upgrade freetype does it add some new features?better ones?
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cohesion · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2002 Posts: 24 Location: KC, MO, USA

The April 10th freetype-2.1.4 ebuild now builds the Bytecode Interpreter by default. No need to use the USE="cjk" anymore. If you want the autohinter turned on:

cohesion · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2002 Posts: 24 Location: KC, MO, USA

Removing the RedHat 2.1.3 patch from the 2.1.4 ebuild fixes problems with the autohinter screwing up Georgia and Times New Roman. (The q's, u's and t's were spaced oddly.) And o's are now correctly spaced. If you want to use the autohinter, I recommend switching off the RedHat patch. Arial continues to be beautiful.

cohesion · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2002 Posts: 24 Location: KC, MO, USA

Okay. After the above, I had to recompile GTK2 and restart X and now all my applications are using the new autohinting and look beautiful. There's still an annoying problem with u's in Georgia at 12pt; you can see that in this screen shot:

http://www.kcpassages.org/snapshot3.png

Also, for anyone interested, I have a SAMSUNG SyncMaster 763mb monitor -- shadow mask technology. You Trinitron users might be having a different experience because of that. I've read that subpixel hinting is possible on a Trinitron (due to the square nature of the pixels on those monitors).

Oh yea -- Also, my Mozilla 1.3 is compiled WITH GTK2 support. So, if you're having trouble with GTK using the new autohinting, try GTK2 -- it's really stable these days.

dizzy · Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2003 4:26 am Post subject:

Yinchie · Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2003 11:27 am Post subject: