the perfect antialias - a ms cleartweak clone

[paranoidx]

Firstly, I am pretty new to gentoo so cosmetics is pretty important since I migrated from MS win. Over the past months after compiling and compiling and reading tonnes of notes/faq. I finally got gentoo to function like my lap dog(exaggerated ofcoarse), damn toughie despite my background. (phew!!)

But the anti-alias display and font collection, thats another department altogether. After reading http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Xorg_and_Fonts I
gathered approx how the X windows and aa works in X and thanks to that wiki it gave me a good insight into the fundamentals.

After following the wiki, well let me say it was still far from what I am used to from ms win. Fonts/display although trivial, it is the biggest part of the ball game in
attracting new comers. This is not only as my opinions but also opinions of many others that I've read from blogs etc.

As a gentoo(linux as well) lover myself now due to countless advantages. I really want to fully migrate to a 100% nix environment with all my other boxes and good ridance with the ms box. Font display was to my surprise, the biggest stumbling block. The first reaction from everyone I tried introduced nix to, the first question is: why is the font ........

But I have finally get it to look like ClearType(R) instead of a fuzzy faded blurred blob. But there's a catch, at least until I have the time to read more about the fontconfig custimization or people here to enlighten me. All the ms fonts I imported displayed perfectly, but all the linux fonts inclusive of bitstream, lucida etc turns out to be blocky.

Italics also don't display properly but not too bad. Since my main use is xterm/bash/browsers, this don't affect me at all. But I will look further into it to customized the perfect AA display.

Any comments, recommendation is welcome, as I am a beginner myself.

heres the screenies:
antialias - hint, no sub-pixel
[IMG]http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/1497/aahintnosub1id5.png[/IMG]

antialias - nohint, no sub
[IMG]http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/4135/aanohintnosubxq8.png[/IMG]

antialias - no hint, with sub
[IMG]http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/3071/aanohintwithsubwj0.png[/IMG]

as you can see all of them is simply fuzzy, blurred etc. I have emerge freetype USE="-bindist".

heres my tuning to what I believe is the closest to windows cleartweak.
[IMG]http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/1237/aaperfecthd4.png[/IMG]

to achieve this:
-------------/etc/fonts/local.conf
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<!-- /etc/fonts/local.conf file to configure system font access -->
<fontconfig>
<!-- Enable sub-pixel rendering -->
<match target="font">
<test qual="all" name="rgba"> <const>unknown</const> </test>
<edit name="rgba" mode="assign"><const>rgb</const></edit>
</match>
<!-- Use the Autohinter -->
<match target="font">
<edit name="autohint" mode="assign"><bool>false</bool></edit>
</match>
<!-- Disable Autohinting for bold fonts -->
<match target="font">
<test name="weight" compare="more"> <const>medium</const> </test>
<edit name="autohint" mode="assign"><bool>false</bool></edit>
</match>
<!-- Exclude/Include a range of fonts for Anti Aliasing -->
<match target="font">
<test qual="any" name="size" compare="more"> <double>9</double> </test>
<test qual="any" name="size" compare="less"> <double>14</double> </test>
<edit name="antialias" mode="assign"> <bool>false</bool> </edit>
</match>
<!-- And/Or disable Anti Aliasing for a range on pixel-based size.
Disabling this using both methods seems to fix Firefox. -->
<!--
<match target="font">
<test compare="less" name="pixelsize" qual="any"> <double>20</double> </test>
<edit mode="assign" name="antialias"> <bool>false</bool> </edit>
</match>
-->
</fontconfig>

----------.$HOME/.fonts.conf < not needed for kde but needed for
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
<const>none</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>hintfull</const>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>

-------------ONLY important parts of xorg.conf
Section "Device"
#VideoRam 524288
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
# BusiD "PCI:1:0:0"
# VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
Identifier "GeForce 7900 GTX"
Driver "nvidia"
BoardName "NVIDIA"
Card "NVIDIA GeForce"
Option "NoLogo" "0"
Option "MetaModes" "1280x1024,1280x1024;"
Option "sw_cursor"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "true"
Option "BusType" "PCIE"
Option "AGPFastWrite" "true"
Option "EnableDepthMoves" "true"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "NvAGP" "0"
Option "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP-0"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
Option "UseEdidDpi" "true"
EndSection

in regards to the /etc/fonts/fonts.conf, I don't think I modified it, but I might be wrong.

Hope this helps out to promote nix and gentoo to others

[nbensa]

[paranoidx]

I have to have hinting on(slight or any other) with no antialias. If everything is off, well it looks like a goo of crooked lines on mine no matter what foundry/family font except bitmap fonts.

Another issue that I came accross with the KDE control centre is that by turning antialias off, the menu where sub-hinting etc is disabled. But you can always temporary enable the aa and then change the hinting then disable the aa. If you look at the $HOME/.font.conf now, you will notice the aa disabled but the hinting is on whatever you have set. So in a sense the kde control centre is misleading.

heres what I gathered so far in regards to how fontconfig works.
From the kde control centre, it seems that hinting/sub-pixel is part of antialias. Hence disabling aa, I can't modify hinting/sub. But according to my experiments, these 3 can be set independantly. So I can set hinting with no aa,sub-pixel or aa/sub with no hint etc.

After playing around with it a bit more I finally got every font to look exactly as how i wanted it.

the key is in the /etc/fonts/local.conf and a monitor is always(presumable) tied to the computer with the fonts, the best place to modify is local.conf which is a system wide setting.

Unless you have a CRT/LCD xinerama, then I have no idea which is the optimum or whether you can set 2 rules to the same fonts to 2 difference device.

but what I did is simply specify rules to the specific fonts. So within /etc/fonts/local.conf
this is the system wide setting:

[tallest]

So...

Your perfect antialias is no antialias???
_________________
Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities. --Voltaire