Fuzzy bold fonts: helllp!! [RESOLVED]

palantir · Last edited by palantir on Fri Jan 30, 2004 8:21 am; edited 1 time in total

This topic seems quite recurrent, but I see only people asking "hey I have slim and thin fonts, I want the fuzzy ones". I on the contrary have those extra large fuzzy and bold fonts and I want my thin fonts back.
I see there are three situations.
1. No antialiasing at all. This is what happens if I set no antialiasing in kde's control center or if I do it vie ~/.fonts.config. This is not what I want, since with this disabled fonts are thin, but insanely edgy too.
2. Fuzzy fonts. The thing I have now. It seems that truetype fonts are antialiased twice or thrice, and become what I said before.
3. Normal fonts. I mean the thing you see on windows or like the adobe's helvetica font (which AFAIK is a bitmap font and so doesn't get antialiasing).

I used to obtain effect number 3 with a qtconfig switch: in the fonts table there used to be an option to Enable antialiasing support in XFT. With this disabled everything worked great. With qt 3.3 this option is GONE and I am here thinking of how ugly my desktop is ;-)

Thanks to anyone who will help...
Palantir

Zapp! · Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2004 11:44 am Post subject:

Try to experiment with the freetype bytecode interpreter.
You can enable the bytecode interpreter, if you emerge freetype as follows:

palantir · Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2004 12:48 pm Post subject:

Zapp! · Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2004 3:47 pm Post subject:

from /usr/portage/media-libs/freetype/freetype-2.1.5.ebuild

rgzoso · n00b Joined: 26 Jun 2002 Posts: 10 Location: Atlanta, GA

palantir · Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2004 11:11 am Post subject:

rgzoso · n00b Joined: 26 Jun 2002 Posts: 10 Location: Atlanta, GA

palantir · Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2004 8:20 pm Post subject:

Mmm... the first time I tried to emerge freetype I made it this way: as soon as the source was unpacked, I pressed CTRL-Z to pause the script, went to the working directory and uncommented the appropriate line in the configuration header. Then resumed the compilation with the fg command.

You need to uncomment:
/* #define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER */
(if I remember correctly...) in the file freetype-2.1.7/include/freetype/config/ftoption.h

I won't swear this will/should/could work, but I managed to get thin fonts this way. It seems that there are _many_ factors that influence this problem, for example, on QT before 3.3.3 you can run qtconfig and in the fonts directory you have the option to "enable support fot xft antialiasing fonts" or something similar. Well, this was a good way to get rid of bold fonts: you needed to uncheck that option and restart, there are goon dhances your KDE apps will be pretty. Unfortunately in QT 3.3.3, which is what I am using now, this option is gone.
There is the configuration file called ~/.fonts.conf where you could put some commands (although KDE's control panel seems to make changes to that file, so you could change it indirectly from there).
There are font paths and the XFree86 config file, and there are fonts-related options too...
I am using X and KDE, nothing more, and the freetype lib option has worked. If you have xfs, gnome, and possibly other things, well, it could me something _quite_ different...
BTW I am _not_ running xfs...

devsk · Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 2:35 am Post subject:

My situation is slightly different. From control center in KDE, whether I enebale or disable Anti-aliasing, it doesn't make any difference. The fonts are always very-very thin and all text looks like broken. When I open a gnome-terminal and compare its menu text fonts with menu text from KDE I can see that gnome-terminal has much more smoother text.

Why is gnome-terminal able to pick up AA while KDE can't when they both link to same libraries (XFT, freetype, fontconfig) and using the same ~/.fonts.conf. I have added my TT fonts to KDE, so KDE can see them. But somehow it doesn't smooth them at all.

Another un-related issue is that konsole doesn't see TT fonts at all. It only has fixed font available, not even the Linux one.

I really need help with these two issues.

palantir · Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 10:58 am Post subject:

Have you tried the qtconfig option I have mentioned? Is it enabled or not?

lunarg · Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 3:18 pm Post subject:

Is bindist automaticly used when emerging freetype, or does one have to specify it?

I've emerged freetype with 'emerge -U freetype', and my fonts remained as normal. Afterworths, emerged qt-3.3.0-r1, and all my fonts changed (not really for the worst though; a few fonts have gone missing, but I replaced them with other, better looking ones).
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devsk · Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 3:38 pm Post subject: