<div dir="ltr">This is one of the biggest UI issues I have with Fedora post-install, the fonts are very jarring versus the whole Ubuntu/Mac/Windows experience. It's a non-ideal way to present Workstation to new users. I've actually filed a bug about this:<div><div><br></div><div><a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1036220">https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1036220</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>What I don't understand is why Ubuntu has great fonts hinting by default despite these patents being out there. Do they use a different package or configuration of the existing patent-free Freetype? </div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 12:03 PM, Michael Catanzaro <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mcatanzaro@gnome.org" target="_blank">mcatanzaro@gnome.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="">On Tue, 2015-06-09 at 10:40 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:<br>
> Okay, so, here we go again with this... well, actually, hoping *not*<br>
> to, but one specific thing keeps coming up. As far as I know,<br>
> the patents affecting freetype expired, and the "freetype-freeworld"<br>
> package from third party repositories no longer has any special<br>
> sauce.<br>
<br>
</span>Subpixel rendering is still disabled in the Fedora freetype package,<br>
due to patents that have not expired:<br>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering#Patents" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering#Patents</a><br>
<br>
I think we just need to accept that we can't have good font rendering<br>
until they expire.<br>
<span class=""><br>
> Yet, I still see people swearing up and down that this makes a big<br>
> difference, it's included in "making fonts in Fedora look good"<br>
> guides<br>
> everywhere — even though that patent expiration was now long ago. And<br>
> I<br>
> see that in RPMFusion, the "freetype-freeworld" package still exists<br>
> and is regularly updated.<br>
><br>
> So, what's going on with this? My uneducated guess is that the<br>
> "freeworld" package simply enables autohinting that we have off by<br>
> default and does not contain any magic sauce. Is this correct?<br>
<br>
</span>Fedora supports autohinting without installing anything extra, just<br>
change hint type to Light (codeword for "autohint") in Tweak Tool.<br>
Autohinting does not usually work as well as normal hinting, so it's<br>
good that it's not used by default.<br>
<span class=""><br>
> (On the other hand "Infinality" is a set of patches to Freetype, and<br>
> appears specifically tuned for various sets of non-free fonts.)<br>
<br>
</span>The best description of Infinality I've found is<br>
<a href="http://www.infinality.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18" target="_blank">http://www.infinality.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18</a><br>
<br>
Highlight: "These modifications essentially cause the Truetype<br>
interpreter in Freetype to ignore hinting in the X direction, giving a<br>
Cleartype-like result (unlike many pre-existing so-called "cleartype" packages for various distros). The default Truetype interpreter in<br>
Freetype renders fonts "correctly", in that it follows the instructions<br>
given to it by the font. For legacy fonts (Arial, Verdana, Times, etc.)<br>
these instructions were created with the idea that the end<br>
rasterization of the font would be monochrome, i.e. Black and White<br>
pixels only."<br>
<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5">--<br>
desktop mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org">desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org</a><br>
<a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop" target="_blank">https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop</a></div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>