F26 and blurry fonts

[Heinz Diehl]

Hi,

for those who love razorsharp fonts just like me but got the new v40 interpreter
coming with freetype-2.7 enforced on them when installing F26: the good old v35
interpreter is still there (and I hope it will be forever). You can
use it by setting the environment variable

 FREETYPE_PROPERTIES=truetype:interpreter-version=35

If you also want subpixel rendering, which now is disabled by default,
you can dig into the foption.h file in the config directory of the
freetype sourcecode, uncomment the option and recompile.

I have never been able to understand why people like the blurry and
muddy Micro$oft-like font rendering... gaah.. Now we have to hack the
source to get rid of that crap.

https://tinyurl.com/ybf3fkwv

Cheers,
 Heinz

[Tom Horsley]

On Thu, 13 Jul 2017 21:16:56 +0200
Heinz Diehl wrote:

>  I have never been able to understand why people like the blurry and
>  muddy Micro$oft-like font rendering... gaah 
Good info. I'm saving this for future reference, but one thing I have
noticed is that Ubuntu (which as far as I know adopts all
the same font infrastructure as fedora) always looks
about 1000 times better in the font area in a brand new
install, not yet customized, just what the live image
provides.

I've never been able to track down the specific differences
between what ubuntu provides for fonts and what fedora
provides. Maybe they just spend some time picking default
fonts that simply look better.

[Mike Wright]

On 07/13/2017 12:30 PM, Tom Horsley wrote:
>  On Thu, 13 Jul 2017 21:16:56 +0200
>  Heinz Diehl wrote:
>  
> > I have never been able to understand why people like the blurry and
> > muddy Micro$oft-like font rendering... gaah
>  
>  Good info. I'm saving this for future reference, but one thing I have
>  noticed is that Ubuntu (which as far as I know adopts all
>  the same font infrastructure as fedora) always looks
>  about 1000 times better in the font area in a brand new
>  install, not yet customized, just what the live image
>  provides.
>  
>  I've never been able to track down the specific differences
>  between what ubuntu provides for fonts and what fedora
>  provides. Maybe they just spend some time picking default
>  fonts that simply look better. 
You may have something there.  Right off the top they provide their own 
default set at "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ubuntu-font-family".

UbuntuMono-RI.ttf
UbuntuMono-B.ttf
Ubuntu-R.ttf
Ubuntu-B.ttf
Ubuntu-C.ttf
Ubuntu-BI.ttf
UbuntuMono-R.ttf
Ubuntu-RI.ttf
Ubuntu-LI.ttf
Ubuntu-L.ttf
Ubuntu-M.ttf
Ubuntu-MI.ttf
UbuntuMono-BI.ttf

That pretty much covers everything with Lite, Condensed, Medium, 
Regular, and Mono fonts, with bold and/or italic styles where applicable.

[Patrick Laimbock]

Hi,

On 13-07-17 21:16, Heinz Diehl wrote:
>  Hi,
>
>  for those who love razorsharp fonts just like me but got the new v40 interpreter
>  coming with freetype-2.7 enforced on them when installing F26: the good old v35
>  interpreter is still there (and I hope it will be forever). You can
>  use it by setting the environment variable
>
>   FREETYPE_PROPERTIES=truetype:interpreter-version=35 
Will give that a try. Thanks for the tip.

>  If you also want subpixel rendering, which now is disabled by
> default,
>  you can dig into the foption.h file in the config directory of the
>  freetype sourcecode, uncomment the option and recompile. 
freetype-freeworld on rpmfusion.org has subpixel rendering enabled.

http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/releases/26/Everything/x86_64/...

HTH,
Patrick

[Heinz Diehl]

On 13.07.2017, Patrick Laimbock wrote: 

>  Will give that a try. Thanks for the tip. 
In addition, to get really sharp fonts, you'll have to delete the
slight hinting set as default in /etc/fonts/conf.d and enable full
hinting. Just delete the link to 10-hinting-slight.conf and create a
new one to 10-hinting-full.conf.

>  > If you also want subpixel rendering, which now is disabled by
> default,
>  > you can dig into the foption.h file in the config directory of the
>  > freetype sourcecode, uncomment the option and recompile. 
 
>  freetype-freeworld on rpmfusion.org has subpixel rendering enabled.
Thanks! However, compiling freetype is rather trivial.

[stan]

On Fri, 14 Jul 2017 08:08:04 +0200
Heinz Diehl <htd+ml(a)fritha.org&gt; wrote:

>  On 13.07.2017, Patrick Laimbock wrote: 
>  
>  > Will give that a try. Thanks for the tip.  
>  
>  In addition, to get really sharp fonts, you'll have to delete the
>  slight hinting set as default in /etc/fonts/conf.d and enable full
>  hinting. Just delete the link to 10-hinting-slight.conf and create a
>  new one to 10-hinting-full.conf. 
I'm using freetype-freeworld from rpmfusion.  I followed your
original links, and ended up here, 
https://www.freetype.org/freetype2/docs/subpixel-hinting.html
where I see a comparison between 35 and 40.  My fonts look like the 35
version.  Do I still need to do the above?

> > > If you also want subpixel rendering, which now is disabled by
> > > default, you can dig into the foption.h file in the config
> > > directory of the freetype sourcecode, uncomment the option and
> > > recompile.  
>  
> > freetype-freeworld on rpmfusion.org has subpixel rendering
> > enabled.  
> 
> Thanks! However, compiling freetype is rather trivial.

[stan]

On Fri, 14 Jul 2017 07:59:54 -0700
stan <stanl-fedorauser(a)vfemail.net&gt; wrote:

>  I'm using freetype-freeworld from rpmfusion.  I followed your
>  original links, and ended up here, 
>  https://www.freetype.org/freetype2/docs/subpixel-hinting.html
>  where I see a comparison between 35 and 40.  My fonts look like the 35
>  version.  Do I still need to do the above? 
It was so easy, I just changed it.  It doesn't seem to have made any
difference, maybe after the next reboot.

[Heinz Diehl]

On 14.07.2017, stan wrote: 

>  It was so easy, I just changed it.  It doesn't seem to have made
> any
>  difference, maybe after the next reboot. 
As far as I can see, the different hinting levels do no longer have
any effect since freetype-2.7. Have to dig a little deeper into the
sourcecode to fully understand what's going on.

Normally, it is enough to log out and in again to restart the font
renderer, you won't have to reboot..

[Neal Becker]

Heinz Diehl wrote:

>  Hi,
>  
>  for those who love razorsharp fonts just like me but got the new v40
>  interpreter coming with freetype-2.7 enforced on them when installing F26:
>  the good old v35 interpreter is still there (and I hope it will be
>  forever). You can use it by setting the environment variable
>  
>   FREETYPE_PROPERTIES=truetype:interpreter-version=35
>  
>  If you also want subpixel rendering, which now is disabled by default,
>  you can dig into the foption.h file in the config directory of the
>  freetype sourcecode, uncomment the option and recompile.
>  
>  I have never been able to understand why people like the blurry and
>  muddy Micro$oft-like font rendering... gaah.. Now we have to hack the
>  source to get rid of that crap.
>  
>  https://tinyurl.com/ybf3fkwv
>  
>  Cheers,
>   Heinz
>   
>  _______________________________________________
>  users mailing list -- users(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org 
where are you setting this?

[Tom Horsley]

On Fri, 14 Jul 2017 09:09:02 -0400
Neal Becker wrote:

>  where are you setting this? 
If you aren't using wayland, session-wide environment variables can be
set in scripts added to the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/ directory.

I have no idea where to do something similar in wayland.

[Ahmad Samir]

On 14 July 2017 at 15:28, Tom Horsley <horsley1953(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Fri, 14 Jul 2017 09:09:02 -0400
>  Neal Becker wrote:
>
> > where are you setting this?
>
>  If you aren't using wayland, session-wide environment variables can be
>  set in scripts added to the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/ directory.
>
>  I have no idea where to do something similar in wayland. 
By exporting the env var in ~/.bash_profile and possibly in a script
in /etc/profile.d/*.sh; have a look at:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=736660#c63

-- 
Ahmad Samir

[Heinz Diehl]

On 14.07.2017, Neal Becker wrote: 

>  where are you setting this? 
Global environment variables belong into /etc/profile, and local ones
into .bash_profile in your home directory. Here's the diff to
re-enable subpixel rendering (simply uncommenting the option):

diff -urN a/freetype-2.7.1/include/freetype/config/ftoption.h
b/freetype-2.7.1/include/freetype/config/ftoption.h
--- a/freetype-2.7.1/include/freetype/config/ftoption.h	2016-12-11 07:53:49.000000000
+0100
+++ b/freetype-2.7.1/include/freetype/config/ftoption.h	2017-07-13 20:51:26.727210939
+0200
@@ -122,7 +122,7 @@
   /* This is done to allow FreeType clients to run unmodified, forcing     */
   /* them to display normal gray-level anti-aliased glyphs.                */
   /*                                                                       */
-/* #define FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING */
+#define FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING
 
 
   /*************************************************************************/

[Andreas M. Kirchwitz]

Heinz Diehl <htd+ml(a)fritha.org&gt; wrote:

>  for those who love razorsharp fonts just like me but got the new v40
> interpreter
>  coming with freetype-2.7 enforced on them when installing F26: the good old v35
>  interpreter is still there (and I hope it will be forever). You can
>  use it by setting the environment variable
>
>   FREETYPE_PROPERTIES=truetype:interpreter-version=35 
Cool, that works for GTK applications (eg, menus and other text) and
also software like Firefox (text in web pages), Thunderbird (mail) etc.

Do you know why the font display looks broken with the new v40 engine?
Is that a bug in the freetype library or something that has to be
fixed in all applications?

Unfortunately, with Anti-Antialiasing disabled, Google Chrome now
freaks out and - for unknown reasons - also disables Hinting.

In F25 (and before) Google Chrome just silently ignored fontconfig
(that's where I disabled anti-aliasing for specific fonts like Arial,
most other fonts look ugly without anti-aliasing). Google Chrome
continued to display all fonts anti-aliased.

Starting with F26, Chrome now respects the anti-aliasing config,
but although I have have turned Hinting on (which is essential for
nice font rendering, even with AA turned off), Chrome displays those
fonts without Hinting. That looks horrible. :-(

Does anybody know how to make Google Chrome have display fonts nicely?

>  If you also want subpixel rendering, which now is disabled by
> default,
>  you can dig into the foption.h file in the config directory of the
>  freetype sourcecode, uncomment the option and recompile. 
Does that mean, subpixel rendering has been completely removed
from the freetype library compiled for F26? Any reason for this?

Subpixel rendering has no effect if AA is turned off, right?

	Greetings, Andreas

[Heinz Diehl]

On 18.07.2017, Andreas M. Kirchwitz wrote: 

>  Do you know why the font display looks broken with the new v40
> engine?
>  Is that a bug in the freetype library or something that has to be
>  fixed in all applications? 
It's not a bug, it's meant to be a feature :-(
https://tinyurl.com/ybf3fkwv

>  Starting with F26, Chrome now respects the anti-aliasing config,
>  but although I have have turned Hinting on (which is essential for
>  nice font rendering, even with AA turned off), Chrome displays those
>  fonts without Hinting. That looks horrible. :-( 
I've never used Chrome, so I don't know what's going on there. You could do a
diff
between the latest Chrome that worked and the new one, just to see if
there's something that rings a bell.

>  > If you also want subpixel rendering, which now is disabled by
> default,
>  > you can dig into the foption.h file in the config directory of the
>  > freetype sourcecode, uncomment the option and recompile. 
 
>  Does that mean, subpixel rendering has been completely removed
>  from the freetype library compiled for F26? Any reason for this? 
Seems to be the case. Looking into the latest 2.7.1 source shipped by
Fedora, subpixel rendering isn't enabled in foptions.h. Most probably,
Fedora follows the freetype principal developers opinion(s).
 
>  Subpixel rendering has no effect if AA is turned off, right? 
As far as I understand it, subpixel rendering is a form of
antialiasing on LCD screens that works because the combination of red,
green and blue appears as white light. A typical example is Micro$ofts
"Cleartype".

To me, v40 is far superior to v35. Fortunately, there's a way to
switch back to v35 behaviour.

[Heinz Diehl]

On 19.07.2017, Heinz Diehl wrote: 

>  To me, v40 is far superior to v35. Fortunately, there's a way to
>  switch back to v35 behaviour. 
s/superior/inferior;