Font rendering, 2015

[Matthias Clasen]

On Tue, 2015-06-09 at 10:40 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
> Okay, so, here we go again with this... well, actually, hoping *not*
> to, but one specific thing keeps coming up. As far as I know,
> the patents affecting freetype expired, and the "freetype-freeworld"
> package from third party repositories no longer has any special 
> sauce.
> Yet, I still see people swearing up and down that this makes a big
> difference, it's included in "making fonts in Fedora look good" 
> guides
> everywhere — even though that patent expiration was now long ago. And 
> I
> see that in RPMFusion, the "freetype-freeworld" package still exists
> and is regularly updated.
> 
> So, what's going on with this? My uneducated guess is that the
> "freeworld" package simply enables autohinting that we have off by
> default and does not contain any magic sauce. Is this correct?

There is really no best answer for font rendering. A depends greatly on
the font in question, the screen resolution, and your personal
preference. Some people prefer shape over sharpness, others can't stand
fuzzy fonts.

There is a lot of snake oil out on the internet when it comes to fonts,
and there's probably a placebo effect - you feel that your fonts look
better, because you followed some instructions on some web page that
are supposed to make them look better....

Thankfully, increasing screen resolution makes this issue increasingly
less of a problem.