Font rendering in F13

[Roberto Ragusa]

Matthias Clasen wrote:
> Hey, 
> 
> early in the F13 cycle, we enabled the bytecode interpreter in our
> freetype package, since the patents on that have expired last fall.
> Unfortunately, it turned out that many free fonts don't actually benefit
> from this, and actually look worse with the bci. The reason for that is
> that without the bci, freetype uses its autohinter on all fonts, but
> with the bci turned on, it only applies hints to fonts which have them,
> and leaves other fonts alone.
> 
> Behdad investigated the situation, and we have a plan to fix this, but
> doing it properly requires enhancements in multiple places (freetype,
> fontconfig, pango), and will not be ready in time for F13. 

My experience has always been that the autohinter is way better than
all the bci stuff.

I understand that the target of these modifications is to have the bci
where available and the autohinter where bci info is missing.

Will there be an option to say "always use the autohinter?"?
If not, I would miss it badly.

-- 
   Roberto Ragusa    mail at robertoragusa.it