Font rendering in F13

[Ilyes Gouta]

Hi,

> That's always been how it's looked to me as well, FWIW. Given that we
> default to using free world fonts and can't ship Microsoft's fonts it
> would seem sensible to default to the autohinter rather than the BCI, in
> my opinion. I definitely prefer the autohinter's interpretation of the
> fonts I usually use (Deja Vu / Vera).

I think it all boils down to this question:

Do we want Fedora to provide full support for the TrueType standard
(actually file format is much more appropriate) or not?

> I'd say the principle should be that we should use whichever
> non-encumbered method gives the closest rendering to that intended by
> the font designer of our default font set for any particular release.

>From what I know, the FreeType API doesn't allow to switch from one
method to another on a per-font basis. But to move on and completely
disable such a feature (bci) is a hefty price to pay. Would be nice if
we could build a kind of a whitelist where bci would be used against
this and that font and disabled otherwise.

-Ilyes Gouta

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 5:17 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-05-23 at 21:51 +0200, drago01 wrote:
>> On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 9:11 PM, Gianluca Sforna <giallu at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 6:57 PM, Roberto Ragusa <mail at robertoragusa.it> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> I'm well aware that many people have different tastes about font
>> >> readability and that I'm probably out of the majority (who
>> >> wants "like on Windows" rendering). This awareness was actually
>> >> the reason of my post: to have guys remember that not everyone
>> >> welcomes the bci.
>> >>
>> >
>> > Actually, one of the first questions I get from users switching from
>> > Ubuntu is why our fonts look worse than theirs.
>> >
>> > As of today, I haven't a good answer, if anyone knows better I'd
>> > really love to hear where we differ and if/how we plan to close the
>> > gap.
>>
>> We neither do have the BCI nor the subpixel hinter enabled.
>>
>> The patents for the former expired but apparently some fonts look
>> worse with it so we decided to disable it.
>> (I have been running with it enabled for years and for me stuff does
>> look _way_ better with the bci ... but well this is a subjective
>> thing).
>
> AIUI, Microsoft fonts - Arial and the rest - are designed with BCI in
> mind and look better that way. Free world fonts - Deja Vu and so on -
> were designed with the autohinter in mind, and tend to look better that
> way.
>
> That's always been how it's looked to me as well, FWIW. Given that we
> default to using free world fonts and can't ship Microsoft's fonts it
> would seem sensible to default to the autohinter rather than the BCI, in
> my opinion. I definitely prefer the autohinter's interpretation of the
> fonts I usually use (Deja Vu / Vera).
>
> I'd say the principle should be that we should use whichever
> non-encumbered method gives the closest rendering to that intended by
> the font designer of our default font set for any particular release.
> --
> Adam Williamson
> Fedora QA Community Monkey
> IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
> http://www.happyassassin.net
>
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