Re: [ft] Tweaking/Improving FreeType Antialiasing

[Roman Shaposhnik]

On Sun, 2006-08-27 at 10:38 -0700, address@hidden wrote:
> If I'm reading your post correctly, you're basically saying that  
> getting text that looks the way I want is hopeless.

  Well, its not entirely hopeless, but it seems to be impossible
with the current software at hand. As I pointed out -- I'd be
very motivated to work on this, provided that:
   
   1. I have somebody as obsessed with Font Rendering as I am 
      for evaluating results of difference software rendering
      techniques ;-) [ Check ]
    
   2. I have somebody I can ask stupid questions (hey -- asking
      stupid questions is how I got into multimedia anyway) 

> It sounds like Linux has an API limitation? And  
> this API limitation is what in turn makes the fonts look so  
> miserable? (In my view.)

  Yes. So far it seems that at least one area of Font Rendering
(postprocessing filtering) is completely missing from both
libraries doing font manipulation: FreeType and Xft. Changing
that, is, in fact an easy hack of Xft as far as APIs go. 
Figuring out what filters to use -- could be tricky. And I'm
saying that based on the MPEG/DV filtering that I've been
experimenting with for ffmpeg.

> Regarding turning off hinting, wasn't that the default setting under  
> FC5? 

  These days -- I always reconfigure everything myself. Default
configs are simply not trustworthy enough.

> Even under OS X, Mozilla-based browsers have horrendous  
> kerning - particularly of italic serif fonts. I love the feature set,  
> but the kerning turns me off - despite using the system anti-aliasing  
> - so I can't stand to use Mozilla more than the bare minimum.

  Kerning seems like the second issue to resolve. And I hope that Tor
would be kind enough to offer his advice on fractional rendering here.

  Now, that said, IMHO kerning quality depends much more on the
font being used and its kerning tables, than on autokerning software
features. 

> Maybe I'm an idiot, but I think one the largest barriers to using  
> Linux on the desktop for me is the maddening font rendering quality.  
> Where precisely is the problem coming in? Would it be possible to use  
> an alternative desktop or window manager to get around it?

  I don't think so. The problem is coming from a very core pair
of software libraries FreeType2 + Xft. Everything else is a layer
on top of them.

Thanks,
Roman.