Re: [ft] With Freetype 2.8 my desktop looks bad

[Werner LEMBERG]

Hello Sebastian!


> My issue is that the recent update of the freetype2 package to
> version 2.8 has noticeably changed the way my fonts look.

So it seems that `Arch' is another distribution that used FreeType
< 2.8 unmodified...

> Vaguely it all appears less crisp than before, but what is most
> disturbing is that in Droid Sans Regular 10 there is now a striking
> imbalance between the non-bold and bold version.  [...]

There's nothing I can do.  The auto-hinter previously used slightly
different scaling values – which it shouldn't have done so, and which
is fixed now.  To be more precise, the auto-hinter used an integer
ppem value instead of the unrounded one.  In your case 10pt at 96dpi
corresponds to 13.3333ppem.  What you need is 13ppem.

> I did try changing the font size and have noticed that only size 10
> shows this strong difference. [...]

You didn't try hard enough.  Since

  13ppem * 72dpi / 96dpi = 9.75pt

you should try 9.75pt.


    Werner