Re: [ft] Which settings are optimal to use for CRT monitors?

[Anatoly]

On Wed, 23 Oct 2019 08:34:33 +0000
Bj"orkeb"ack Jon <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hi!
> 
> Recently I swapped out my LCD screen for a CRT, and I have since
> struggled to get truetype-fonts readable in X.
> 
> Bitmap fonts are tack sharp (there's nothing wrong with sharpness on
> my Nokia 445) while truetype-fonts on the other hand are un-baringly
> blurry.
> 
> What settings in free-type can I use to remedy this situation? (I run
> ubunto 18.04 which means I have freetype 2.8.1 installed)
> 
> Grateful for any suggestions. Thanks!
> 
> /Jon

Hello
I'm not a freetype expert yet and I'm on FreeBSD OS, but here is what I
do when I want "Windows9x/2k-like fonts" suitable for low-res display
or CRT:
In general:
In freetype:
 1. Disable subpixel hinting.
Fonts:
 2. Use only fonts for which hinting works well. My favourite font set
 is "mscorefonts" (or sometimes MS "webfonts"). "DejaVu" fonts good
 except *-condensed. "Liberation", "Droid", "Linux*" almost not good. 
In fontconfig configuration files: 
 3. Set hinting to "full" and disable antialiasing for mentioned
 above fonts (for which hinting works well). For rest of fonts, which
 are not good on hinting, enable antialiasing. I tend to not to keep
 such fonts within my X11 fonts directory tree at all (or just don't
 care about them cause don't use them), so to me this is almost things
 like webfonts in browsers.

Also, I've noted for ex. that chromium browser (2016 versions, don't
know about modern, did'n tested it) does not use system freetype at all
to render webpages. So all this does not affect it.

In details:
- For 1. I don't know how it was in 2.8.1. I have only 2.9.1 and 2.6.3
by hand.
In case with 2.9.1 you need freetype built with commented out (or
deleted) line
#define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_HINTING
in file
include/freetype/config/ftoption.h
In case with 2.6.3 you need freetype built with not defined macro
FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING
- For 3. In fontconfig directory (in my case /usr/local/etc/fonts) there
is conf.d directory. Go to conf.d directory and replace symlink
10-hinting-slight.conf@-> /usr/local/etc/fonts/conf.avail/10-hinting-slight.conf
with
10-hinting-full.conf@ -> ../conf.avail/10-hinting-full.conf

In fontconfig directory create local.conf file:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<match target="font">
        <test qual="any" name="file" compare="contains">
                <string>fonts</string>
        </test>
        <test qual="any" name="size" compare="less">
                <double>18</double>
        </test>
        <edit name="antialias" mode="assign">
                <bool>false</bool>
        </edit>
</match>
<match target="font">
        <test qual="any" name="file" compare="contains">
                <string>fonts</string>
        </test>
        <test qual="any" name="pixelsize" compare="less">
                <double>18</double>
        </test>
        <edit name="antialias" mode="assign">
                <bool>false</bool>
        </edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>