Re: Hinting regression in Ubuntu 23.04

[Werner LEMBERG]

> Ubuntu 23.04 has a regression in hinted font rendering and possibly
> RGB subpixel rendering. I already tried replacing libfreetype with
> the last known good version of 22.10 and compiled 2.13.0 to see if
> that made any improvements but it didn't (as far as I can tell).

I don't use Ubuntu, so I can't help.

> I do understand that distro specific issues are not FreeType's
> concern but both Ubuntu developers and other contributors to the
> issue (including me) are failing to understand what's happing and
> why e.g. MS's Verdana is rendered using perfect hinting?

I've just tested a self-compiled version of current git, together with
the `ftview` demo program, using UbuntuMono-R.ttf (version 0.8, last
modified 2011-09-26).  Attached is a screenshot of the following call

  ftview -kA5 -e unic 16 UbuntuMono-R.ttf

This is B/W monochrome rendering with full hinting.  As can be seen,
the result is just fine.  I'm quite confident that the problem is
*not* with FreeType.

In general, I recommend that you play around with the demo programs.
If you prefer a nifty graphical interface you might try `ftinspect`,
which was greatly enhanced in FreeType version 2.13.0.



    Werner