Here are patches that provides much better subpixel rendering of fonts on lcd displays, found on ubuntu forums, tested on x86 box http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=180647&page=10 http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=235526 They can possilby break some patents so we should enable them only if bindist USE flag is not set.
Created attachment 95354 [details, diff] patch for cairo 1.2.*
Created attachment 95355 [details, diff] patch for libXft-2.1.10
Created attachment 95356 [details] modified cairo 1.2.4 ebuild with bindist use flag
Created attachment 95357 [details] modified libXft 2.1.10 ebuild with bindist use flag
Created attachment 95359 [details] I uploaded wrong ebuild, this one is the right one for 1.2.4 cairo
Created attachment 95360 [details] I uploaded wrong ebuild, this one is the right one for 2.1.10 libXft
I confirm that fonts are improved. The cairo patch needs its email headers removed - it works if its first line is "index..."
Ugh, these are huge patches. Please, submit such stuff upstream.
Seems that is not needed use this patches in cairo-1.2.6: http://blog.cardoe.com/archives/2006/11/02/cairo-126/
This stuff has been moved into FreeType 2.3.0. It is better known as Microsoft ClearType and it clearly infringes on Microsoft patents, which people claim to have prior art for but unless you're willing to fight Microsoft in the courts... it's better to keep them disabled if you distribute binary packages. The original author of these patches agreed that it was better to implement them in freetype, where they belong so that's where they are. As a default, Gentoo's freetype does ship with this disabled. You simply need to create the following symlinks.. $ ls -l /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-autohint.conf lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 Feb 7 01:34 /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-autohint.conf -> ../conf.avail/10-autohint.conf $ ls -l /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 35 Feb 7 01:34 /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf -> ../conf.avail/10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf And you're set.
