I commented out the RedHat 2.1.3 patch out of the 2.1.4 ebuild and autohinting (not bytecode interpreter) is working correctly now. I was having problems with q's, u's and t's being oddly spaced causing words to be deformed. Italics were also incorrectly weighted. Removing this patch fixed that. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Comment out RedHat 2.1.3 patch. 2. Compile 2.1.4 with "emerge freetype" 3. Fonts are ugly. Actual Results: Fonts are ugly and distorted in Georgia and Times New Roman. Expected Results: Render better than in version 2.1.3. Remove the RedHat patch and compile with: # USE="prebuilt" emerge freetype to get the autohinter enabled. (I think I'll file another bug to get that flag changed. why did you choose "prebuilt"?)
alright well we'll take a look at this, this is a small part of the larger 'font sexiness' we've been working on =) foser: i'm goin gto test out what he says...
he may be right, not that it doesn't work right, but that in it's default setting (which can only be changed easily in the gnome config) it might distort certain fonts. Altough i must say i can't really reproduce the described behaviour myself. Reporter, can you show us some samples ? I was thinking of getting rid of the slighhint stuff anyway, it doesn't seem to be used really and there is enough font settings already.
I guess I could recompile with the RedHat patch and snap a screen shot. Georgia at 12pt and any italics Serif fonts exhibit the most problems. I have posted a screen shot of 2.1.4 w/ autohinter WITHOUT the RedHat patch here: http://www.kcpassages.org/snapshot3.png GTK2 and KDE apps are shown. If you need me to, I can recompile with the RedHat 2.1.3 patch later this evening and snap a screenie. Let me know.
please do and while you are at it, could you also do a shot with the bytecode interpreter enabled instead of the autohinter ? Right now the ebuild should once again default to this, but check the ebuild to make sure.
With BCI enabled: http:/www.kcpassages.org/snapshot5.png autohinter WITH RedHat patch to follow
autohinter WITH RedHat patch: http://www.kcpassages.org/snapshot6.png also, my font test file for KWord: http://www.kcpassages.org/fontest.kwd Notice in the mozilla browser window the words "My Safari" in bold at the top. The 'a' seems closer to it's other letters than other characters to. Notice also the 8pt fonts -- all of which are vastly distorted. Notice also that 14 pt Arial, the 'm' is disproportionate. Also, in the word 'fragments' that I magnified, the 'rag' is cramed together while other letter maintain nominal space.
To be honest, the more I look at all of the different compiling ways, the more I get the sense that autohinter is just not ready for prime time. It's pretty in some cases and I really like the smoothness of it all. But with or without the RedHat 2.1.3 patch, there are just too many anomolies. My bigest complaint is where the autohinter compresses clusters of letters together in words while all other letters remain the same spacing. I'm seeing it in both methods though not in the same cases -- so clearly, the RedHat 2.1.3 patch is changing something. Thanks for your attention to this, guys.
both BI and AH have their good points, but with all the (bad) fonts out there it is nearly impossible to do it all right i think. For now we keep the slighthint patches, cause it would be major pita to remove i'm afraid and i suppose there are people who do use them. In time we should re-evaluate if it pays off to keep them vs. their usefulness.
