I emerge xfree-4.2.0-r9, and the fonts looked fuzzy when antialiased. If antialiasing was turned of, the fonts appeard jagged and difficult to read. I resolved this to to xft hack. I've modified the build and commented out the xft hack, and compiled X against freetype 2.0.9 (and while at it added #HAS_ZLIB to it. Now things look alot better. Then antialiased fonts look sharper and the non aliased one look great as well.
Created attachment 1176 [details] My modified ebuild to build against freetype 2.0.9 and disable xft hack and while at it, added echo "#define HasZlib YES" >> config/cf/host.def echo "#define HasNCurses YES" >> config/cf/host.def echo "#define HasFreetype2 YES" >> config/cf/host.def echo "#define HasMMXSupport YES" >> config/cf/host.def echo "#define HasLibCrypt YES" >> config/cf/host.def
Have a look at xfree-4.2.0-r11.
I see that it doesn't apply the xft 'quality' patch. Does it do anything else related to it or just disable it? The changelog doesn't say anything about it.
It disables it. But it uses freetype-2.0.9 with hinting support. Currently the big problem with Xfree86 and antialiasing is that all the bulk work of improving it is in the new CVS versions .... I dont know if we should go that route (have a CVS version of X) now ....
I really think that the Xft quality hack ought to be reapplied, optionally or not. I tested it a couple different ways (have screenshots, will post if needed) and I definitely think that having it enabled is the way to go. It affects spacing and apparent size of text in KDE 3.0, distinctly for the better. Maybe to avoid the fuzziness complaints, something (suggested by Danny Tholen) like this should be added to /etc/X11/XftConfig: match any size > 8 any size < 15 edit antialias = false;
Well, I think I am going to leave it commented. If need be, you can alway uncomment it. I get good results with AA in Gnome2 and the current Mozilla, without it or the modifications to XftConfig.
