This might be a bit fuzzy, I find it hard to quantify the changes - Since the upgrade to fc-2.11.93 all fonts are noticeably smaller (font size 9 looks like 7.5 now), scaling is weird (9 is small, 10 is a lot larger). This is especially unpleasant with monospace fonts. Antialiasing is turned up to 11, making the now-smaller fonts extremely unpleasant to read. Keming issues too ... I'll try to figure out what changed in the config, having font size 8 be font size 8 would be very nice to have.
Curiously, since the upgrade this morning I have no antialiasing at all, and the massive kerning issues you mention. I agree things do look a little smaller too. KDE is set globally to "slight" hinting, 96dpi, no antialiasing for 0-4pt. Downgrading back to 2.11.1-r2 seems to resolve it so I'll be masking 2.11.93 for now.
This depends a lot on your configuration. Which conf files do you have enabled in eselect fontconfig? Which fonts are you using?
Three machines with different setup showing the same font shrinkage (as in, font size 9 now is like 7-7.5 before), and noticeably worse antialiasing. All three on kde4, no config files wanted to be changed after upgrade. eselect output from one victim: $ eselect fontconfig list Available fontconfig .conf files (* is enabled): [1] 10-autohint.conf [2] 10-no-sub-pixel.conf [3] 10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf * [4] 10-sub-pixel-bgr.conf [5] 10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf [6] 10-sub-pixel-vbgr.conf [7] 10-sub-pixel-vrgb.conf [8] 10-unhinted.conf [9] 11-lcdfilter-default.conf [10] 11-lcdfilter-legacy.conf [11] 11-lcdfilter-light.conf [12] 20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans.conf [13] 20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans-mono.conf [14] 20-unhint-small-dejavu-serif.conf [15] 20-unhint-small-vera.conf * [16] 25-ttf-arphic-ukai-render.conf [17] 25-ttf-arphic-uming-bitmaps.conf [18] 25-ttf-arphic-uming-render.conf [19] 25-unhint-nonlatin.conf [20] 30-metric-aliases.conf * [21] 30-urw-aliases.conf * [22] 35-ttf-arphic-ukai-aliases.conf [23] 35-ttf-arphic-uming-aliases.conf [24] 40-nonlatin.conf * [25] 41-ttf-arphic-ukai.conf [26] 41-ttf-arphic-uming.conf [27] 45-latin.conf * [28] 49-sansserif.conf * [29] 50-user.conf * [30] 51-local.conf * [31] 57-dejavu-sans.conf [32] 57-dejavu-sans-mono.conf [33] 57-dejavu-serif.conf [34] 59-google-droid-sans.conf [35] 59-google-droid-sans-mono.conf [36] 59-google-droid-serif.conf [37] 60-latin.conf * [38] 60-liberation.conf [39] 64-ttf-arphic-uming.conf [40] 65-0-lohit-marathi.conf [41] 65-0-lohit-nepali.conf [42] 65-fonts-persian.conf * [43] 65-khmer.conf [44] 65-nonlatin.conf * [45] 66-lohit-assamese.conf [46] 66-lohit-bengali.conf [47] 66-lohit-devanagari.conf [48] 66-lohit-gujarati.conf [49] 66-lohit-gurmukhi.conf [50] 66-lohit-kannada.conf [51] 66-lohit-odia.conf [52] 66-lohit-tamil-classical.conf [53] 66-lohit-tamil.conf [54] 66-lohit-telugu.conf [55] 67-lohit-malayalam.conf [56] 69-unifont.conf * [57] 70-no-bitmaps.conf [58] 70-yes-bitmaps.conf [59] 75-ttf-arphic-ukai-select.conf [60] 80-delicious.conf * [61] 90-synthetic.conf * [62] 90-ttf-arphic-ukai-embolden.conf [63] 90-ttf-arphic-uming-embolden.conf [64] 99pdftoopvp.conf
I'm also having problems after updating to 2.11.93: small fonts, big jumps in visual size with small changes in numerical size, blurry anti-aliasing. I'm also on KDE 4, configured with no forced DPI setting, "medium" hinting, no font sizes excluded from anti-aliasing, and no sub-pixel rendering. It should be noted that not only KDE applications are affected - the fist application I saw it in was Firefox. Downgrading to media-libs/fontconfig-2.11.1-r2 gives me back sane font rendering. $ eselect fontconfig list Available fontconfig .conf files (* is enabled): [1] 09-texlive.conf [2] 10-autohint.conf [3] 10-no-sub-pixel.conf [4] 10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf * [5] 10-sub-pixel-bgr.conf [6] 10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf * [7] 10-sub-pixel-vbgr.conf [8] 10-sub-pixel-vrgb.conf [9] 10-unhinted.conf [10] 11-lcdfilter-default.conf [11] 11-lcdfilter-legacy.conf [12] 11-lcdfilter-light.conf [13] 20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans-mono.conf [14] 20-unhint-small-dejavu-sans.conf [15] 20-unhint-small-dejavu-serif.conf [16] 20-unhint-small-vera.conf * [17] 25-ttf-arphic-ukai-render.conf [18] 25-ttf-arphic-uming-bitmaps.conf [19] 25-ttf-arphic-uming-render.conf [20] 25-unhint-nonlatin.conf [21] 30-metric-aliases.conf * [22] 30-urw-aliases.conf * [23] 35-ttf-arphic-ukai-aliases.conf [24] 35-ttf-arphic-uming-aliases.conf [25] 40-nonlatin.conf * [26] 41-ttf-arphic-ukai.conf [27] 41-ttf-arphic-uming.conf [28] 43-wqy-zenhei-sharp.conf [29] 44-wqy-zenhei.conf [30] 45-latin.conf * [31] 49-sansserif.conf * [32] 50-user.conf * [33] 51-local.conf * [34] 57-dejavu-sans-mono.conf [35] 57-dejavu-sans.conf [36] 57-dejavu-serif.conf [37] 60-latin.conf * [38] 60-liberation.conf [39] 64-ttf-arphic-uming.conf [40] 65-0-lohit-marathi.conf [41] 65-0-lohit-nepali.conf [42] 65-fonts-persian.conf * [43] 65-khmer.conf [44] 65-nonlatin.conf * [45] 66-lohit-assamese.conf [46] 66-lohit-bengali.conf [47] 66-lohit-devanagari.conf [48] 66-lohit-gujarati.conf [49] 66-lohit-gurmukhi.conf [50] 66-lohit-kannada.conf [51] 66-lohit-odia.conf [52] 66-lohit-tamil-classical.conf [53] 66-lohit-tamil.conf [54] 66-lohit-telugu.conf [55] 67-lohit-malayalam.conf [56] 69-unifont.conf * [57] 70-no-bitmaps.conf [58] 70-yes-bitmaps.conf [59] 75-ttf-arphic-ukai-select.conf [60] 80-delicious.conf * [61] 90-roboto-regular.conf [62] 90-synthetic.conf * [63] 90-ttf-arphic-ukai-embolden.conf [64] 90-ttf-arphic-uming-embolden.conf [65] 99pdftoopvp.conf
I confirm the problem above, I have blurred, smaller fonts in netbeans (java swing??), other applications works fine, i didn't noticed change (browser, kde applications). Downgrading to 2.11.1-r2 brought back the sharp, nice fonts before.
Which fonts are you using that are affected this way?
Specifically, does it help when you uninstall media-fonts/liberation-fonts?
It is not just the change to the Liberation fonts as default (which I think are ugly and hard to read in and of themselves, but that's a different story altogether). I saw it first with Bitstream Vera Serif: I had a Firefox, started with media-libs/fontconfig-2.11.1-r2, showing a page which explicitly sets the font to Bitstream Vera Serif. After emerging media-libs/fontconfig-2.11.93, I opened the same document in a new window, without restarting Firefox. I could then alt-tab between them, and see that the document text differed in that the new one had horribly blurry anti-aliasing. The new window also had much smaller text in the UI chrome, but the document text was the same size.
I had the same issue with fonts too. I had to downgrade to the stable fontconfig version, don't have time to debug this atm.
tbh, on my system, I find fonts to be (although smaller), in fact noticeably sharper (but that might just be because they're smaller). However, I suspect that this is related to an error I'm experiencing with conky: namely, that it now reports that Xft "can't load Xft font [whatever font I have in the config]", and instead displays the fonts of the applet at grossly incorrect sizes and types. Downgrading resolves the issue.
We now have freetype-2.6 and fontconfig-2.11.94. Do they improve font rendering for you guys in any way?
Updating to 2.11.94 and the fonts are rendered the same as 2.11.93. No improvement for me. Using Gnome 3.14.2 on funtoo.
No improvement for me either. media-libs/fontconfig-2.11.94, with either media-libs/freetype-2.5.5 or media-libs/freetype-2.6, gives the same bad result as media-libs/fontconfig-2.11.93.
Same with my issue with conky: 2.11.94 still has the issue with Xft being unable to find any font I specify in the config file, fonts are smaller (but incongruously sharper) on other applications, etc etc.
(In reply to Ben de Groot from comment #7) > Specifically, does it help when you uninstall media-fonts/liberation-fonts? Just unmasked and installed .94 fontconfig. Had the same trouble but removing liberation-fonts fixed the bloody thing.
Unmasking and updating to fontconfig-2.11.94 and uninstalling liberation-fonts also solves the issue on Funtoo with Gnome as well, however, there are dependencies that pull liberation-fonts back in. # equery d liberation-fonts * These packages depend on liberation-fonts: app-office/libreoffice-4.4.5.2 (media-fonts/liberation-fonts) virtual/ttf-fonts-1 (media-fonts/liberation-fonts) www-plugins/adobe-flash-11.2.202.508 (media-fonts/liberation-fonts)
The problem still exists for me. I put these in the /etc/portage/package.mask and the fonts in firefox/java/netbeans etc are fine: =media-libs/fontconfig-2.11.93 =media-libs/fontconfig-2.11.94 =media-libs/fontconfig-2.11.95 If i uninstall liberation-fonts, the fonts are nice in netbeans with fontconfig-2.11.95. But liberation-fonts are required by some packages: app-office/libreoffice-5.1.2.2 (media-fonts/liberation-fonts) app-text/calibre-2.47.0 (media-fonts/liberation-fonts) virtual/ttf-fonts-1 (media-fonts/liberation-fonts) www-plugins/adobe-flash-11.2.202.616 (media-fonts/liberation-fonts) I tried these: eselect fontconfig enable 60-liberation.conf eselect fontconfig disable 60-liberation.conf nothing changed. (this is off, but libreoffice seems to work without liberation-fonts) I use plasma-desktop, and the fonts are only ugly in firefox/netbeans, they are fine in chromium and kde apps. The fonts are ugly in the menu of netbeans too. uninstalling liberation-fonts OR downgrading to =fontconfig-2.11.1-r2 fixes it.
I can confirm that dropping media-fonts/liberation-fonts from system and stubing it in /etc/portage/profile/package.provided does fixes the font rendering issues. Libreoffice works without any problem. Do any of you know what's so epcial in liberation-fonts that OO.o/LO depends on it?
