Font hinting is not enabled on default install. This makes lcd users very sad. Hinting should be on on default install : http://wiki2.archlinux.org/index.php/XOrg%20Font%20Configuration Or atleast there should be use flag for that. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
afaik hinting is on by default. What exactly would you like to see changed, the page you refer to is mostly unneeded trickery or default in Gentoo. Adding a USE flag seems overdone, the defaults should be fine for lcd users as well.
<!-- Use the Autohinter --> <match target="pattern"> <edit name="autohint" mode="assign"> <bool>true</bool> </edit> </match> in ~/.fonts.conf makes fonts readable on tft displays and nicer on crt monitors too. This should be added to global font config
most ppl want to use the bytecode interpreter because well.. it's more correct than the autohinter ever could be (& looks more like fonts on other OS-es). Only badly hinted fonts will look better with the autohinter & this has nothing todo with being an lcd or crt user.
Without this setting fonts are *very badly* on tft displays. There should be at least tft useflag or something.
maybe your fonts are just *very bad* and is that your problem.
Have you ever tested fonts on laptop? It is true that small fonts look very ugly without that setting on tft display, specially on laptop display. Corefonts and similar are installed, but no luck without that setting on. Test and see.
No I haven't, send me one and I'll give it a go. So far your understanding of the subject and the resulting solution you give can't really convince me you know your stuff. I do not deny that you may have a bad fonts experience, but I very much doubt this is the right solution.
Well, can you provide other working solutions? I have studied this issue with lot of time, still I haven't found way to to get fonts work fine on tft displays, only way to get fonts look fine is to disable bytecode interpreter. In same machine fonts look fine on crt, but not on tft. This same issue goes on Redhat systems, since they by default enable bytecode interpreter due to some licensing issues, they might be fear of software patents that Apple might have. (ref: http://freetype.sourceforge.net/patents.html) anyway, Debian systems disable bytecode interpreter on tft displays. I might be wrong, but I mainly believe my eyes on font quality and I don't want customers wining about crappy fonts on Linux. At this time I can't provide tft display for you, maybe later on this year, If I have some available.
The autohinter works fine on my LCD with sub-pixel rendering enabled. Perhaps not as well as the bytecode interpreter, but that's how it goes.
AI vs BI is a matter of preference, the first is somewhat more bold and fuzzy according to most people, the latter is sharper & more correct when used with well hinted fonts (ms-core, ttf-bitstream-vera). Although the glyphs are somewhat different it shouldn't have such a big impact. For LCD's to give the best picture you should set subpixel order apprioriate for your display (/etc/fonts/local.conf for an example i think) that should make some difference.
Fonts configuration is done via symlinking /etc/fonts/conf.avail stuff to /etc/fonts/conf.d; configure as preferred for your system. If you need something special, that's what /etc/fonts/local.conf and/or ~/.fonts.conf is for. Closing this bug that isn't going anywhere.
