With bytecode interpreter as well as subpixel hinting that someone else mentioned turned on, the settings for the right one are:

option excluded range unchecked
subpixel hinting checked and RBG selected
hinting style: medium

http://webplaza.pt.lu/uselpa/beautiful.html

This how to should be a good start for non AA fonts. People are right there has been a lot of talk lately about the quality of fonts, which is why I posted my screen shots a while back http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=539868. The thing is you guys are right about what you are saying here on how enable the bytecode interpreter and sub pixel rendering, but there is more to it than that to get optimal results, you need to use David Turners Rogue Patches and patch libXft and the PLD guys have updated the Cairo patch to work with 1.4.10. once you apply these patches and recompile Cairo and libXft then you need to make a .fonts.conf file in your home directory with the settings you like, my current settings are

<?xml version="1.0"?><!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
<const>rgb</const>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="hinting" >
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
<edit name="autohint">
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
<const>hintmedium</const>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>

Keep in mind that you can tweak these options, but I think they work quite well like this.

Also the slackbuild does have two lines that you need to un-comment to get the bytecode interpreter and sub pixel rendering. Once you un-comment those lines there is actually one more thing you need to change manually, you need to edit the
/freetype-2.3.5/src/autofit/aflatin.c file. There are two line in particular that you need to change change the following two lines so that they look like so..

if ( mode == FT_RENDER_MODE_MONO || mode == FT_RENDER_MODE_LCD )
other_flags |= AF_LATIN_HINTS_HORZ_SNAP;

change that to

if ( mode == FT_RENDER_MODE_MONO )
other_flags |= AF_LATIN_HINTS_HORZ_SNAP;


and then change

if ( mode == FT_RENDER_MODE_MONO || mode == FT_RENDER_MODE_LCD_V )
other_flags |= AF_LATIN_HINTS_VERT_SNAP;

to

if ( mode == FT_RENDER_MODE_MONO )
other_flags |= AF_LATIN_HINTS_VERT_SNAP;



Once you do all those things above you will achieve the most optimal cleartype looking fonts that linux can do.


I always get people saying that this issue is stupid and the fonts look fine by default, well good for you but some of us want fonts more like windows.

Ding Ding! We have two winners!

Looking at the screenshots very closely, there's a couple of things to note. It seems that bold is handled slightly differently on Windows - it's not quite so thick. Also spacing of fonts is slightly different - the fonts on Windows are ever so slightly flatter.

I did use the libXft, Cairo and freetype patches noted by Daedra to achieve this effect.

A lot of the guides are pretty outdated - and suitable for CRT screens, where sub-pixel hinting might not make much of an effect, which is why it usually doesn't get mentioned.

It can seem like a lot of work, I've been 'using' Slackware for years, but never in a capacity like a workstation - the fonts always put me off. However, I'm pretty confident that now I might be able to start doing so. That's how important fonts are to me.

i think i prefer the left,
http://www.sfu.ca/~mda5/compare.png

its nice and clean. the one on the right seems blurred to me and its got lots of colors in it.

I found a set of patches here: http://quanli.googlepages.com/davidt...esfordebiansid

These work with the versions of the packages shipped with Slackware 12.

They make a big difference. You won't appreciate how much of a difference until you try them.

Man you guys have some awesome looking font setups I must say.
mattydee - I too like the right screenshot.

Did you have the bytecode interpreter enabled in that first screenshot? When I turn AA off on my box my fonts look really quite very bad (extra pixels hanging off in every direction, very rough edges, etc.)

Also, for people who are rebuilding the Slackware fonts package, what do you do about versioning? Do you do keep the version number the same and do upgradepkg --install or do you remove the old package, change the version on the new package and then just installpkg?

P.S. Daedra: Your Linux screenshot with AA and SPH looks much better to me than Windows + Cleartype!

i agree.. i've never bothered with the font building stuff but I am going to delve into this now. thanks to all for posting your info!

Am I the only one who thinks the fonts on the right in

http://www.sfu.ca/~mda5/compare2.png

appear blurry?

no your not,penguin. i think theyre blurry aswell, and theyve got lots of colors in in them. it must be the way some people see color or something.

I didn't have the bit code interpreter turned off. What I did is stupidly select the exclude range option, which pretty much turned off AA.

As for the recompilation, I let checkinstall do its thing then renamed the package it created to -3.tgz so that slapt-get will not bother me about an update...

Also, I noticed that some packages that need freetype to compile look for the lib in /usr/lib, but the freetype default install is in /usr/local/lib, so adding the option --prefix=/usr is a good idea.

I've just uploaded my Cairo, LibXft, and Freetype slack packages that I made, all the packages are made using Pat's build scripts so they are as close to official slack packages as you can get, there is no doubt in my mind that they will work for you, but just in case I accept no responsibility if your PC blow up, lol . These packages should take out the leg of work of recompiling all those packages to get good cleartype results, all the packages have been patched using the patches that i mentioned earlier.

http://webpages.charter.net/daedra/c....10-i486-1.tgz
http://webpages.charter.net/daedra/l....12-i486-3.tgz
http://webpages.charter.net/daedra/f...3.5-i486-1.tgz

thankyou Daedra

Just don't forget to make a .fonts.conf file in your home directory, if you want you can just copy mine from my earlier post, other wise you won't get optimal results.

P.S. Optimal results if you like the results on the right, for the left side you will need different settings in your .fonts.conf file

@Daedra - thanks.. are these slack11 or 12 packages?