font issues on slackware64-current

SpelledJ · 02-17-2010, 01:12 PM

I've installed slackware64-current from a 1/31/10 iso created by Eric's mirror-slackware-current script and my rsync mirror. I'm having a lot of problems getting fonts to look readable. Firefox looks particularly bad both in the UI and rendering fonts inside pages themselves. Black on white text has a lot of red/orange and blue fringing that reminds me of the Apple II from 30 years ago.

I've recompiled freetype with all three patches from the -current slackbuild. I've got anti-aliasing enabled in KDE with no exclusions and RGB hinting. I've tried slight, medium, and full and can't tell much difference among them. I didn't notice much improvement from the base install to after I rebuilt freetype.

I've tried following Dugan Chen's guide under "Rebuilding your font rendering subsystem" but can't even get past the freetype re-compile using his slackbuild and the 2.3.11 sources. I thought this might be a -current vs. stable 13.0 issue, or possibly differences between the 2.3.9 freetype in current and the 2.3.11 that Dugan suggests. The configure step seems to work okay, but make stops at target "unix".

Other details - I have an ATI Radeon HD4670 and I'm using the radeonhd open source driver. I haven't used the closed source fglrx driver yet because it appears to require multilib and I haven't set it up yet. I'm using a 17" LCD monitor at 1280x1024 also.

Any suggestions? Anyone used Dugan's freetype-2.3.11 slackbuild on current? Would the fglrx driver help?

rg3 · 02-17-2010, 01:34 PM

EDIT: Wrong thread.

dugan · 02-17-2010, 02:29 PM

Can you post the error message in the compile output?

And if it says something like "see this file for more details," then can you post the relevant parts from that file as well?

SpelledJ · 02-17-2010, 03:05 PM

I'm away from my slackware box right now, but I'll post the actual error this evening. IIRC, it was "make: nothing to do for target `unix'", but I'll verify and post some output. Thanks for checking in on this, Dugan.

gauchao · 02-17-2010, 05:41 PM

Quote:

Black on white text has a lot of red/orange and blue fringing that reminds me of the Apple II from 30 years ago.

Come on, that was nice, wasn't it? (Sorry for the joke; Apple ][ was my all-time favourite PC)

Best wishes!

SpelledJ · 02-17-2010, 06:14 PM

Heh heh, sorry Gauchao - I was a Commodore64 man. Er, kid.

Dugan -
Two mistakes on my part:

1. I gave the wrong error message earlier. It was:

Code:

checking build system type... i486-slackware-linux-gnu                                                                                                       
checking host system type... i486-slackware-linux-gnu                                                                                                        
checking for gcc... gcc                                                                                                                                      
checking for C compiler default output file name...                                                                                                          
configure: error: in `/tmp/SBo/freetype-2.3.11/builds/unix':                                                                                                 
configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables                                                                                                       
See `config.log' for more details.                                                                                                                           
make: *** [setup] Error 77

I hadn't noticed the config.log message earlier - I found it and discovered:

Code:

configure:2539: gcc -O2 -march=i486 -mtune=i686   conftest.c  >&5
conftest.c:1: error: CPU you selected does not support x86-64 instruction set

Which made me realize mistake #2: I used your Slackbuild as-is and forgot to change the ARCH to x86_64. This is my first 64-bit x86 machine and I'm not in the habit of watching for those differences yet.

After changing the ARCH, it built fine and installed. I need to restart X and continue building your other packages so I'll give an update later.

bgeddy · 02-17-2010, 06:36 PM

Quote:

Which made me realize mistake #2: I used your Slackbuild as-is and forgot to change the ARCH to x86_64. This is my first 64-bit x86 machine and I'm not in the habit of watching for those differences yet

I just set this line in /etc/profile so I always have that covered :

Code:

export ARCH="x86_64"

Saves you remembering to check when compiling anything.

SpelledJ · 02-17-2010, 09:56 PM

Okay, all done. Dugan, all of the packages built and installed just fine on -current. I installed the webcore package and the Droid fonts and it made a huge improvement. I've still got a lot of tweaking to do. I had everything looking good and then I started fiddling with the font settings in Firefox. I've now got things a little smaller than I can comfortably read. But, I think the backend rendering is working very well. Thanks for your packaging efforts. That was very easy to set up.

Also thanks for the tip about putting ARCH in /etc/profile, bgeddy. That will probably save me some headaches as I finish setting up my new rig.

grissiom · 02-18-2010, 06:59 AM

@Dugan Chen

I found something wrong with your freetype.SlackBuild, in about line 80:

Code:

   80 if [ $USE = "ubuntu"  ]; then
   81   echo -e "\033[1mApplying Cleartype patches...\033[0m"
   82   patch -p1 < "${FILESDIR}"/${P}-ubuntu.patch
   83   echo -e "\033[1mAll Cleartype patches applied\033[0m"
   84 fi

Why apply "Cleartype" patches when use "ubuntu"?

Ok, it's all about messages and is trivial.

And 10-no-sub-pixel.conf is in /etc/fonts/conf.avail rather than /etc/fonts/conf.d

dugan · 02-18-2010, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by grissiom

@Dugan Chen

I found something wrong with your freetype.SlackBuild, in about line 80:

Code:

   80 if [ $USE = "ubuntu"  ]; then
   81   echo -e "\033[1mApplying Cleartype patches...\033[0m"
   82   patch -p1 < "${FILESDIR}"/${P}-ubuntu.patch
   83   echo -e "\033[1mAll Cleartype patches applied\033[0m"
   84 fi

Why apply "Cleartype" patches when use "ubuntu"?

Ok, it's all about messages and is trivial.

I did notice that about a month ago, but forgot to post the fixed version. Thanks for reminding me.