SuSE 10.0

ivasic · 10-10-2005, 05:15 PM

I've been messing with hinting and antialiasing whole night and can't find a solution. In 9.2 and 9.3 my fonts were so smooth and everything looked great. Now the fonts with sizes <11 are so damn ugly.

I have 17" TFT with 1280x1024 res. and
xdpyinfo | grep resol gave me: resolution: 95x96 dots per inch

I really have problem reading text like this, does anybody have any tip?

duffmckagan · 10-11-2005, 07:18 AM

Have you tried changing some options related to "Appearance" in the KDE Control Center?

ivasic · 10-11-2005, 07:43 AM

Yes, I did. I changed almost everything like : Antialiasing (on/off), Use sub-pixel hinting (on/off) - including all options from low-full, different exclude ranges...
I also changed BYTECODE_INTERPRETER option in /etc/sysconfig but no luck.

Some fonts get properly rendered (MS font Trebuchet for instance), but ALL sans fonts that came with SuSE (fonts I was using before) look horrible... When AA and hinting are off they look even worse. So, I do see the change when these options are on - but fonts are not nearly as smooth as they were in 9.3 (or 9.2). I don't know how to describe this effect, but it's not very good looking I can tell for sure

duffmckagan · 10-11-2005, 07:48 AM

Did you install Fonts by yourself?

Any additional Fonts can sometimes cause problems. If "tried" sometimes, it is difficult to revert things back.

ivasic · 10-11-2005, 08:11 AM

Nope. All fonts were installed during OS setup and MS TrueType fonts were installed via YOU.
So I didn't do anything manually.

duffmckagan · 10-11-2005, 11:33 AM

Not sure if Sax2 will help.

mac57 · 10-11-2005, 11:36 AM

ivasic, a question for you. I am afraid that I cannot help, but you mentioned that you had been able to change the BYTECODE_INTERPRETER option in /etc/sysconfig. Where is that option? I have looked through all the files in /etc/sysconfig and not found it. Until now, I thought you had to download freetype, patch it and rebuild to enable the BYTECODE_INTERPRETER stuff. I have tried that twice now, and succeeded in completely hosing my SuSE 9.3 each time, to the point that I could never get it to boot up to KDE. At this point I had given up. If there is a way to configure this without doing a rebuild of freetype, I would be REALLY interested.

I fear that this may be a SuSE 10.0 option that is not supported in my SuSE 9.3 of course...

ivasic · 10-11-2005, 01:18 PM

Yep, you're right. This is one of the 'features' of SuSE 10. They added BYTECODE_INTERPRETER (and they totaly screwed up my fonts).
If you choose to install v10 you'll find it in YaST->System->/etc/sysconfig ...

bretts5964 · 02-15-2006, 08:18 AM

I found this tutorial on the openSUSE site recently. I don't think it existed until after the last post here in this thread.

Optimal Use of MS TrueType Core Fonts for a KDE Desktop on SuSE
http://en.opensuse.org/Optimal_Use_o...esktop_on_SuSE

I use a CRT, not an LCD display. I hear that LCD font tweaking is a bit different. This tutorial gave me fonts that looked IDENTICAL to those in (dare I say it) Windows. Anyway, the tutorial includes screenshots so you can decide if you like it before messing with anything.

There's also some instructions for SUSE 9.3 fonts. It doesn't offer this advice, but there IS a way to turn on the bytecode interpreter (BCI) by getting the freetype2 source RPM, changing a variable in the source, and recompiling. (NO need to do this if you use SUSE 10.0 & up).

This site (in German) explains how to turn on the freetype2 BCI so you've got an RPM to install. Just don't distribute your RPM when you're done because this may be restricted where you live. Legally speaking, you're on your own.

FreeType - Bytecode-Interpreter aktivieren (Bei RPM-basierenden Distributionen)
http://www.antikoerperchen.de/deutsch/howto-30.php

Enjoy,
Brett