I have an LCD monitor, and have enabled subpixel rendering (Desktop->Preferences->Fonts in gnome).

My LCD can be rotated, and I have placed a couple of icons on the upper taskbar to give me a "normal" or "rotated" desktop. When the desktop is rotated, the subpixel rendering is wrong. This can be fixed by clicking the Details tab in the above-mentioned fonts menu, but this is too unweildy a solution if I am to use my screen in both orientations on a regular basis.

Is there a command, executable from the command-line, that can change the subpixel ordering between horizontal and vertical? If so, I can build a shell script (with root permissions if need be) to execute both xrandr and change the subpixel ordering. Perhaps there's another way to do this?

A quick web search suggests that this should happen automatically, but it doesn't, and the Gnome font widget (Desktop->Preferences->Fonts->Details) doesn't update either, suggesting that Gnome is overriding xrandr.

Any help here would be welcome...

Cheers, Tim [Morosoph]

That is a very good question! I was thinking about that just today, in fact.

I don't think there is a command to do it, unfortunately. However, you should be able to manipulate your ~.fonts.config file and tell it to use VRGB (or BGRV, depending on the direction you rotate) instead of using RGB.

For example:

<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
<const>VRGB</const>
</edit>
</match>

You could keep two config files and switch them back and forth. The only catch is that, theoretically, it will only take affect on NEWLY LAUNCHED applications.