Hey all,

On my quest to make my fonts (Slackware 12) look better, I've tried my hand on the whole freetype bytecode/subpixel thing. I've downloaded the source and the slackbuild script from ftp.slackware.com and uncommented the two lines described in the slackbuild script.

I've then installed the resulting package and restarted X.

Result: Nothing. Fonts are still looking the same, meaning somewhat "blurry".

Am I missing something? Do I need to adjust any other settings for this package to take effect?

Also I've tried installing the qt-gtk engine so I can control the look of Thunderbird and Firefox, but alas; this doesn't appear to be working either. Both programs look exactly as they've always looked: Blocky and clumsy - no matter how I set the new qt-gtk engine control in the KDE Control Center.

I'm baffled..

Any and all advice is more than welcome.

Regards,
Thomas

I am interested in this as well, because to my eye I have never got Slackware 12 looking as good as Slackware 11 despite having, as far as I can see near identical set ups regarding fonts. I also have done the bytecode/subpixel thing. It seems to do the trick in Slackware 11 but things do not look quite right to me in 12. This is the main reason why I am sticking with 11 for now.

Hi,

You could use this guide.

in case anyone is interested, this is my etc/fonts/local.conf.


<?xml version="1.0"?><!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<dir>/usr/local/share/fonts</dir>
<dir>/usr/share/fonts</dir>
<match target="font">
<edit name="antialias" mode="assign"><bool>false</bool></edit>
<edit name="hinting" mode="assign"><bool>true</bool></edit>
<edit name="autohint" mode="assign"><bool>false</bool></edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>



and my ~/.gtkrc-2.0

gtk-font-name= "Verdana 10"

(I like verdana, choose your preferred font and size - of course microsoft fonts don't come with slackware)

(if you use kde) go to Control centre>fonts and adjust to your liking. I have antialiasing enabled, but then in the configure part, I disable from 8-15 pts

I like it anyway.
tobyl

Fixed!

Here's what I did to get the fonts how I like 'em:

1. Installed the bytecode/subpixel enabled freetype package
2. Ran the two font related scripts from setup (pkgtool/setup)
3. Enabled sub pixel hinting in the KDE Control Center (RGB, Full)
4. Restarted X.

Voila! Fonts are now looking great.

A funny thing: I have two systems running side by side. One is equipped with a cheap nVidia graphics card and the other is equipped with an onboard Intel 965 chip.

Prior to installing the nVidia driver, both systems looked the same, but after having installed the nVidia driver the nVidia systems looks a lot better. Everything is more "crisp".


Thomas

Like you a few months set out to get my fonts looking as good as they possibly could, I have my screenshots on this post http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...kware.-539868/

On this post I posted my freetype/cairo/libXft patches that I compiled for the slackware community that adds subpixel support and bytecode interpreter, plus my .fonts.config file. give these post a look and if you have any questions let us know
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...t-geek-570440/

So basically to summarize... You did the right thing by recompiling freetype with bytecode and sub pixel rendering support, but if you want the most optimal results you need to also recompile Cairo and libXft with the patches that were supplied by david turner of freetype a while back. The patches in question basically make cairo and libXft use the subpixel rendering libraries of freetype. once you have all 3 packages recompiled then you need to make a file called .fonts.conf and put it in your home directory (you can use KDE font settings, but I find it lacking a bit in settings). As I stated above I already recompile all the said packages with patches for everyone in the above post if you want to just use mine instead of recompiling all of it yourself.

Here is a quick screenshot of this post with my font settings
http://webpages.charter.net/daedra/snapshot2.png

You can also try this, which really helped make the fonts much clearer.

Measure the height and width of the display area of your screen in millimeters. Then to your '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' add this to the "Monitor" section:

From the 'man xorg.conf':
so, put in your width and height instead of my numbers there. That really made the fonts a lot clearer ... something to do with DPI.

Good Point, make sure your font DPI is 96x96. You can check this by typing

xdpyinfo | grep resolution

if it isn't you can use the above solution, but lately I just edit /usr/bin/startx and add this line to server arguments (In Red)

#!/bin/sh

# $Xorg: startx.cpp,v 1.3 2000/08/17 19:54:29 cpqbld Exp $
#
# This is just a sample implementation of a slightly less primitive
# interface than xinit. It looks for user .xinitrc and .xserverrc
# files, then system xinitrc and xserverrc files, else lets xinit choose
# its default. The system xinitrc should probably do things like check
# for .Xresources files and merge them in, startup up a window manager,
# and pop a clock and serveral xterms.
#
# Site administrators are STRONGLY urged to write nicer versions.
#
# $XFree86: xc/programs/xinit/startx.cpp,v 3.16tsi Exp $
userclientrc=$HOME/.xinitrc
sysclientrc=/usr/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc


userserverrc=$HOME/.xserverrc
sysserverrc=/usr/lib/X11/xinit/xserverrc
defaultclient=xterm
defaultserver=/usr/bin/X
defaultclientargs=""
defaultserverargs="-dpi 96"
clientargs=""
serverargs=""

Daedra, are you aware of any new patches? Last I tried, quite awhile ago, the cairo patch was broken and possibly even libxft.

1.4.6 or maybe even 1.4.4 was the last cairo that patched cleanly.

I tried some of this out in my slackware 11 installation (which is the one where I am happy with the fonts)

xorg.conf shows

so I changed it to

This made no change at all to the resolution.

I wonder if this is to do with using a flat screen.

Why not try it where you're not happy with the fonts ?

Have you had a look at this old thread?

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...705/page9.html

It goes into great detail about configuring to get good rendering of TT fonts involving some extensive additions to the config. files.

Bill.

Yes, but the Cairo patch is being maintained by the PLD guys, the newest version applies cleanly to to Cairo-1.4.10, here is a link to all the most current patches. They all apply cleanly to Cairo/libXft/etc.

http://webpages.charter.net/daedra/c...atches.tar.bz2

Nice. Thank you.