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Bruce, You are going to the Olympics? What about the Chinese attempt to control the environmental problems before and during the games? I know it's off topic but just curious to get some info from someone who is over there. I know China is a big country but.
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Nowadays, they store their font ebuilds on the devnull overlay. I converted them to SlackBuilds. Their ebuilds can compile for either Cleartype-style or Ubuntu-style subpixel rendering, and so can these SlackBuilds.
By default, they'll build for Ubuntu-style rendering.
If you want Cleartype-style rendering, then do the following before installing all 4:
Previous versions of the Fontconfig SlackBuild had an extra configuration file that set the sans, serif and monospace alias to Liberation fonts. I suspect this file was largely responsible for the "Thanks Dugan, that looks AWESOME!" reactions I kept getting .
I'm making available, separately, a version of the file that sets the sans, serif and monospace alias to Droid fonts instead:
Before reinstalling Fontconfig, I recommend deleting /etc/fonts. After installing it, I recommend the following steps:
symlinking /etc/fonts/conf.avail/10-autohint.conf into /etc/fonts/conf.d
removing /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-no-sub-pixel.conf
checking your subpixel order and then symlinking the appropriate file into conf.d (in my case it's 10-subpixel-rgb.conf)
putting the 35-droid.conf file into conf.d if you want the sans, serif and monospace alias set to Droid fonts (which you'll have to install separately).
I'm happily using these with Ubuntu-style rendering. As for Cleartype-style rendering, well, it compiles.
And here's a SlackBuild for a Firefox that respects subpixel rendering settings. It's outdated, but it should work with the latest version of Firefox if you bump the VERSION.
I just updated to your new font setup and my fonts are great!
One thing to note I had to build the newest pixman package for my machine from the cairo site before i could get cairo to compile on a vanilla slack 12.1 setup. I just used the link provided in the failed build attempt for the cairo slackbuild.
In a side by side comparison my Slack fonts are as good if not better then the Ubuntu fonts on my laptop!
P.S - I have yet to try the new Slackbuild Firefox, I am currently using the slacky build and things still look great.
Also on a side note: The double loading can be eliminated by right clicking on the firefox icon and select configure firefox button. Go to Application, then advanced options and uncheck launch feedback. Since it doesn't try to load twice from the command line it had to be from the launcher.
I find some launch feedback helpful to prevent double-clicking.
Go to KDE control center > Appearance & Themes > Launch Feedback and set the time out lower.
I set it to 3 seconds and unchecked the Taskbar Notification. I find it annoying to continue longer anyway.
The Firefox problem is apparently due to compiling without the --enable-startup-notification option. I couldn't find a reason why the Mozilla binaries are not being compiled with it. Perhaps Pat will have to start compiling his own?
It appears that this is part of 'session restore' that is new in Firefox 3?
Quote:
sessionstore-windows-restored New in Firefox 3 Sent by the session restore process to indicate that all initial browser windows have opened. Note that while the window are open and the chrome loaded the tabs in the windows may still be being restored after this notification.
Freetype - There are not patches, you just have to follow step one, Pat's build script can take care of that for you with a simple edit of the build script. However there is one thing that need to be done if you are going to compile your self you need to edit two lines in the src/autofit/aflatin.c file. Find the lines that say this
I just got 12.2 installed and I am experimenting with somethings right now. Should have a new post in a day or two. I plan on doing two this time one for cleartype sux-pixel rendering and one for traditional non-AA fonts.
I just had a look at these, and there is no need to update them for 12.2. The Freetype, Fontconfig and libXft SlackBuilds are the same versions as 12.2's. The Cairo SlackBuild is newer.
I have been following the various threads on optimising fonts for LCD and I must say that there has been some great work put in by several people, particularly Daedra and Dugan who posted links to necessary files.
I guess that these patches have been test now by many people on Slackware and therefore any regressions should have been identified by this stage.
My question here is therefore: are we going to see any of these LCD optimisations appearing in 'official Slackware' and do we know what the views of Pat and his co-developers are on this?.
I have been following the various threads on optimising fonts for LCD and I must say that there has been some great work put in by several people, particularly Daedra and Dugan who posted links to necessary files.
I guess that these patches have been test now by many people on Slackware and therefore any regressions should have been identified by this stage.
My question here is therefore: are we going to see any of these LCD optimisations appearing in 'official Slackware' and do we know what the views of Pat and his co-developers are on this?.
Bill.
Nope . The bytecode interpreter is a patent property that is held by Apple, that is why its not compiled by default with Slackware, you legally have to have a license or live in a country where the patent doesn't apply, and the various "cleartype" optimizations are patented by Microsoft. So unfortunately I doubt we will ever see them out of the box, I have heard that certain distributions have the bytecode interpreter enable by default, not sure if thats true. The best we can probably hope for is for Pat to include the patches with the source tree so that the packages Cairo and libXft can be easily recompiled from source with out chasing down the patches, kind of like he has a patch for the bytecode interpreter with the source freetype package. It's too bad though since it really makes a huge difference, but M$ and Apple won't bother with the end-user using these technologies but they would probably sue a distribution if they put them in.
--- The best we can probably hope for is for Pat to include the patches with the source tree so that the packages Cairo and libXft can be easily recompiled from source with out chasing down the patches, kind of like he has a patch for the bytecode interpreter with the source freetype package. ---.
This is exactly what I had in mind as I fully understand the patent issues. It would then be relatively easy for people to edit the Slackbuild as required.
How can we progress this?. Have you suggested this to Pat?.
To Fontconfig, I added an extra configuration file that sets the sans, serif and monospace font aliases to Liberation fonts.
Before installing, I recommend deleting /etc/fonts. After installing, I recommend deleting /etc/fonts/conf.d/30-metric-aliases.conf and symlinking both 10-autohint.conf and 10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf (from /etc/fonts/conf.avail) into /etc/fonts/conf.d. And then, of course, running fc-cache.
EDIT: Thanks for reminding me about Pixman, Alstare. Yes, you need a recent version of Pixman. I recommend installing it from slackware-current.
So I finally got around to trying your packages Dugan I must say they look great, excellent work. the only thing I did with my system is I used the cleartype patch for libXft, for me I think it looks better with that patch.
UPDATE:
Actually I did a config wrong, it seems, at least to my eyes, that there is no difference with the cleartype patch and the one in your build.
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