Re: [solved] Can't make fonts look any better

From: Michel Talon (talon_at_lpthe.jussieu.fr)
Date: 07/28/04

  • Next message: Saurabh Agarwal: "Linux USB Monitor" 
    Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 09:42:14 +0000 (UTC)

    Keve Nagy <no_spam@poliod.hu> wrote:
    > Charles wrote:
    >
    > > I solved my problem. I enabled font sub-pixel hinting with RGB.
    >
    > OK. That sounds cool, but I have to admit that I have no idea what that
    > is. For the benefit of others, could you please summarize in a few words
    > what you did and where (in which config files) you did that!
    >

    This means that when the boundary of a glyph crosses a pixel, instead of
    arbitrarily choosing a value black or white for the pixel, which leads to
    a blurred glyph, one subdivides the pixel into smaller squares
    (sub-pixels), one computes how many of them are black, and based on that
    one assignes a colored gray to the initial pixel. If you look at the glyph
    using the magnifying tool xmag, you can very well see the colored pixels
    at the boundary of the glyph. The visual effect of this procedure is to smooth
    the boundary particularly when it is oblique. However it has a tendency to
    blur the boundaries which are horizontal or vertical. Another technique, used
    by the Microsoft TTF fonts, is to deform the boundary of the glyph so that
    it falls more exactly on pixel boundaries. This, plus antialiasing for the
    oblique legs is supposed to give best results. In principle the freetype2
    library, when compiled with the Apple TTF interpreter, is able to do all that
    stuff automatically. Practically this works better with TTF fonts that with
    Adobe Type1 fonts, in fact only the Adobe interpreter (available for Windows)
    gives very good results with Type1 fonts.

    To enable these features or not is generally available through the GUI library
    which is used, for example the QT library. As a consequence, in KDE you have
    configuration options in the configuration center, Look and feel, Fonts,
    Antialiasing:
    -enable antialiasing
    -enable subpixel RGB

    > Thanks,
    >
    > Keve
    > 

    -- 
Michel TALON
  • Next message: Saurabh Agarwal: "Linux USB Monitor"

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