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  • #41
    Originally posted by loonyphoenix View Post
    Calibri, as far as I understand, is a proprietary font from Microsoft, so it's definitely not an option. And even if it was, you can't tell web browsers only to use those fonts that render good with subpixel; they use DejaVu and Liberation fonts most of the time.
    Calibri is a proprietary font by Ascender Corporation, not Microsoft - still not a choice if you'd prefer free fonts, but better than Microsoft I guess.

    Unfortunately, there are precious few fonts under the SIL or similar open licenses. Droid is a great font (unsure about the license, but you can use it for free) that works good on the desktop. Gentium is also nice, but that's not really meant for the desktop. I never really liked Liberation or Bitstream Vera (DejaVu), though (just a matter of preference, pretty much like saying you don't like the orange color .)

    That said, you definitely *can* tell a browser to render only the fonts you like. The actual method differs from browser to browser, but I know for a fact that this is possible in Opera (via user CSS) and Firefox (there is a preference, IIRC).

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    • #42
      @BlackStar: Okay, technically you might be able to tell the browser which fonts to use, but it's not easy. Moreover, sometimes sites are made with a certain font in mind, and if you substitute it, the site looks ugly (bad practice, in my opinion, but nothing we can do about it). That's what Liberation fonts are for, in my mind: substituting for Arial and Times New Roman and Curier New where you must And in my opinion, these, along with the DejaVu family, are still the best all-purpose fonts you can find in the free software world. I haven't tried Droid, though, and am installing it currently

      PS: Now I've tried Droid, and I don't like how it's hinted. It's blurred whatever options I use: subpixel, grayscale or black&white rendering; full, slight or no hinting. The best is still grayscale + full, because it looks the least blurred there. But I guess that's a matter of taste, the same as you not liking DejaVu and Liberation
      Last edited by loonyphoenix; 16 August 2009, 07:36 AM.

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      • #43
        Originally posted by loonyphoenix View Post
        PS: Now I've tried Droid, and I don't like how it's hinted. It's blurred whatever options I use: subpixel, grayscale or black&white rendering; full, slight or no hinting. The best is still grayscale + full, because it looks the least blurred there. But I guess that's a matter of taste, the same as you not liking DejaVu and Liberation
        Yep, fonts seem to be a matter of taste (and don't dare challenge someone on his choice of programming fonts!)

        Droid was designed for the Android platform (think small mobile screens), so it probably looks best there. I don't recall any bluriness on Droid 10pt w/ slight hinting & subpixel, but then again "bluriness" is another subjective matter (cue Mac OS X with its blurry fonts - many people *love* them).

        I just tried grayscale AA again. Impressions: on my laptop it looks significantly worse (Dell D830 @1680x1050): curves lose definition and become aliased (e.g. letters '(' and ')'), while diagonals become too thick compared to straight lines (e.g. (e.g. letter 'x' or 'κ'). On my CRT the effect is nowhere near as pronounced (Nec FE991SB @1400x1050 with Trinitron grid). Diagonals are still slightly unbalanced, but this fact is offset by the lack of color fringing.

        Put together, I prefer subpixel AA on the TFT - there is no visible color fringing and text looks significantly better with it. On my CRT I could use either mode without issue, which means I'll stick with subpixel since I tend to connect both monitors in dual head.

        Damn, now I'll have to go around my house and check every single monitor...

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        • #44
          Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
          Edit 2: RealNC, your desktop is beatiful (you are using no hinting - similar to Mac OS X). Starting with KDE 4.2 / Qt4.5 you can actually enable slight hinting without destroying your fonts (Qt had a bug previously that treated sligh as full hinting when subpixel AA was enabled) - have you tested that?
          The fonts in the screenshot *do* use slight hinting actually. It's just that there's a small difference between Gtk/Qt3 apps (Firefox and KDE3 apps) and Qt4. Qt4 renders a bit sharper (I like that). Gtk and Qt 3 (with the cleartype patch applied to libXft) a tiny bit blurrier. Fortunately, I can't easily make out the difference unless I look quite close at the monitor.

          Of course it also depends on the font used. The DejaVu fonts give good results, but I also have a knack for the MS fonts (Times New Roman, Tahoma and Verdana), designs I like very much though they tend to give less sharp results than DejaVu.

          Edit:
          Also let's not forget that this whole "subpixel/cleartype/grayscale" thing is also a matter of what we're used to. If someone used grayscale for several years (or subpixel rendering), he/she simply got used to it and everything else can be perceived as "uglier".
          Last edited by RealNC; 16 August 2009, 01:05 PM.

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          • #45
            AMD and bro

            I guess that makes AMD really happy.

            Their 2D acceleration code is completly slow and brolen in fglrx. They don't even provide the most basic XRender acceleration stuff, falling back to software all the time.

            Maybe this way they can avoid writing descent linux specific drivers at all (the ogl code is shared anyway) :P
            Anyway with their OGL implementation I would not run more then 10 ogl apps side-by side either

            - Clemens

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            • #46
              Originally posted by Linuxhippy View Post
              I guess that makes AMD really happy.

              Their 2D acceleration code is completly slow and brolen in fglrx. They don't even provide the most basic XRender acceleration stuff, falling back to software all the time.

              Maybe this way they can avoid writing descent linux specific drivers at all (the ogl code is shared anyway) :P
              Anyway with their OGL implementation I would not run more then 10 ogl apps side-by side either

              - Clemens
              I've done stress testing with 100 OpenGL contexts side by side. It worked just fine last year and I guess it still does.

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              • #47
                Originally posted by RealNC View Post
                Just to make sure we're seeing the same thing here:

                http://i28.tinypic.com/ju766h.png
                RealNC your greek fonts seem so good as well?
                Last edited by Apopas; 19 August 2009, 08:53 PM.

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                • #48
                  Originally posted by Apopas View Post
                  RealNC your greek fonts seem so good as well?

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                  • #49
                    Originally posted by RealNC View Post
                    In Firefox they seem perfect to me as well. What about kwrite or dolphin?

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                    • #50
                      The bottom-left window ("Το μέτρο της βλακείας") is Firefox. The top-right one ("Τα σκυλιά κυνηγάνε της γάτες") is Konqueror. Since Konqueror is a KDE app, fonts would look the same in KWrite and Dolphin too, so no need to post additional screens here. The top-left window is also a KDE app (the "Font installer" in KDE's System Settings.)

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