The Latest Pango + HarfBuzz Is Leading To A Messy Font Rendering Situation For Some

[evil_core]

I guess I install them by habit but there was a reason.
Wasn't the reason to use the fonts to get crappy/corporate websites to render correctly or word documents?

Some people yes. But those fonts (unlike all free fonts like Liberation*, Vera*, DejaVu*) are high quality and provide decent hinting.
If you want perfect lookign, sharp font, then the only way is to disable antialiasing, and for lower resoultions (unlike printers and 5K screens) you need fonts to be fully hinted. If fonts are blured, some people with good vision got their eyes hurt, because they tries to focus on blured fonts, and it's impossible. But new generations of milennials, etc got used to blurred fonts from beginning.

[oiaohm]

Some people yes. But those fonts (unlike all free fonts like Liberation*, Vera*, DejaVu*) are high quality and provide decent hinting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts

I think you need to take a second look at Liberation. They got full hinting in 2008. They happen to be the default gypths and hinting used in Chrome OS from Dec 2018 to current. Not all the free fonts are second rate stuff.

The fonts in ChromeOS was called Croscore this font set is made and maintained by the same company that makes Liberation fonts. What the difference between croscore font and liberation font of the same type was that croscore had more glyphs and more refined hinting. Guess what Dec 2018 merged croscore and liberation merged into Liberation fonts 2. It really did not make sense to duplicate this effort when both were being released under the same license.

You also forgot the android fonts that are all fine.

DejaVu in fact has more gypths than any of the Microsoft default fonts if you go by number of glypths hinted it out does your Microsoft fonts. Microsoft fonts stop under 5000 gypths,

The monster font for glypths that are all hinted is open source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noto_fonts

Yes Noto by google also there is a fully hinted versions on the googlefonts github.


The old corefonts in fact have broken hinting and issues come out when printing as well as their glyphs have glitches.

[slalomsk8er]

Some people yes. But those fonts (unlike all free fonts like Liberation*, Vera*, DejaVu*) are high quality and provide decent hinting.
If you want perfect lookign, sharp font, then the only way is to disable antialiasing, and for lower resoultions (unlike printers and 5K screens) you need fonts to be fully hinted. If fonts are blured, some people with good vision got their eyes hurt, because they tries to focus on blured fonts, and it's impossible. But new generations of milennials, etc got used to blurred fonts from beginning.

The problem is not only in the sharpness of the letters and how they are placed in relation to each other but also in how much space the resulting text takes up in both directions.
At work some pages will not only look bad without core fonts but end up broken because content will wrap and/or overflow with the wrong font.
Building sites that break if the font is not pixel perfect must be a insider joke or a arcane art form. You can't explain this with malice, ignorance nor negligence

[oiaohm]

The problem is not only in the sharpness of the letters and how they are placed in relation to each other but also in how much space the resulting text takes up in both directions.
At work some pages will not only look bad without core fonts but end up broken because content will wrap and/or overflow with the wrong font.
Building sites that break if the font is not pixel perfect must be a insider joke or a arcane art form. You can't explain this with malice, ignorance nor negligence

I have a problem with that statement. Chromeos and Android and IOS don't have core fonts these days. Times New Roman, Ariel and Courier New all have perfect metric compatible and hinted replacements that browsers have on those platforms.

The reality if a web site looks broken without corefonts with chrome on Linux you have used a font you should have paid for so you could embedded font.

https://www.pagecloud.com/blog/how-to-add-custom-fonts-to-any-website

Yes word, powerpoint, excel and libreoffice documents have option to embed fonts.

Embed fonts removing the platform need be it Linux, Android, OSi, Mac OS, Windows or some other platform so that the right fonts exist so the document renders correctly.

So Office documents or websites breaking due to platform missing a font is simple incompetence of not embedded the fonts you should and a lot of cases not paying for the fonts you should have. Yes lot of places have a problem of blaming the victim of malformed documents and websites by saying they are not using the right program/OS so that is why they have a problem when the problem is purely badly made documents and sites.

Yes a embedded version of MS fonts in a word made document from windows will be newer and better than what corefonts includes and don't require the legacy hinting engine to work right.

Item like corefont package should not be required any more and is way out of date.

The problems caused by missing fonts resulting in a font of a different metric being used is a combination of incompetence, ignorance and negligence by not doing what they should be doing when creating documents and websites if exact formatting is need yes the correct answer is embed the font.

The problem where that font may not render exactly pixel right on screen or printer but with exactly right metric so formatting is still perfect that is a font rendering engine problem normally does not ruin your means to use the document.

There are two very clear problems here. slalomsk8er wrap and or overflow with the wrong font is incompetence of operator who made the document or website because correctly made document or website wrong font would never been possible.

[lowflyer]

True, Facebook is the absolute worst. Obsessed with IP, patents and copyright. Almost joined them as an Android developer, and their employment agreement was 10 sides about IP, explicitly forbidding contributions to standards organizations like the W3C, we can search your bag or car at any time etc. And one or two sides of paper about protecting user information and data.

Oh and some weird clauses where I must agree to not get offended by any posters in the office (so I can't even complain about posters containing racism, sexism, misogyny etc.)

That's quite an interesting insight you present here. In which country did you apply?

[Delgarde]

I'm really curious about these parts. Care to elaborate which of the two bug reports contain any of this? Maybe consecutive comments have something remotely similar to what you said but the original bug reports are concise, clean and pretty neutral.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/pango/issues/463

https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/issues/2394

So, the initial pango bug report is fine... but when you don't get a quick enough response, you launch straight into stuff like "Maybe you hate Microsoft that's why people who use their products should suffer? Why are you ignoring this issue?", and the moaning about "a dirty MacOS X like mess which I absolutely abhor and which makes my eyes bleed." Very negative, very hyperbolic, very demanding of service. If you're going to approach them with a bad attitude, they're unlikely to have a good one in turn...

But then, literally your first sentence on the harfbuzz bug report is "I really don't know what to do 'cause Pango/RH developers are unwilling to cooperate or even admit the issue, so it's my last resort." Right away, bad attitude, complaining about developers on the other project... and since the Linux font rendering community is kind of small, the people you're slagging off are by and large, the same people you're now asking again for help on a different forum. So guess how they feel about fixing your problem?

Also, as one of the comments on the pango bug report noted, "Repeatedly pinging people who are volunteers on an open source project is not a good way to endear yourself or your issue."

[birdie]

So, the initial pango bug report is fine... but when you don't get a quick enough response, you launch straight into stuff like "Maybe you hate Microsoft that's why people who use their products should suffer? Why are you ignoring this issue?", and the moaning about "a dirty MacOS X like mess which I absolutely abhor and which makes my eyes bleed." Very negative, very hyperbolic, very demanding of service. If you're going to approach them with a bad attitude, they're unlikely to have a good one in turn...

But then, literally your first sentence on the harfbuzz bug report is "I really don't know what to do 'cause Pango/RH developers are unwilling to cooperate or even admit the issue, so it's my last resort." Right away, bad attitude, complaining about developers on the other project... and since the Linux font rendering community is kind of small, the people you're slagging off are by and large, the same people you're now asking again for help on a different forum. So guess how they feel about fixing your problem?

Also, as one of the comments on the pango bug report noted, "Repeatedly pinging people who are volunteers on an open source project is not a good way to endear yourself or your issue."

I waited for a reply in the pango bug tracker for almost two months. No one cared to give any answers. Then I kinda lost my temper. Please tell me what's the best way to attract developers' attention when they simly don't give a damn and ignore you. And how nice of you to ignore my intial neutral bug reports and pay attention to my later replies when I lost all hope. Especially when something which worked for you perfectly stopped working at all. Anyways, screw it. You're not here for this issue - you're here to shame, blame and expose me for trying to get the best for all Open Source users. Not the first time it's happening to me - I'm getting used to that. Also, the way you're talking to me is just disgusting: "moaning about".

"I absolutely abhor and which makes my eyes bleed" - yes, that's true, I'm very sensitive to good font rendering. If you, like many other Linux users, enjoy blurry fonts which strain your eyes and ultimately worsen your vision then please GTFO. Close to 98% of screenshots from Linux users feature blurry ugly horrible fonts which are painful to look at.

Put your SJW/CoC principles back where the Sun doesn't ever shine, deep into your intestines. For some reasons people here on Phoronix absolutely love when e.g. Linus Torvalds behaves the same way, i.e. being straightforward and almost insulting. Every comment on a news piece about NVIDIA where someone says "F NVIDIA" garners a ton of likes. I've never said the f-work to anyone in these bug reports but I am willing to say it to you. Please do not reply to my comments ever again. You're unworthy of my attention and time. You do look like a worthless nitpicky obnoxious person overall.

[oiaohm]

"I absolutely abhor and which makes my eyes bleed" - yes, that's true, I'm very sensitive to good font rendering. If you, like many other Linux users, enjoy blurry fonts which strain your eyes and ultimately worsen your vision then please GTFO. Close to 98% of screenshots from Linux users feature blurry ugly horrible fonts which are painful to look at.

Yet you suggested corefonts a while back.

https://www.freetype.org/freetype2/d...l-hinting.html

Older fonts like the core web fonts snap things to full hard pixels on both axes, newer fonts and especially web fonts often use a hinting strategy that snaps glyphs to the pixel grid mainly or only vertically and with varying strength.

There is a major quality difference between old fonts like that are in corefonts and their new versions. So if you hate bad font rendering you should avoid corefonts like the plague.

Harfbuzz has made it more in face when you are using one of these old fonts instead of being min-orally broken its totally in face broken.

Yes you are complaining about eye strain corefonts included fonts even with the best freetype or microsoft font engine settings are still going to strain your eyes. The reality you don't want eye strain you will use a substitution all the fonts provided by corefonts with something with equal metrics.

Microsoft reworked all those fonts that are included in corefonts to fix major font design issues in newer versions of those fonts.

If I was managing those bug reports I would close them as well. Your arguement is mostly I am using a broken font that I should not be. Quality output with those old broken fonts is not possible. Things were done in those old fonts to avoid different parties patents at the cost of font rendering quality.

There is the possibility you are more use to looking at broken font rendering? Or are you just insisting on using broken fonts?

[tildearrow]

Sure many can disagree with me, but lets face it's bullshit if you think this font looks horrendously worse under Linux.

Unfair comparison detected. Please enable sub-pixel antialiasing on Linux and let me see the 4 hinting levels.

[birdie]

Yet you suggested corefonts a while back.

https://www.freetype.org/freetype2/d...l-hinting.html


There is a major quality difference between old fonts like that are in corefonts and their new versions. So if you hate bad font rendering you should avoid corefonts like the plague.

Harfbuzz has made it more in face when you are using one of these old fonts instead of being min-orally broken its totally in face broken.

Yes you are complaining about eye strain corefonts included fonts even with the best freetype or microsoft font engine settings are still going to strain your eyes. The reality you don't want eye strain you will use a substitution all the fonts provided by corefonts with something with equal metrics.

Microsoft reworked all those fonts that are included in corefonts to fix major font design issues in newer versions of those fonts.

If I was managing those bug reports I would close them as well. Your arguement is mostly I am using a broken font that I should not be. Quality output with those old broken fonts is not possible. Things were done in those old fonts to avoid different parties patents at the cost of font rendering quality.

There is the possibility you are more use to looking at broken font rendering? Or are you just insisting on using broken fonts?

It's just like with Web 3.0 design. It must be good, right? Except it's total crap as assessed by people with an actual brain.

Here take this: font comparsion between Windows XP, Windows 10, Fedora 32 (with my fonts and settings), default Fedora 32, default Ubuntu 20.10.

In terms of font rendering quality:

1) Windows XP the absolute best
2) Fedora 32 with my settings close second
3-4) Windows 10, very good && Ubuntu 20.10 with major tweaks, decent - can't decide which one is better
5) Default Fedora 32 as endorsed by Pango/HardBuzz developers - absolute unmitigated CRAP.

https://imgur.com/gallery/M1mw8N8

Now please kindly quit with trying to force modern trendy stylish fonts and font rendering on me, OK? I don't give a crap how they were designed, why they are supposed to look good, why I should trust someone else's opinion on that. I trust my eyes only. ClearType v1/v2 and Windows XP/Windows 7 were designed by scientists, engineers and specialists in human vision - their results are simply astonishing given the fact that they emulate such crisp fonts on low DPI displays.

Modern font rendering as pioneered by Windows 8 (grayish blurry crap) remains crap and no amount of indoctrination can change that.