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

[coder]

This time however they leave us with no options at all, except sticking to older distros where the old font stack is still present.

Other distros don't have to take the updates. If a fork of Pango without these changes becomes predominant, then maybe the trunk could become irrelevant.

[lowflyer]

How can somebody work at facebook and still call himself a "free software developer" ???

[birdie]

Other distros don't have to take the updates. If a fork of Pango without these changes becomes predominant, then maybe the trunk could become irrelevant.

So far I'm aware of just a single distro which decided to back away from Pango 1.44, and that is Void Linux - they are sticking to version 1.42.4.

[Shiba]

"That's what we decided not to support anymore. You can try to get used to the "blurry" rendering. Or you can find something else to use, or whatever. You are using Free Software you realize, right?"

Yes.

shiba ~ > equery list pango
* Searching for pango ...
[IP-] [ ] x11-libs/pango-1.42.4-r2:0

Goodbye, fools.

[lu_tze]

Not any more. Attitudes like this is what pushed me back to Microsoft Windows & Apple on the desktop/mobile. I have work to do, don't have time coddling toxic free software egos that break or remove significant compatibility features simply because their narrow personal use doesn't include it.

The only thing I use free software for any more is file servers where the software stack is significantly smaller and generally backed up with support dollars.

That's fine, just don't be surprised when you find out, that the proprietary platforms take even more hardcore position.

There's no hinting on Apple platforms, and also no subpixel rendering for several releases already. You are supposed to purchase a device with a Retina display... i.e. exactly what the Pango developer said.

[birdie]

That's fine, just don't be surprised when you find out, that the proprietary platforms take even more hardcore position.

There's no hinting on Apple platforms, and also no subpixel rendering for several releases already. You are supposed to purchase a device with a Retina display... i.e. exactly what the Pango developer said.

That could have been excusable if they had the technical reasons (like enormous complexity) not to support subpixel hinting, however FreeType perfectly supports it and Pango developers from RedHat decided to switch to "modern" "trendy" HarfBuzz whose developers aren't willing to implement the feature.

The question is: has anyone noticed anything exceptionally relevant, absolutely necessary and brand new in Pango 1.44? No one that I know of. So, why go all the way to remove something which gave near perfect results and replace it with something which now requires the user to ... purchase a high DPI monitor not to bleed from their eyes?

[Linuxxx]

I know this is an extremely unpopular opinion around extremely "1337" (Arch et al.) users around here, but if there is one distro & one related company in the Linux world that has greatly cared about proper font rendering "out-of-the-box" since the very inception, it is:

UBUNTU by CANONICAL (c)

And well, only they can be trusted to stand up against this non-sense once & for all!

GO GO Power Shuttleworth! (cue >>Power Rangers<< tune here!)

[birdie]

I know this is an extremely unpopular opinion around extremely "1337" (Arch et al.) users around here, but if there is one distro & one related company in the Linux world that has greatly cared about proper font rendering "out-of-the-box" since the very inception, it is:

UBUNTU by CANONICAL (c)

And well, only they can be trusted to stand up against this non-sense once & for all!

GO GO Power Shuttleworth! (cue >>Power Rangers<< tune here!)

Ubuntu 20.10 is happily using Pango 1.44.7 with the issue which we're all discussing here.

[finalzone]

Maybe. It's the second time in a row that Gnome/RH developers mandate the usage of high DPI screens with Linux moving forward. This time however they leave us with no options at all, except sticking to older distros where the old font stack is still present.

Reading your bug report, the main issues are the fonts themselves which needed update to properly support HiDPI. Are you willing to do the task i.e. converting these bitmap fonts to freetype2 thus adhering to modern standard instead of legacy way? The sources are available to start the project.
Remember the world is in constant change and all we can do is adapt.

[angrypie]

hintfull with lcdlegacy? Seriously? Oh, nevermind, that's birdie.

I've tried other hinting styles but only hintfull satisfies me as it looks very close to ClearType v2 in Windows 7 which in my opinion has the best font rendering out of any implementations.

Jesus fucking Christ.