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

[mos87]

Of course Ubuntu has "solved" the issue by making users use some exact fonts they are given but once you need to work with other fonts, Ubuntu defaults break apart.

I don't suppose you are a font developer? Then what's "working with other fonts" would mean? Also there are Droid (whatever those are called these days), which I think are the default on eg KUbuntu.
I for one have been using Menlo (Monaco's successor) for years as my default monospaced font and couldn't be happier.

[birdie]

as I've mentioned on the opennet discussion - I gave up fiddling with it for years now. Granted I gave up on trying to use the fonts intentionally developed and geared for an alien rendering system as well. Can't quite understand why are you so clinging to M$ ttfs and stuff. Let go man. Droid/Ubuntu fonts have looked satisfactory for some time IMO

Let's say I follow your advice and give up on M$ TTFs like you snarkily called them. What should people do once they have to work with documents created in Windows? Font substitutes often break formatting in various unexpected ways, so having Microsoft fonts becomes a necessity while their rendering is ... not exactly good (as indicated by this news piece). Also, since Linux share on the desktop is miniscule, maybe Linux should cater to more entrenched OSes and not stand apart and claim superiority which doesn't exactly attract new followers? I don't know.

I'd still want Linux to render both open fonts, and any other TTF fonts in existence as best as it could without giving some of them preferential treatment.

[s_j_newbury]

I have to say, I strongly agree with birdie on this one. The ability to use fonts created over the last 30 years with decent rendering, including the use of bitmap fonts is/was a major strength of the Linux desktop. This is a serious regression in Pango. The idea that everybody should be using hidpi displays (presumably with the latest discrete graphics cards to push enough pixels) just to use a DE with fonts that don't cause migraines is crazy.

[Xaero_Vincent]

Birdie, what do you think about the "DejaVu Sans Condensed" font I mentioned on page 5?

IMO, It looks pretty much identical to Tahoma, except that the spacing is slightly greater at huge font sizes. But smaller fonts render much nicer than Tahoma with Pango.

[mos87]

It had to be Phoronix garbage reporting after all! https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz...ment-626249527

)))

[remenic]

I understand why Pango has decided to abandon that old style hinting. It just doesn't work well with modern rendering, where we often require subpixel positioning, especially during transitions/animations. You don't want the font to look malformed during the animation, and you also don't want the font to change shape when it finishes the animation. This issue can be 'fixed' by simply not using those old fonts anymore. I use a 15" 1080p display (laptop) and my fonts looks great, even those crappy old windows fonts.

[mos87]

What should people do once they have to work with documents created in Windows?

using tahoma???)) be real, people will create docs with something like Calibri or whatever is the next default on their latest products...

I'm not snarkish, the drum I'm banging is that M$ fonts are understandably geared towards their own ways. That's all. Especially 20 yo ones.

That's not saying that nonchalantly breaking existing functionality is ever OK.

[liskin]

Birdie, what do you think about the "DejaVu Sans Condensed" font I mentioned on page 5?

IMO, It looks pretty much identical to Tahoma, except that the spacing is slightly greater at huge font sizes. But smaller fonts render much nicer than Tahoma with Pango.

Unfortunately, DejaVu is affected by this bug as well. In the picture you posted, it seems you disabled hinting od lcdfilter, which is why the kerning seemed all right, but at smaller sizes it was just too blurry.

[birdie]

Birdie, what do you think about the "DejaVu Sans Condensed" font I mentioned on page 5?

IMO, It looks pretty much identical to Tahoma, except that the spacing is slightly greater at huge font sizes. But smaller fonts render much nicer than Tahoma with Pango.

I will certainly try new fonts now that Pango developers have made it abundantly clear that proper font kerning for hintfull will never be fixed/(re)implemented. I'd be glad to drop everything which is based on GTK/Pango from now on but it's an impossible task. Looks like Qt applications are not yet affected.

[V1tol]

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.

Actually that is not quite correct. Happy Hackintosh user here

Yes, by default font rendering is strictly configured to Retina displays, but you can easily change that.
First run this:

defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO

And then play with the numbers in this command (from 0 to 3):

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 0