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

[mos87]

Michael, maybe it's better to remove the references to pango and harfbuzz bugs because it seems that the problem is not a bug in either, but rather a lost functionality when moving away from freetype. A regression at best. per this discussion https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz...ment-626241990

[birdie]

Just did a quick check it's pango was linked with both freetype2 and harfbuzz; cann't it take advantage of the freetype engine given it's still there?

Not possible since Pango developers removed the code which used FreeType to get proper font kerning for various hintstyles. FreeType is still used to render glyphs - no one is even thinking of replacing it. It's just with time more and more parts of FreeType are abandoned for reasons which are beyond me.

[birdie]

Michael, maybe it's better to remove the references to pango and harfbuzz bugs because it seems that the problem is not a bug in either, but rather a lost functionality when moving away from freetype. A regression at best. per this discussion https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz...ment-626241990

A missing/removed feature which was used by many looks like a valid bug report, no? It's now obvious HarfBuzz guys are not responsible for the SNAFU but Pango developers very well are and they insist it's not coming back which doesn't look fine, unless you like the It's fine meme:

[birdie]

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

To be honest I've tinkered with all the subpixel rendering modes in MacOS X and they all looked horrible. :-)

[mos87]

A missing/removed feature which was used by many looks like a valid bug report, no? It's now obvious HarfBuzz guys are not responsible for the SNAFU but Pango developers very well are and they insist it's not coming back which doesn't look fine, unless you like the It's fine meme:

I was urging Michael to not call it a bug in either pango or HB based on the conclusive discussion(s).

Reporting a bug on a missing feature is another matter entirely. See? "A bug in soft A and/or soft B is responsible for a situation C" (like it's now written) vs "New way of doing things by soft A causes C for some" (like it actually is as far I understood the explanations).

as for the missing functionality, well, pango devs explicitly stated that they're going to do away with it, in that blogpost and elsewhere. It's just coincided with moving to HB for "glyph advances" (whatever those are, they seem to be the culprit here.. the way that HB provides them compared to freetype that is)

[tildearrow]

Linux 15 years ago: "If it works poorly, use better software."

Linux today: "If it works poorly, use better hardware." What in the heck? This is the Windows mentality!!

[birdie]

There are new insightful comments in the HarfBuzz discussion. The situation is kinda messy but you don't have to trust my word on it - just read them.

Starting with this one: https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz...ment-626254448

[QwertyChouskie]

Didn't have time to read through every post on every one of the many threads about this issue, but just wanted to say this: Noto Sans 9 with slight hinting, v40 font renderer (the default nowadays), and RGB antialiasing still looks quite great, even on Ubuntu 20.04, which has the Pango version that breaks full hinting, on a 1366x768 very-low-DPI screen. Y'all have options, the world is not imploding just yet

[re:fi.64]

I feel like people here don't actually get what the division between HarfBuzz, Pango, and Freetype is...

HarfBuzz is the industry standard FOSS text shaping library, originally forked from FreeType and used on dozens of projects including all major web browsers. It in many ways is superior to freetype for rendering of Unicode characters and is not any sort of "trendy" library. FreeType shines when used for rendering instead, which is its primarily use nowadays.

In addition, you can't easily just fork a shaping library. This is a tremendously complex task (as is Unicode friendly text in general), and there's a reason everyone just uses HarfBuzz.

[birdie]

Didn't have time to read through every post on every one of the many threads about this issue, but just wanted to say this: Noto Sans 9 with slight hinting, v40 font renderer (the default nowadays), and RGB antialiasing still looks quite great, even on Ubuntu 20.04, which has the Pango version that breaks full hinting, on a 1366x768 very-low-DPI screen. Y'all have options, the world is not imploding just yet

I really don't understand why you've copied this comment to the HarfBuzz bug report. Of course they are plenty of options to get good font rendering/kerning for other fonts and hintstyles but some people may have preferences different than yours and they might not be interested in changing their habits. Also, some people absolutely need to work with documents created in Windows and your proposal no longer applies to them. Why do even people have to choose between good results and preferred fonts? When you're in Windows fonts just work without any hassle. In Linux it's a whole different situation - you have to tread carefully and choose something very specific to get the best results. This doesn't look right.