Fedora Enables ClearType Subpixel Font Rendering Thanks To Microsoft

[mudig]

You still missed the most important part of my reply. You enabled something by default which is still generally not supported in Linux distros right now and no one, except you of course, runs your setup. 99.999% of Linux users out there now have to suffer because you created a cozy nice Linux setup for yourself while distros/UIs/whatevs didn't follow your suit.

I adressed the most important part -- you just keep refusing to understand that toolkits support the change well enough, although it could be better, and stuff looks _fine enough_. It was not fine before. "My setup" mirrors what and Ubuntu and its derivatives that go along with slight hinting do, I really don't use any special sauce here. You keep asserting everything looks worse now if that makes you happy. I'll keep asserting that's just, like, your opinion, man, and certainly not the one of 99.999% of Linux users out there.

PS: There is work on Gtk3 to enable subpixel positioning, which should improve inter-glyph spacing.

Who are you BS'ing? There has never been an open discussion about the new rendering method in FreeType.

No, but Ubuntu as a popular desktop distro provides an implicit opinion

[justmy2cents]

I'd consider https://www.freetype.org/image/freet...ning-demo1.png -> lower right picture nice enough. And it's okay to disagree Just keep in mind that the look of fonts is partly technical and partly acquired taste.

so... it is aquired taste? funny thing, according to your claim it seems i am schizophrenic then. i have 6 different monitors and i have to use different font rendering method on each one. probably because when i switch to another monitor, my personality seems to change to as if i try using best method for previous monitor my eyes just can't stand it

same picture you showed looks great on one of my monitors, decent on two and just horrible on 3. as i keep saying, if it looks great for you, don't proclaim it as holy truth because someone might see different result just because his equipment is different

and for bazillionth time. i don't say stem darkening is inferior to subpixel rendering, nor did i ever do that. i just keep saying that different monitor will have different best looking font method. only thing you can say for sure is that retina displays don't need any kind of smoothing or changing how fonts look where you get same quality and less performance hit and non retina displays pretty much need that.

and slowly you really are getting tedious. more and more your claims keep wandering into HGTG and 42. never did i mention any method as the best (in fact, i keep claiming opposite, that there is no best) and there never was any question about which one is.

I did, I even wrote it

then it is just sad.

i'll try to keep it simple and try translating our conversation to something more understandable

hammer is best tool for nails.

according to your claim one hammer is enough and same hammer with shinny blue handle applies to whole civilization. who even cares if person deals with 1/5th or 9 inch nails?

according to my claims. each nail has its most suitable hammer and there is no best hammer. only thing you can be sure is that even though screws look similar at glance to nails... hammer will not be best tool and you might take a look at screwdriver

Actually, LCDs with LED backlights barely change compared to the CCFL backlights and CRTs of yesteryear.

they still change, but they are not as abysmal. how does that change anything from my claim? the world is still too populated by monitors requiring font render correction method to just abolish it all together which is what OP asked.

[mudig]

i'll try to keep it simple and try translating our conversation to something more understandable.

I honestly find your posts very hard to read and follow, so it's entirely possible I'm constantly misunderstanding you. The point is that there's a middle ground or compromise that works well on a large number of screens. I do agree that it would be nice to have some sort of tuning capability as provided by Microsoft's ClearType Tuner.

And I'm actually curious what exact changes you need to make to each of your monitor? Do you have pictures?

[justmy2cents]

I honestly find your posts very hard to read and follow, so it's entirely possible I'm constantly misunderstanding you. The point is that there's a middle ground or compromise that works well on a large number of screens. I do agree that it would be nice to have some sort of tuning capability as provided by Microsoft's ClearType Tuner.

And I'm actually curious what exact changes you need to make to each of your monitor? Do you have pictures?

you mainly have problems following my posts because you are answering the NEVER asked questions and that is what i am putting most of my effort in order you might realize there is no magic "best method" where you pointlessly keep returning to persuasion i never disputed or acknowledged

now to your later question which is actually first time you said and it was not something completely OT

look from simplest point of view with setting up Gnome fonts with Gnome Tweaks. if i try using same setting as on this monitor on my notebook, fonts get so thin and grayed out it is unbearable. from that point i have set those 6 monitors ranging from no hinting to full hinting, sometimes with grayed and sometimes with rgba

as far as pictures go, that is pretty much the most pointless venture. if i made screenshots you can't see what i see as you will see my screenshots as your hw distorts them and not how mine does and making a photo pretty much removes all the visible details why something looks good or bad

the only actual way you could get some result is by NOT asking random person like me on internet what he needs to do. you should simply create pictures with variable settings and arrange them into pool question "which looks best for you?" and then generate as much feedback as possible. this still won't tell you which method is the best because that is 42, but it will tell you which fuckup is most prevalent in monitors of people who were answering the question. people won't see same picture as you do, they will see that picture fucked up as their hw fucks it up

main point in how user sees fonts is probably how well his gamma is setup. the factory gamma setting or factory profiles are pretty much bogus and random as they can be. testing that is pretty simple as it can be and you can create gamma calibration picture in 1min by using something like inkscape or gimp.

[RealNC]

i have 6 different monitors and i have to use different font rendering method on each one

So you're saying there can't possibly be a sane default that freetype can ship with, because each display will require different settings. What is the point then in arguing about a change of defaults?

[justmy2cents]

So you're saying there can't possibly be a sane default that freetype can ship with, because each display will require different settings. What is the point then in arguing about a change of defaults?

really?

when did i argue anything like that? if you read the gist of my comments, more or less 99% of the time is spent into trying to tell that someone praising stem or subpixel has nothing with my original post. is it like "twist my words" day or something?

i will say it again. better font smoothing will be different per setup, arguing which is better is same HGTG "meaning of life" = 42... the one sure thing is that retina displays work better without since you can't see pixels anyway which also brings better performance

you could only have default workable premade setups if you would know enough information. you'd need to know at least gamma deficiency on display and dpi to make somewhat correct prediction which will work best.

make a simple test. try making 3 overlapping rectangles and look at which point you see them. start with 0,0.5,1 percent black (same for white) and then just raise the gap between shades until you can discern all 3. now try same thing on different monitor

[mudig]

you mainly have problems following my posts because you are answering the NEVER asked questions and that is what i am putting most of my effort in order you might realize there is no magic "best method" where you pointlessly keep returning to persuasion i never disputed or acknowledged

And I never said there is a best method, so you're having trouble with reading comprehension, too, and I am honestly not sure what you're railing against anymore. I know about the wildly different quality of screens and their contrast and gamma crookery, so I'd welcome a "ClearType Tuner" for X11/Wayland.

That's a different issue though: This is about sane, consistent looking defaults that look good enough on a large enough number of screens. The gamma correction of 1.8 that I mentioned in my articles, for example, was determined experimentally by Adobe by testing with various screens. Windows' GDI+ font rendering defaults to 1.4 I think and Edge to 2.2 or something, judging from the thinness of text. Firefox seems to be somewhere in between (with DirectWrite).

I asked you specifically because you made it sound like you were experiencing abhorrent font rendering and yes, making comparison photos can give a general impression. Up to you if you want to follow up. PS: sounds like you bought cheapo screens/laptops. My condolences Try calibrating them if you ever get your hands on a Colorimeter, it can be surprising what you can get out of them.

[justmy2cents]

And I never said there is a best method, so you're having trouble with reading comprehension, too, and I am honestly not sure what you're railing against anymore. I know about the wildly different quality of screens and their contrast and gamma crookery, so I'd welcome a "ClearType Tuner" for X11/Wayland.

That's a different issue though: This is about sane, consistent looking defaults that look good enough on a large enough number of screens. The gamma correction of 1.8 that I mentioned in my articles, for example, was determined experimentally by Adobe by testing with various screens. Windows' GDI+ font rendering defaults to 1.4 I think and Edge to 2.2 or something, judging from the thinness of text. Firefox seems to be somewhere in between (with DirectWrite).

I asked you specifically because you made it sound like you were experiencing abhorrent font rendering and yes, making comparison photos can give a general impression. Up to you if you want to follow up. PS: sounds like you bought cheapo screens/laptops. My condolences Try calibrating them if you ever get your hands on a Colorimeter, it can be surprising what you can get out of them.

my screens are most definitely not cheap

you don't really need colorimeter to calibrate generic picture. at least not if you spent 5 or so years fixing scanners and supporting dtp like i did. only downside is that doing ir manually is time consuming. so... it is easier to just fix fonts where you don't need the rest. why waste time when fix is easy or you just don't need that enough? KISS principle is all about not complicating where complication is not needed

so... based on my experience... i wouldn't be either surprised or convinced

and if you need data. do what i said. make those pictures with all sorts of defaults and set them as pool as i already suggested to you. then post pool in few popular forums like this or linux reddit with explanation that you want to improve defaults by it. asking individuals just doesn't make sense and i don't feel like wasting my time for no result while i would gladly spend time and participate on something like that with all possible results i can give

[caligula]

[/LIST][/LIST]
Not sure one of these have been applied, by the way some are expired and some are still active and the OIN website haven't been updated yet so I can't say if these patents were included or not. Anyway in a legal contentious these details are irrelevant in a legal cause wins the one that has more money.

Well, maybe quite often, but the original cleartype patents are becoming really old. I think it was discussed that the whole set expires in 2019, but there might be some new font tech in win7-win10. At least the winxp patents will expire quite soon.

[mudig]

and if you need data.

If I did, I could, but I don't need data to know that browsing the web with v35 is broken. The easiest solution was to strip down v37 into v40. And if the rendering difference on your "most definitely not cheap" screens really is as stark as you describe it, you need to know about font rendering configuration anyway. There really is neither issue nor controversy here.

Well, maybe quite often, but the original cleartype patents are becoming really old. I think it was discussed that the whole set expires in 2019, but there might be some new font tech in win7-win10. At least the winxp patents will expire quite soon.

One of FreeType's contributors, Alexei Podtelezhnikov, was working on a different way to achieve subpixel rendering that he thought was not patent encumbered and called it "Harmony": http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/fre...?id=master#n47. I haven't tested it thoroughly nor do I know if a patent lawyer would clear it, but... it's there and enabled by default unless you specify that SUBPIXEL_RENDERING compile time flag