FreeType 2.7 Bringing DirectWrite/ClearType-Like Rendering -- Much Better Looking Fonts On Linux

[boltronics]

The only place I care about fonts is in my terminal. There, I use the bitmap font Terminus so everything is pixel perfect.

[sunweb]

So we'll have downgrade? I remember Windows fonts, very thin and choppy. When i came to Linux the first thing i noticed was a much better fonts.
Is this -> https://s32.postimg.org/a2x1ztyid/font.png looking bad and Windows has it better nowadays?

[mudig]

Not true, I used Ubuntu patches on Arch Linux and fontconfig tweaks and it never looked exactly like Ubuntu, it was close but not identical. If it was that easy than people wouldnt complain so much about fonts on Linux, that Ubuntu font rendering is excellent is something nearly everyone agrees with therefore they would use those tweaks and enjoy, but obviously they do not copy the Ubuntu look completely.

I went through the patches a while ago and really, what I said is all there is. You either did something wrong or your brain was playing tricks on you. Take a vanilla FreeType, no patches except subpixel rendering, and select slight hinting. You're done.

The difference is subtle, but Ubuntu's font rendering is still, indeed, superior (look closely at the 'M' in particular).

You forgot to turn on subpixel rendering. Ubuntu uses an older FT btw., 2.6.3 and above use a slightly less aggressive color filter.

http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/ Are we there yet?

Hinting-wise, yes. Linear alpha blending and gamma correction wise, no. Qt5 does subpixel positioning, but only to 1/4th of a pixel iirc.

[bug77]

All of us going on about what we like and don't like is pointless. We all have different eyes, different hardware, different lighting, some of us create and use color profiles, most don't, etc., etc.

You can't configure font rendering in any single way to look best for everyone in all conditions. (My fonts look worse at the end of the day than at the beginning. Bet yours do, too.)

Would not hurt, though, to have a good GUI tool so we could manipulate the options in freetype/fontconfig and see the results in real time.

Actually, my fonts look bad the minute I step into the office

[theghost]

Getting the Ubuntu look involves compiling in subpixel rendering and globally selecting slight hinting (and maybe setting lcddefault as the LCD filter if you haven't done that). Done. They really didn't invest much here

True, works fine and looks like Ubuntu. One of the first steps on a fresh Arch install. I don't know how you could live without it

[smitty3268]

So we'll have downgrade? I remember Windows fonts, very thin and choppy. When i came to Linux the first thing i noticed was a much better fonts.
Is this -> https://s32.postimg.org/a2x1ztyid/font.png looking bad and Windows has it better nowadays?

Windows renders fonts fine now.

Here's a comparison - your screenshot is on top, windows rendering on bottom.

http://i.imgur.com/DSVgjYL.png

[yoshi314]

Windows renders fonts fine now.

Here's a comparison - your screenshot is on top, windows rendering on bottom.

http://i.imgur.com/DSVgjYL.png

those seem to be two different fonts. take a look at number 6 in "2016" in both.

[HyperDrive]

Oh, look! A new and shiny hinting engine for me to disable!

On a more serious (and personal, obviously) note, after getting used to have hinting completely disabled, for the last five years, or so (even on lowly 1366*768 laptop screens), hinted rendering just looks horribly distorted in my eyes. The only features I really wish for are true subpixel positioning and gamma corrected blending.

And don't get me started on OS X (running version 10.11.5, here). I (have to) use a Mac at work, and I cringe every time I have to look at rendered text on this hideous OS.

[BlackStar]

It seems I'll be sticking with version 2.6.5 for some time. I can't stand modern fonts and how they're rendered, I get dizzy looking at them for more than 10 minutes. Then only thing I can stand is the old MS core fonts, the ones that were "beaten into the pixel grid" as that mailing list post puts it. Anything else is either way too blurry or color-fringes like crazy, usually both. Windows has a utility to configure ClearType, but that doesn't help at all when then options are "bad", "worse", "even more worser" and "the worsesest".

If you can afford it, buy a 4K screen and enjoy a headache-free experience. For best results set "hinting" to "slight" or "off".

The smaller sub pixels of 4K monitors eliminate colour fringes. It took decades, but proper text rendering is finally here!

PS: if you still see colour fringes on a 4K monitor, check your eyes for astigmatism and get correcting lenses. Nothing is worth headaches.

[AJSB]

This is not written with intention to troll at all.

One of the reasons i dropped Windows for Linux was this ClearType )or any for of anti-aliasing) that hurts my eyesight (that, and also any refresh rate bellow 100 Hz be in a LED or CRT monitor), funny enough i finally learned some months ago to get rid of all that crap in Windows (in Linux, i also still had some issues with Browsers but finally also managed to remove all that stuff time ago)...

So now, are you telling me that ClearType crap is gonna start to be (forcefully) implemented in LINUX distros ?!?

I might as well return to W7 if there will not be a EASY WAY TO DISABLE THAT CRAP THAT ALMOST PERMANENTLY DAMAGED MY EYESIGHT if i didn't solve it.