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

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FreeType 2.7 Bringing DirectWrite/ClearType-Like Rendering

FreeType 2.7.0 will be shipping with the v40 TrueType instructions interpreter enabled by default. This interpreter is going to "finally brings DirectWrite/ClearType-like rendering to the screen, or 'subpixel hinting' as some FreeType code calls it."..

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=FreeType-2.7-Rendering

[Evil Penguin]

So... Fedora shouldn't have an issue implementing this?

[mudig]

I don't think so. Ignoring something is probably not patented Besides, F24's GNOME is set to slight hinting by default, so people will not see the changes unless they go for medium/full hinting.

[Cerberus]

Ubuntu and OSX have the best font rendering (system and web), but I hope this will improve fonts on Linux in general, I always stayed away from some distributions because of the awful fonts.

[aksdb]

Hmm, I used to install gdipp or similar on Windows to have font rendering like Linux which looked much better imho. I guess I'll be in a strange position soon. Then again, FreeType is pretty configurable.

[buzzrobot]

I count myself as a font rendering obsessive, but I'm not really sure I want my Linux fonts to render like Windows fonts. Windows fonts rendering is second rate.

There are, I think, at least three different font rendering engines shipping with Win10, which is part of its problem.

[johnc]

dafuq? Fonts look awful on Windows, why would we want to bring that to Linux?

[xeekei]

Better than, worse than, or equal to Infinality?

[microcode]

Better than, worse than, or equal to Infinality?

It's less aggressive than Infinality, and in my opinion looks better. They made it configuration-compatible with the Infinality patches.

[Gusar]

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".