Running Qt/KDE Atop An OpenGL Stack

[energyman]

so - with all the patents - are you 'subpixel is a must' people even sure that you have that stuff enabled? What about a side by side comparism?

[RealNC]

so - with all the patents - are you 'subpixel is a must' people even sure that you have that stuff enabled?

I am. On Gentoo you have to enable the "cleartype" USE flag to get packages that contain the patches.

For libXft (older programs use this) I use my own ebuild in the local overlay to apply libXft-2.1.10-lcd-cleartype.diff.

We aren't clueless, energyman

[energyman]

well, I just turned it on - and I am disgusted so far...

[RealNC]

I'm disgusted without it.

Though the results without the bytecode interpreter in freetype are poor ("bindist" USE flag of freetype). Also, the interpreter has to explicitly be enabled. I was tweaking /etc/fonts/local.conf for hours to get the results I wanted. However, if you don't like font rendering that looks like the one in Mac OS X, you will still be disgusted I guess. Me, I can't live without it.

Edit:
Just to make sure we're seeing the same thing here:

http://i28.tinypic.com/ju766h.png

And of course if you happen to view this on a CRT monitor instead of a TFT (CRTs don't have subpixels), or on a TFT that doesn't use RGB subpixel alignment, the fonts will look like some abomination from hell.

[deanjo]

If you look up that patent in the USPTO database, it says:

Good catch, however I'm not sure that can be said on all off the patents. There is also Canadian, UK, and German patents on those items. Until all those are cleared distro's like openSUSE will stay clear of them much like they have with the mpeg codecs and such.

[Ant P.]

The best setting I've found is subpixel AA and hinting set to full (everything else left alone) - the default hinting level makes everything blurry.

I can't stand Windows' cleartype and I don't see why anyone would want to emulate it either.

[RealNC]

I agree on that. Windows' implementation of Cleartype makes fonts jump almost to bold just by increasing size by 1pt. It's heavily annoying.

(Btw, this happens with full hinting so I wonder why you're using it too even though you claim you hate the Windows behavior.)

[loonyphoenix]

~

On Ubuntu subpixel seems to be enabled by default. Or is it not the same subpixel?

Anyway, I like normal hinting better. It looks good regardless how far from the screen you are; and I've found that close up, subpixel rendering can be seen as colored edges on fonts, which I don't like. And it IS still troublesome to make fonts look alike in all applications, at least in Ubuntu. GTK+ applications follow the settings in Gnome's configuration (duh), and so does OpenOffice, and so does Firefox. However, QT applications give a lot of trouble. Some of them can be fixed by installing the systemsettings package (it's KDE's control panel thing); however, others (Opera for one and some QT3 applications) don't even acknowledge those settings and only submit to ~/.fonts.conf or /etc/fonts/conf.d.

[BlackStar]

The best setting I've found is subpixel AA and hinting set to full (everything else left alone) - the default hinting level makes everything blurry.

I can't stand Windows' cleartype and I don't see why anyone would want to emulate it either.

Agreed on Windows cleartype - it tends to chew on fonts a bit too much.

My personal preference is subpixel AA with slight hinting. Slight hinting is a work of genious, actually: it only hints and grid-aligns the y-direction (where monitor DPI is limited) and leaves the x-direction untouched (where monitor DPI is effectively tripled due to subpixel AA). This is the best compromise between legibility and typographic accuracy: letter forms remain truthfull to their original shape but appear crystal clear on the upper and lower parts (which is where the human brain focuses to recognize letters).

As such, slight hinting manages to strike a balance between Mac OS X font rendering (which many find a tad too blurry) and Windows (full hinting, which hurts letter shapes). Add a good font and you are in typographic heaven!

Ok, not exactly, but I've managed to wow Mac OS X users with my Linux desktop (what font is this, it's beatiful!) and that's saying a lot.

My Arch settings: bytecode interpreter; subpixel AA; slight hinting; font bitmaps forced off; Calibri 11pt as desktop font; FreeType, fontconfig, libxft from AUR with Ubuntu patches. Add a good TFT or CRT monitor (the higher DPI the better) and the result *rocks*.

I really can't see how you could prefer grayscale AA - unless you are using a 10year old CRT with convergence problems or low-DPI TFT, eg 15.4'' @1280x800.

Edit: indeed, Ubuntu Intrepid+ have the exact settings I described by default. Nice!

Edit 2: RealNC, your desktop is beatiful (you are using no hinting - similar to Mac OS X). Starting with KDE 4.2 / Qt4.5 you can actually enable slight hinting without destroying your fonts (Qt had a bug previously that treated sligh as full hinting when subpixel AA was enabled) - have you tested that? It should make text slightly more legible (by taking care of the bluriness above letterforms) without hurting its appearance.

[loonyphoenix]

@BlackStar: I prefer grayscale even though I have a 125 DPI LCD monitor which renders subpixels rather nicely I've tried every other alternative (including subpixel + slight hinting and subpixel + strong hinting), and strong hinting + grayscale is what looks most pleasing to my eye. Moreover, I find that some fonts render even better with monochrome (black&white + strong hinting), and those include Redhat's Liberation fonts. However, others look horrible with that setting, so, unless I figure out how to enable monochrome only for select fonts, grayscale strong hinting will have to do.

As you said, much depends on the font used, and maybe some fonts are better with subpixel rendering, but grayscale rendering works best with most fonts, so it's a safe default for me. Calibri, as far as I understand, is a proprietary font from Microsoft, so it's definitely not an option. And even if it was, you can't tell web browsers only to use those fonts that render good with subpixel; they use DejaVu and Liberation fonts most of the time.