[Devel] Apple's X11 1.0 --- font rendering

[Eric Knauel]

While working on bringing Xft fonts to XEmacs I tried out the same
binary on a number of platforms and XFree86'.  Now, I'm wondering how
it's possible about the diffrences in the quality of the glyphs
rendered.  I put together some screenshots:
<http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/knauel/xft-screenshots/>

A good example here is the Xft-XEmacs with a buffer font "Luxi
Mono-12" (btw, all font files on all platforms have identical
MD5-sum, same ~/fonts.conf):

  - XFree86 4.3.0 on a FreeBSD machine an Freetype 9.0.3 (that's what
    `freetype-config --version' says) looks great:
    
<http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/knauel/xft-screenshots/freebsd-xfree-4.3/xemacs-luxi-mono-12.png>

  - XFree 4.2 on OS X 10.2.x (as distributed by Apple as X11 0.3 beta)
    with Freetype 8.0.2 looks even better:
    
<http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/knauel/xft-screenshots/x11-0.3-beta/xemacs-luxi-mono-12.png>

  - XFree 4.3 on OS X 10.3.2 (as distributed by Apple as X11 1.0) with
    Freetype 9.0.3 looks terrible:
    
<http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/knauel/xft-screenshots/x11-1.0/xemacs-luxi-mono-12.png>

Especially characters like `L' and `m' look bad with Apple X11 1.0.
Additionally all characters lock thicker.  I wonder if there is a
particular reason why the rendered fonts differ in such a dramatic
way.  Any clues?

-Eric
-- 
"Excuse me --- Di Du Du Duuuuh Di Dii --- Huh Weeeheeee" (Albert King)