[Freetype] Bad font rendering quality?

[Jan Rychter]

Hi,

Having just upgraded my laptop system (from RedHat 8.0 to Fedora Core
1), I was puzzled when some of my fonts suddenly started looking rather
bad.

It turns out that there is a very pronounced difference in how some
fonts are rendered, while others continue looking pretty much the same.

In particular, Bitstream Cyberbit looks very ugly on my new
system. There is very little difference in how Bitstream Vera fonts are
rendered, though.

I have provided snapshot images at:

Cyberbit font:
System 1: http://jan.rychter.com/freetype/slash1.png
System 2: http://jan.rychter.com/freetype/slash2.png

Vera Serif font:
System 1: http://jan.rychter.com/freetype/slashv1.png
System 2: http://jan.rychter.com/freetype/slashv2.png

Obviously, the troubling image is the second one -- slash2.png.

I have verified that enabling/disabling subpixel rendering does not
improve the appearance in any significant manner.

Both systems use freetype 2.1.4 recompiled with the bytecode interpreter
turned ON.

The biggest difference between the systems is probably the XFree86
version -- 4.2.1 on the first system (where Cyberbit looks good) and 4.3
on the second system (where it looks bad, slash2.png).

Any ideas on what is going on here? Is the problem related to freetype
at all, or should I ask elsewhere?

thanks,
--J.