[Freetype] Re: Bad font rendering quality?

[Jan Rychter]

>>>>> "Werner" == Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden> writes:
 >> 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.

 Werner> It doesn't look bad at all.  It is crisper.  AFAIK you can
 Werner> modify the xft to get the old smooth behaviour.

If you imply that the second picture looks better than the first, I
strongly disagree. The uneven character outlines are very disturbing to
the eye, and overall the effect provides for an unpleasant reading
experience. The previous rendering is perhaps less "crisp", but _much_
more readable, especially in the long term.

Does this mean that the change was caused by Xft, not freetype?

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

 Werner> The fonts which look differently are handled by the autohinter,
 Werner> this is which have missing or bad hints.  If xft is set up for
 Werner> LCD, you get a threefold horizontal pseudo-resolution (similar
 Werner> to Microsoft's ClearType thing).

I'm puzzled now. Bitstream Cyberbit was always the one font that really
stood out as providing the best rendering quality (by far!) at low
resolutions, on all of my systems. The latin part of Cyberbit is Dutch
801, one of their most popular fonts. I had always assumed the great
quality is a result of it being very well hinted.

>From what you say I understand that the quality deteriorated after my
upgrade to XFree86 4.3 because Cyberbit is badly hinted?

Is there any easy way for me to check if a TrueType font is hinted?

thanks,
--J.