Re: [Freetype] Re: Bad font rendering quality?

[Werner LEMBERG]

> If you imply that the second picture looks better than the first, I
> strongly disagree.

It's a matter of taste.

> 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?

To get a definite answer I suggest that you play with ftview, a demo
program of FreeType, where you can easily test most of the various
FreeType rendering modes, hinting enabled/disabled, etc.

> 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.

Hmm, ftview shows quite uneven rendering for certain pixel sizes.  Can
someone do a comparison on Windows?  I don't think that we've recently
introduced a bug, but who knows...

The best-hinted TrueType font I'm aware of is pala.ttf.

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

Difficult to say.  It seems that the defaults of XFree86 4.3 have been
changed.  I'm quite sure that you can get back the previous
appearance.

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

The `h' key in ftview toggles hinting on and off.


    Werner