Re: [Devel] Help me understand this... I'm loosing my sanity. Please.

[Vincent Caron]

Maurizio Colucci wrote:
> Gosh. The opposite of what I guessed.
> So how is it possible that redhat's rendering is better? 
>
> I have uploaded some pictures showing the difference:
>
> http://www.geocities.com/seguso2001/nimbus-roman-13-debian.png
> http://www.geocities.com/seguso2001/nimbus-roman-13-redhat8.png
>
> Since we are using same distribution (debian unstable), could you be
> so kind as to check if you have the same results?

I could reproduce the problem with the Nimbus roman font while running a 
 Gnome application (using a freshly compiled FreeType 2.1.4). Using 
Gnome font configuration tool, I found out that the rendering became 
correct when I turned hinting off (the other hinting modes quoted as 
'slight', 'medium' and 'full' would all fail on the 'p'). I don't have 
the other fonts installed.

This is a Type1 font, so the TrueType byte code interpreter does not 
come in the way. It can be an hinting error in the font itself (is 
RedHat using an updated font file ? Here it is n021003l.pfb). It maybe 
an Xft configuration issue, RedHat can disable hinting for specific 
fonts at given sizes when it proves to improve rendering quality. Etc ...


> On both redhat and debian I tried: 
>
>   $  ldd oowriter
>
> but the answer was: "not a dynamic executable"

These are frontend scripts which launch the real executable, you'll have 
to find this executable and run ldd on it.