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

[Keith Packard]

Around 13 o'clock on Apr 10, Anthony Fok wrote:

> If you don't mind non-free (non-libre) fonts, you could try the
> Microsoft Core Web fonts that used to be available as free (gratis)
> download.  They are beautiful with the bytecode interpreter on.
> Of course, the autohinter is also great with these fonts.

We should also be receiving libre fonts from Bitstream in the near future 
which are exceptionally well hinted and which perform quite a bit better 
with the bytecode interpreter than with the autohinter.  If, as I hope, 
these fonts become commonplace in Linux applications, then many people
will greatly benefit from the interpreter.

The current difficulty is that when the bytecode interpreter is enabled 
and the fonts contain no (or poor) hints, then the resulting output is 
poor as the autohinter is disabled.  I think the best fix will be to add 
suitable configuration mechanisms to fontconfig to select the autohinter 
on a per-family basis.

-keith