[ft-devel] Wrong LCD subpixel autohinting in gnome

[Pjv]

I figured this was a matter of taste, so I didn't submit a bugreport.
Still, it was a very annoying problem to me (made my eyes tear ;-) ).

I recently updated the whole xorg-x11-6.8* to the new modular
xorg-x11-7.0-r1, following the Gentoo xorg migration guide. Freetype was
updated from 2.1.9-r1 to 2.1.10-r2. Apparently this messed up my font
hinting. I hardly changed anything to my config (at least nothing
relevant). I also didn't touch my gnome setting (set to complete rgb
hinting). I used to have for the letter "l" like five stacked black
pixels, but now columns of yellow pixels were added to the sides, making
text look very yellowish and blurry and difficult for my eyes. Changing
rgb to the other three sequences in gnome couldn't make it better.

See for screenshots: http://http://users.skynet.be/pjvh/yellow.png
showing the problem and users.skynet.be/pjvh/yellow2.png with problem
solved (where the problem was solved by downgrading freetype again).

Apparently something was changed but never clearly documented!!!
Inevitably in such a big update these things may be related:
- I think I used to use xft instead of freetype (if that's possible; i'm
not sure):

(II) Loading font Type1
(II) LoadModule: "speedo"
(WW) Warning, couldn't open module speedo
(II) UnloadModule: "speedo"
(EE) Failed to load module "speedo" (module does not exist, 0)
(II) LoadModule: "freetype"
(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/fonts/libfreetype.so
(II) Module freetype: vendor="X.Org Foundation & the After X-TT Project"
        compiled for 7.0.0, module version = 2.1.0
        Module class: X.Org Font Renderer
        ABI class: X.Org Font Renderer, version 0.4
(II) Loading font FreeType
(II) LoadModule: "xtt"
(WW) Warning, couldn't open module xtt
(II) UnloadModule: "xtt"
(EE) Failed to load module "xtt" (module does not exist, 0)
(II) LoadModule: "xft"
(WW) Warning, couldn't open module xft
(II) UnloadModule: "xft"
(EE) Failed to load module "xft" (module does not exist, 0)
(II) LoadModule: "glx"

- I use a rather unusual dpi: 116 (but the total result is the same, and
now everything is perfect again here).
- Lot's of other things probably -> ask

Good luck,
-- 
pjv

yellow.png
Description: PNG image

yellow2.png
Description: PNG image