[ft] controlling the "degree" of anti-aliasing

[Mandar Mitra]

Hello,

I moved recently from SuSE10.0 (freetype2-2.1.10-4) to SuSE10.3
(freetype2-2.3.5 with sub-pixel enabled), and the rendering of fonts
(e.g. Arial) appears to have changed: out of the box, the letters
appear taller and thinner in 2.3.5. After trying various things, I
found that I get closest to the 10.0 appearance when I turn hinting
off in my ~/.fonts.conf.

But the letters still seemed a little fuzzy compared to 2.1.10, so I
took a couple of screenshots (gmail opened in firefox), and zoomed in
to check. I've uploaded an image at

http://www.isical.ac.in/~mandar/10.3-vs-10.jpg

(the part on the left is from SuSE 10.3).

I'm not sure I'm expressing this correctly, but it appears to me that
the "amount" of anti-aliasing is excessive in 2.3.5, in the sense that
the characters have too much grey around them (notice how the 'p' and
'c' are touching, as are o, o and g). Is there any way to control the
degree of anti-aliasing via .fonts.conf, or is this built into the
code?

Thanks for any suggestions,
Mandar.