Re: [ft-devel] Issues due to commit "Fix metrics on size request for scalable fonts."

[Alexei Podtelezhnikov]

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 9:05 AM, Peter Hurley <address@hidden> wrote:
> Werner LEMBERG wrote:
>> > We had report of regression in GTK markups rendering in Ubuntu
>> > precise, (i.e <u>label</u> would render underlined), [...]
>> >
>>
>> AFAIK, the problem is in gtk.  For years, FreeType had this metrics
>> bug, and unfortunately the users got used to the appearance of far too
>> widely spaced lines.  What FreeType now returns is what the font
>> designer has had in mind while designing the font, and what can be
>> found in the font.
>>
>> As has been stated in one of the Debian bug report comments, the
>> amount of the vertical line spacing is something which *must* be
>> configurable or explicitly set by the application.  >
>
> One outcome of integer scaling the metrics is that monospace fonts have
> 'excessive' space between glyphs. Unlike vertical line spacing, there is
> no way to directly control the max_advance metric value from the
> application layer -- only the font stack has access to this value.

I'd like to see some images that show that. Please use ftstring. Also
please remember that freetype renders glyphs and truthfully returns
metrics. The text layout is not done in freetype.

>
> Integer scaling *may* have been the font designer's requirement.
> However, it could be argued that if the font designer was using FreeType
> to proof the work, that the 'intention' was for the font to look as it
> did before this fix.

This is highly unlikely and hypothetical. Freetype is trying to
improve the rendering all the time. Improving meens some changes in
the way glyphs look.

I personally always liked this particular change that made the line
spacing more consistent with the font size and improved the layout of
complex webpages where the font sizes is highly variable:
http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/freetype-devel/2011-07/msg00049.html