Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts

[Nikolaus Waxweiler]

> Well I don't use Wine anymore, and I wanted to make clear enough
> that this is "standalone X + toolkits + webfonts" setup. Maybe it
> affects other such "weird" combinations in different ways?

All I wanted to say is that "windows fonts on unix" is not a rarity and 
perfectly okay :)

> Strange thing about this is, that gtk2 program and qt5 program
> windows don't explode, and such applications display fonts in window
> controls normally, but Gecko engines and some things (yes, I am too
> lazy check again) do have problems, indeed.

Basically, fontconfig allows users to set options as they please but it
is up to the application/toolkit that uses fontconfig (GTK/cairo, Qt,
Skia, etc.) to interpret that configuration and instruct FreeType
accordingly. The handling of each toolkit can differ depending on
circumstances. Gecko (cairo) will honor per-font hinting settings, Blink 
(Skia) and GTK will not and take additional input from other sources. 
Yes, it's messy.

Fontconfig only has properties for things that can be set per-font, the
interpreter version is a TrueType-engine-wide setting. All users of
fontconfig would need to implement handling for that on a per-font-basis
and maybe it's better not to go there...

> > Whitelist? Where? Keep in mind that FreeType is not the place for
> > configuration and white/blacklists unless it's critical for
> > rendering things correctly.
>
> I was reffering to this email from Werner I found:
> http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.fonts.freetype.devel/10497

Ah, yes, I scrapped that idea because I wanted to see how far I could go
without special-casing fonts except tricky and native ClearType ones.
Very far it turns out. The current code does not have any
white-/blacklisting.

> And, well it breaks rendering to almost unreadable levels indeed. So
> I would say it is kind of "critical".

That's because your brain is used to something different. I find the
"old" look horrible, you the new one. It's a matter of getting used to
something. The new look has the objective advantage that different fonts 
render much more harmoniously even when the hinting is shoddy by 
discarding an entire axis that happens to be important for horizontal 
text like what you're reading right now. That's why I think it's the 
objectively better choice for a default.

> Lower resolution displays and CRTs are still not the thing of the
> past yet. One can hardly find higher quality fonts for situations
> like that, than those from Microsoft (unfortunately, open source
> fonts will probably never reach that state, now when everybody is
> jumping hires "retina" bandwagon). This might be crucial for some
> users, and I believe they should not be left in the dark, at least
> yet.
>
> Webfonts package contains only handful of fonts and most new fonts
> being hires LCD "optimized", whitelist could be an effective option.

I think you're conflating several things here, FreeType's rendition of
Microsoft's core web fonts with the new v40 code is *very* similar to
how they are rendered by DirectWrite on Windows, HiDPI or not. Keep in 
mind that millions of Windows users are exposed to a very similar 
rendering every day on crappy low-resolution displays and can read it 
fine. Internet Explorer, Edge and Chrome all use DirectWrite to render 
fonts by default, only Firefox uses GDI for several fonts on an internal 
whitelist. Ubuntu employs a similar look and is the most visible Linux 
distribution.

What you mean is, you want GDI-like rendering of fonts that were 
instructed for clean black-and-white display. Think Windows 95+ and XP. 
That's what the previously default v35 code did, but *only* when the 
font was hinted accordingly. Read: Microsoft's core web fonts and the 
DejaVu (+ antialiasing) and Ubuntu family.

Font hinting is an extremely confusing and messy topic.