From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Opera/7.50 (X11; Linux i686; U) [en] Description of problem: Some truetype fonts which looked great under Core 1 are rendered extremly ugly under Core 2. The best example is Courier New which turned absolutely unusable. (e.g. the # doesn't look like a # any more). Applications using the new XFT fontconfig system aren't affected, only those using plain X font system. Bypassing XFS by specifying the font directories in X configuration doesn't change anything. The X.org logs don't show any errors. The problem appeared emidiently after upgrade from Core 1 to Core 2, I did not change anything in my configuration. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): freetype-2.1.7-4 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Get msttcorefonst from corefonts.sourceforge.net, build and install the rpm as described on the site 2. cd to /usr/share/fonts/msttcorefonts 3. run ttmkfdir 4. run mkfontsdir 5. run /usr/sbin/chkfontpath --add /usr/share/fonts/msttcorefonts 6. start Emacs like this: emacs -fn "-monotype-courier new-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-m-0-iso8859-15" 7. Enter some #, some 2, some w (any other app that uses the old core X font system will do, too) Actual Results: The characters, ecspecially #, 2 and w are rendered very stranga and almost unreadable. It worked well under Core 1. Other truetype fonts don't look as goods as under Core 1, too. E.g Bitstream Vera Sans Mono. Expected Results: The fonts should look at least as good as under Fedora Core 1. Additional info: I tested the above steps on two PCs I upgraded from Core 1 to Core 2 and the results are the same. Bypassing xfs doesn't change anything.
My guess is that you had a custom freetype package installed with the patented truetype hinting enabled. Monochrome rendering of TrueType fonts isn't expected to look good without that.
No I didn't. It was a plain Fedora Core 1 install. And it isn't that the fonts only look worse, some characters are unreadable.
I just build and installed freetype with hinting enabled and the problem is still there.
Created attachment 100698 [details] A screenshot showing the problem
Two reports from users seeing the same problem: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.general/45791 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.general/32591
I must correct myself: The rendering is indeed better with patented truetype hinting enabled, however there is definitely a bug as the fonts looked much better in releases before Core 2 test 2. The freetype ftoption-h states: /*************************************************************************/ /* */ /* Define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_UNPATENTED_HINTING (in addition to */ /* TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER) to compile the unpatented */ /* work-around hinting system. Note that for the moment, the algorithm */ /* is only used when selected at runtime through the parameter tag */ /* FT_PARAM_TAG_UNPATENTED_HINTING; or when the debug hook */ /* FT_DEBUG_HOOK_UNPATENTED_HINTING is globally actived */ /* */ #define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_UNPATENTED_HINTING could it be possible that xorg fails to set those parameter tags?
It was pointed out to me that FC1 accidentally shipped using an internal version of FreeType with the truetype interpreter on.