Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3901 mails)

["Paul W. Abrahams" <abrahams@xxxxxxx>]

On Saturday 29 January 2005 9:25 pm, Chris Carlen wrote:
> > I've noticed that the intercharacter spacing of OpenOffice documents is 
not 
> > calculated correctly for the on-screen display, even though it is OK in 
the 
> > printed documents.

> Few people know about the real cause of this or its fix.  The cause is 
> as follows:
> 
> The freetype library is what renders truetype fonts.  For patent 
> reasons, Suse cannot ship this library compiled with the "bytecode 
> interpreter" turned on.  This is what is necessary to properly render 
> the fonts using a technique known as hinting.

Thanks a bunch for posting all of this useful and enlightening information.

Paul


> 
> To work around this, the smart folks at the freetype project designed an 
> "autohinter" which attempts to give the same quality of results at the 
> real bytecode interpreter, but without using the bytecodes which are the 
> hinting clues in the font which are what enable the rendering code to 
> arrange the pixels on a grid so that the font looks symmetrical and 
> "nice".  Without hinting, the font looks "klunky" or "rough."
> 
> The fact is, the autohinter just cannot look as good as the real 
> bytecode interpreter.  That is why Suse sets up OOo with antialiasing 
> turned on.  The blurring of the fonts hides the fact that the hinting is 
> not done very well.  When you turn off antialiasing, you see the 
> problem.  This is a serious problem for folks who use flat panels, and 
> who don't like the blurred fonts.
> 
> Interestingly, if the bytecode interpreter is enabled, and antialiasing 
> is still used, together with subpixel hinting, then the results are 
> simply stunning.  The resulting display looks truly professional.
> 
> I am one of the demanding few who thinks that if Linux distributers 
> cannot find a solution to this problem and get that bytecode interpreter 
> turned on by default, then professionals like myself who don't have 
> philosophical but only practical motivations to use Linux, will simply 
> find it unacceptable.
> 
> The fact is, without antialiasing, the font display sucks.  It even 
> sucks with antialiasing, once you have seen what it looks like with the 
> bytecode interpreter.  This affects all of KDE and other GUI apps which 
> use TTF fonts, not just OOo.
> 
> To use the bytecode interpreter, you must recompile freetype. 
> Unfortunately, if you use the vanilla freetype and try to simply replace 
> the lib in the Suse system, things will break.  You must use the Suse 
> source package.
> 
> Inside the package is a file freetype2.spec that explains what you must 
> edit in that file before compiling to get the bytecode interpreter. 
> Notice that this might violate patents.  So whether you can do it 
> depends on legal factors beyond my understanding.  I emailed Apple to 
> request info on paying whatever royalties to get a license to use the 
> bytecode interpreter, and they didn't respond.  Interpret that as you 
> will (pun intended).
> 
> 
> Good day!
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> _____________________
> Christopher R. Carlen
> crobc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> SuSE 9.1 Linux 2.6.5
>