Hi All, Faintly irritated by still-fuzzy fonts after doing a bit of work to get browser / general / especially Mozilla / fonts looking better (lots of good advice at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/FDU and in the Unofficial FAQ at $YOURLOCALMIRROR/susefaq/generalx.html), I took the bull by the horns and compiled and installed freetype 2.1.3 from http://www.freetype.org (./configure --prefix=/usr && make && make install seems fine). In case of screw-ups, I had backed up the libraries under /usr/lib, the include directory /usr/include/freetype, and /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/fonts/libfreetype.a (the only file I could find under the X11 hierarchy that seemed to be from freetype. Thinking myself smart, I copied the newly formed libfreetype.a from my build directory to /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/fonts/. That caused the X server to crash on restarting, putting the old libfreetype.a back where it was restored all to health. So the point of the mail is 1) freetype 2.1.3 really does seem, on my 8.1 i386 system at least, to provide signifcant improvement in the anti-aliasing / font-smoothing performance. See freetype's site for the scoop on why/how. You might want to check it out, but not before reading the various other advice and caveats at the addresses above. 2) Obviously I should have left /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/libfreetype.a alone, and not meddled. Can a patient person quickly and coherently explain why the system needs the old one left in place? I think I understood this once, but clearly don't now. Best Fergus -- Fergus Wilde Chetham's Library Long Millgate Manchester M3 1SB Tel: +44 161 834 7961 Fax: +44 161 839 5797 http://www.chethams.org.uk
On Tuesday 03 December 2002 08:50, Fergus Wilde wrote:
Hi All,
Faintly irritated by still-fuzzy fonts after doing a bit of work to get browser / general / especially Mozilla / fonts looking better (lots of good advice at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/FDU and in the Unofficial FAQ at $YOURLOCALMIRROR/susefaq/generalx.html), I took the bull by the horns and compiled and installed freetype 2.1.3 from http://www.freetype.org (./configure --prefix=/usr && make && make install seems fine).
Yeah, the freetype2 compile is surprisingly smooth. I just compiled 2.1.3 myself (RPM, actually). Interestingly, the freetype.sf.net page still says 2.1.2 is the latest release. Going into the downloads section, though, you can download the source. FYI (and everyone else's), if you have a proper TrueType license, you might want to turn on the bytecode interpreter if you're compiling your own freetype2. You have to edit the ftoption.h file in include/freetype/config and #define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER . Supposedly it gives much better results, but I don't use it as I use the hacked Xft library from http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/xfthack/ with Microsoft's TrueType fonts. Gorgeous... Now if only YaST2 didn't use it's own font and used KDE defaults...
In case of screw-ups, I had backed up the libraries under /usr/lib, the include directory /usr/include/freetype, and /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/fonts/libfreetype.a (the only file I could find under the X11 hierarchy that seemed to be from freetype. Thinking myself smart, I copied the newly formed libfreetype.a from my build directory to /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/fonts/. That caused the X server to crash on restarting, putting the old libfreetype.a back where it was restored all to health.
Yup, I expected as much. Read on...
So the point of the mail is 1) freetype 2.1.3 really does seem, on my 8.1 i386 system at least, to provide signifcant improvement in the anti-aliasing / font-smoothing performance. See freetype's site for the scoop on why/how. You might want to check it out, but not before reading the various other advice and caveats at the addresses above.
2) Obviously I should have left /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/libfreetype.a alone, and not meddled. Can a patient person quickly and coherently explain why the system needs the old one left in place? I think I understood this once, but clearly don't now.
Sure, Fergus. In short, that libfreetype.a is a XFree86 -module-. See /var/log/XFree86.0.log: (II) Loading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/fonts/libfreetype.a (II) Module freetype: vendor="The XFree86 Project" compiled for 4.2.0, module version = 1.1.10 Module class: XFree86 Font Renderer ABI class: XFree86 Font Renderer, version 0.3 The libfreetype.a from the source is a static library to compile apps with freetype2 staticly. -- Karol Pietrzak <noodlez84@earthlink.net> PGP KeyID: 3A1446A0
* Karol Pietrzak; <kap4020@osfmail.isc.rit.edu> on 03 Dec, 2002 wrote:
On Tuesday 03 December 2002 08:50, Fergus Wilde wrote: Gorgeous... Now if only YaST2 didn't use it's own font and used KDE defaults...
I can not quarantee it will work yet you can change it here :-) /usr/lib/YaST2/bin/yast2-funcs Y2_XFONT="-gnu-unifont-medium-r-normal--16-160-75-75-p-80-iso10646-1" -- Togan Muftuoglu Unofficial SuSE FAQ Maintainer http://dinamizm.ath.cx
On Tuesday 03 December 2002 17:12, Karol Pietrzak wrote:
On Tuesday 03 December 2002 08:50, Fergus Wilde wrote:
Hi All,
<some snippage> Hi Noodlez,
FYI (and everyone else's), if you have a proper TrueType license, you might want to turn on the bytecode interpreter if you're compiling your own freetype2. You have to edit the ftoption.h file in include/freetype/config and #define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER .
Supposedly it gives much better results, but I don't use it as I use the hacked Xft library from http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/xfthack/ with Microsoft's TrueType fonts.
The advice at http://www.freetype.org/freetype2/2.1.3-explained.html appears to be that you shouldn't necessarily turn on the bytecode interpreter for this release, because they have their own wonder-weapon: "Short answer: No for most people !! We now highly recommend you to not enable the TrueType bytecode interpreter when installing FreeType. That's because we believe that the FreeType auto-hinter now produces results that out-perform native TrueType hinting when it comes to rendering AA text. However, you might still need it in certain cases, <large snip> ... we invite you to experiment with a fully anti-aliased desktop with FreeType 2.1.3 and no bytecode interpreter. Only if this doesn't suit your needs should you consider downgrading." Presumably this doesn't apply to you if you're using your hacked Xft library, but it might apply to those of us who haven't got into that yet.
Gorgeous... Now if only YaST2 didn't use it's own font and used KDE defaults...
<my silly question and Karol's answer snipped> Thanks for that, now it makes sense! And thanks for putting up your Mplayer rpms, too, they work really nicely. Best Fergus -- Fergus Wilde Chetham's Library Long Millgate Manchester M3 1SB Tel: +44 161 834 7961 Fax: +44 161 839 5797 http://www.chethams.org.uk
participants (3)
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Fergus Wilde -
Karol Pietrzak -
Togan Muftuoglu