Hi,
I ran into this change and found it disconcerting overall. Since it's an
upstream change, I don't necessarily expect it to be fixed here, but
I'll report some of what I learned in the hope that it may be generally
useful.
There's a detailed description here:
https://www.freetype.org/freetype2/docs/subpixel-hinting.html
In my case, the particularly confusing part was due to upgrading
fontconfig-config and freetype6 at the same time. When I saw the change
in fonts, I examined the apt log to see what I had just upgraded, found
fontconfig-config, and reconfigured it. fontconfig-config clearly
described a change and how to revert to earlier behavior by changing the
hinting style, but changing that option to "Full" did nothing.
Eventually I found and researched the libfreetype6 upgrade and arrived
at this bug.
I might be able to live with the new font rendering in general. It looks
rather different in many cases, but overall maybe not worse. I'm rather
particular about my terminal font, though--I selected it specifically
because it gives crisp, compact text without being too small to be
readable. I use:
Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:pixelsize=15
With the v35 renderer and full hinting enabled, the lines of the font
("strokes"?) end up a single pixel wide, with minimal antialiasing to
smooth them out.
I tried starting terminals with the following fonts in each of the
renderers simultaneously. I set it up so that I wouldn't know which
render was in use until I checked, so as to avoid any inherent bias on
my part.
DejaVu Sans Mono:style=Book
Liberation Mono:style=Regular
Hack:style=Regular
Inconsolata:style=Medium
Fira Code:style=Regular
Nimbus Mono L:style=Regular
Fantasque Sans Mono:style=Regular
Anonymous Pro:style=Regular
Fira Code, Numbus Mono L, and Fantasque Sans Mono looked the same
regardless of renderer. The others all looked crisper and cleaner in the
v35 renderer. In general, I'm trying to get used to the new font
rendering, but I spend so much time in front of terminals that I need to
stick to a font that works very well, and the v35 renderer does that.
-Corey
