> I'm curious why many scaled fonts look perfect in Ubuntu 16 > (freetype 2.6.1) , but terrible in Ubuntu 20 (2.10.1). To > reproduce in Ubuntu 20:
Perhaps you should ask on an Ubuntu mailing list, as you describe an Ubuntu issue, the assumption that Freetype is involved is not entirely plausible. > 1. $ xfontsel -scaled > 2. Select these options: fndry=misc, family=fixed, pxlsz=17. > 3. Observe ugly font. > 4. Try other settings, notice how everything is ugly. > I came across the issue when I had to get the X server working > with a legacy application running in a VM. Perhaps you should also ask whoever setup the font configuration in that VM. > The app requests a scaled Liberation font That is confusing: If the way to reproduce is to choose a 'fixed' font, why mention Liberation here? > in XLFD format. XLFD is a font selection syntax, while PCF and TTF are font formats. If Ubuntu were using PCF fonts (and 'fixed' usually is a PCF font) to satisfy requests in XLFD syntax, since they are not outline but bitmap based they look bad when scaled by the X11 font system.
