Hi Peter, Thanks for the response.
I can reproduce the issue in OpenSUSE as well. I just sent Werner some comparison screenshots. Apologies for the confusing email. Cheers, Ben On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 4:35 PM pg--- via FreeType users < freetype@nongnu.org> wrote: > > 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. > >