Hi List! I am a computer sciences student and I'm primarily here because I think the Render extension needs a little fix.
I browsed through several discussions of this topic on this list, but AFAIK there is generally seen no need to apply gamma correction to antialiased fonts. I think this is wrong, and I'll provide the following simple test to prove it: My X runs with gamma=1, as xgamma reports. My monitor has approximately 2.3, the exactness of that value is quite unimportant. Your setup should be similar, as most monitors are around that. Using the console, look at some characters in black-on-white. Now mark them, so they appear white-on-black. Suddenly the caracters look thinner, and less equal bright. I've seen a lot of descriptions for this on this list. Now run: xgamma -gamma 2.3 The 2.3 is for my monitor, if you know yours use that but it won't make much of a difference. The screen will be much brighter, but the characters are much more in tune. BW and WB characters look equally good, IMHO even more balanced for most fonts. What happens? With this gamma correction a basic assumption of the font renderer (50% pixel coverage becomes 1/2 of BG/FG color added) finally becomes true, because we operate (quite...) linear in luminance. Sadly, everything else is too bright, as it was developed to look ok on an average monitor. Besides, luminance-linear color spaces are just nothing one would use, except in graphics operations. The gamma we set with xgamma is a correction and has nothing to do with monitor gamma. Although it influences system gamma (video memory to screen), which is the one we need to know in order to correctly mix BG with character color. AFAIK there is no way to get a display's gamma from X (which could be known through configfile or maybe DDC), which IMHO is a design flaw. Microsoft made the sRGB standard which provides a default of gamma=2.2; things are a little more complicated anyway, but a loose match is ok for antialiasing issues. I don't know the Render extension or X too good, but I guess a fix is not a problem if someone already involved does it. Some people said fonts are too bright on white BG; this would make them even brighter. Personally I think it is ok; maybe it is better to tune the autohinter towards the problem, but this is an FT2 issue. _______________________________________________ Render mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/render
