I have the strangest problem with font quality using Xft. Fonts in GTK+ apps (which don't use XFT) are noticibly higher in quality than fonts in KDE 3.0 apps (which use Xft through Qt 3.0). In KDE 2.x, I could get KDE to stop using Xft by disabling anti-aliasing. However, Qt 3.0 apparently now uses Xft all the time, with or without anti-aliasing. Either way, the problem shouldn't exist. The quality of Freetype 2.x (which Xft uses) is supposed to be identical to Freetype 1.x (which is used by core X). Rendering fonts directly with the Freetype library supports this assertion.
I'm running Debian sid with custom compiled KDE 3.0, GNOME 1.4, and Freetype 2.1.0 with the bytecode interpreter enabled. I've seen the exact same problem in several other configurations of Mandrake and Slackware. Attached is a PNG showing the differences I am talking about. The segment at the top is a screenshot of KMail displaying the alphabet in Monotype Arial 10pt. The bottom picture is a screenshot of GEdit displaying the same text in the same font. The letters that differ between the two are pasted along the bottom, with KMail on the left and GEdit on the right. Any help in understanding why these differences are there would be appreciated.
font_scr.png
Description: PNG image
