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Summary: Default Font Rendering is Poor https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=489833 Summary: Default Font Rendering is Poor Product: Fedora Version: 10 Platform: All OS/Version: Linux Status: NEW Severity: high Priority: low Component: freetype AssignedTo: besfa...@redhat.com ReportedBy: cwgarfiel...@yahoo.com QAContact: extras...@fedoraproject.org CC: besfa...@redhat.com, ke...@tigcc.ticalc.org, fedora-fonts-bugs-list@redhat.com Classification: Fedora Description of Bug: In Fedora 10, fonts are by default rendered poorly in terms of legibility and proportion. While this problem is in reality systemwide with ALL fonts, it is most noticeable in Firefox and OpenOffice. In Firefox, fonts are too big proportionally no matter how font settings are changed in Edit|Preferences. They look about 1 size bigger or smaller than they should be. In OpenOffice, fonts do not appear antialiased at all (regardless of sans serif or serif or system hinting settings) and the edges of the letters appear very jagged instead of smooth. One can observe a similar phenomenon in AbiWord as well. This makes documents difficult to look at for extended periods of time. A long time ago, Debian/Ubuntu had similar problems with fonts, but they patched the font rendering packages and now the problem is fixed in those distros. Fedora has not done the same and this problem has persisted through many releases with no action being taken. This is most emphatically NOT a bug with Firefox, Abiword, OpenOffice or any other external program. This has to do with Fedora itself, as one can clearly see from the descriptions that follow. Steps to fix bug: After much research, packages located at http://www.bevenhall.se/jim/fedora-cleartype/ were found to completely fix the problem. Steps as quoted from http://www.bevenhall.se/jim/fedora-cleartype/ "Tired of crappy and ugly fedora fonts? Download and replace these rpms for F8 or F10. 'rpm -Uvh --replacepkgs --force cairo-* freetype-* libXft-* msfonts-*' [NOTE: msfonts-* is COMPLETELY optional, only useful if one wishes to use those fonts. /NOTE] Restart X to make sure everything is reloaded. Turn on and adjust antialiasing and subpixel smoothing. Enjoy "cleartype enabled" fonts. Thanks to jaganath for the patch tips and thanks to Erik for the 64-bit rpms." The result of the above fix: Fonts are now beautiful and easy to read systemwide. They antialias well across the system and proportionally scale well in Firefox. These packages are freely redistributable as Fedora installs them by default (albeit the unpatched versions). Clearly, it is not a problem with the fonts individually. Rather the bug concerns the font rendering packages cairo, freetype, and libXft. Steps to Reproduce: Simply compare the font-rendering quality of a default Fedora 10 install to an install that was patched with these packages. Simply a matter of before and after. To fully see changes, one should be sure to "Turn on and adjust antialiasing and subpixel smoothing." as mentioned in the steps above after restarting X. Other bugs that are completely fixed by the patched packages are: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=244384 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=473836 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=198082 A personal appeal: I appeal to the community to please make this a priority before the next release. I just don't want people to be turned off Fedora because of it's poor default font rendering. As one can see from the bug reports above, this problem has lingered for years now. It is in fact a legitimate bug and it deserves attention. Fedora is a great distro and this is really the main thing keeping it from realizing it's true potential from a user perspective. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug. _______________________________________________ Fedora-fonts-bugs-list mailing list Fedora-fonts-bugs-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-fonts-bugs-list