Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts
> For the record, I did some evil downstream patchery and introduced > FT2_SUBPIXEL_HINTING a few versions ago, recently extended for > 2.6.4: > > https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/0003-Make-subpixel-hinting-mode-configurable.patch?h=packages/freetype2 With my just added code, you can now say e.g. FREETYPE_PROPERTIES=truetype:interpreter-version=38 Werner ___ Freetype-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts
>>> FREETYPE_PROPERTIES=truetype:interpreter-version=35 \ >>> cff:no-stem-darkening=1 \ >>> autofitter:warping=1 >> >> In my opinion this would be great solution > > OK, will try that soon. This is now implemented in the git repository, please test! Werner ___ Freetype-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts
On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 9:38 PM Werner LEMBERG wrote: > > Shouldn't thus envvar in question be named 'FT2_PROPERTIES'? > > Maybe, but `FREETYPE' is more meaningful than `FT2' for the common > man, I guess :-) > For the record, I did some evil downstream patchery and introduced FT2_SUBPIXEL_HINTING a few versions ago, recently extended for 2.6.4: https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/0003-Make-subpixel-hinting-mode-configurable.patch?h=packages/freetype2 ___ Freetype-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts
>>I don't know of any other way than recompiling. Fontconfig doesn't >>support the property and likely won't as it isn't a font-property >>but something that affects all TrueType fonts. Cairo/Qt would need >>to go along with it, too. > > Strange thing about this is, that gtk2 program and qt5 program > windows don't explode, [...] They probably use a statically linked FreeType library. > I do also understand fontconfig is separate mechanism, and you are > telling me there is no way of this getting solved in "their domain", > so to speak? Correct. Fontconfig's job is *not* to define or set up the rendering of a font but to provide information on fonts and what capabilities they have. >> FREETYPE_PROPERTIES=truetype:interpreter-version=35 \ >> cff:no-stem-darkening=1 \ >> autofitter:warping=1 > > In my opinion this would be great solution OK, will try that soon. > Shouldn't thus envvar in question be named 'FT2_PROPERTIES'? Maybe, but `FREETYPE' is more meaningful than `FT2' for the common man, I guess :-) Werner ___ Freetype-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts
On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 3:24 PM, Nikolaus Waxweiler wrote: >>> Are you going to enable subpixel rendering by default as well? >> >> >> You mean FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING? No. It's still >> patented stuff, AFAIK. > > > Until mid-2018 I think? The latest filing date was Oct 7 1999. Plus 20 years. ___ Freetype-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts
>>> Are you going to enable subpixel rendering by default as well? >> >> You mean FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING? No. It's still >> patented stuff, AFAIK. > > Until mid-2018 I think? Really? I have no idea :-) Werner ___ Freetype-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts
Are you going to enable subpixel rendering by default as well? You mean FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING? No. It's still patented stuff, AFAIK. Until mid-2018 I think? ___ Freetype-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts
Well I don't use Wine anymore, and I wanted to make clear enough that this is "standalone X + toolkits + webfonts" setup. Maybe it affects other such "weird" combinations in different ways? All I wanted to say is that "windows fonts on unix" is not a rarity and perfectly okay :) Strange thing about this is, that gtk2 program and qt5 program windows don't explode, and such applications display fonts in window controls normally, but Gecko engines and some things (yes, I am too lazy check again) do have problems, indeed. Basically, fontconfig allows users to set options as they please but it is up to the application/toolkit that uses fontconfig (GTK/cairo, Qt, Skia, etc.) to interpret that configuration and instruct FreeType accordingly. The handling of each toolkit can differ depending on circumstances. Gecko (cairo) will honor per-font hinting settings, Blink (Skia) and GTK will not and take additional input from other sources. Yes, it's messy. Fontconfig only has properties for things that can be set per-font, the interpreter version is a TrueType-engine-wide setting. All users of fontconfig would need to implement handling for that on a per-font-basis and maybe it's better not to go there... Whitelist? Where? Keep in mind that FreeType is not the place for configuration and white/blacklists unless it's critical for rendering things correctly. I was reffering to this email from Werner I found: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.fonts.freetype.devel/10497 Ah, yes, I scrapped that idea because I wanted to see how far I could go without special-casing fonts except tricky and native ClearType ones. Very far it turns out. The current code does not have any white-/blacklisting. And, well it breaks rendering to almost unreadable levels indeed. So I would say it is kind of "critical". That's because your brain is used to something different. I find the "old" look horrible, you the new one. It's a matter of getting used to something. The new look has the objective advantage that different fonts render much more harmoniously even when the hinting is shoddy by discarding an entire axis that happens to be important for horizontal text like what you're reading right now. That's why I think it's the objectively better choice for a default. Lower resolution displays and CRTs are still not the thing of the past yet. One can hardly find higher quality fonts for situations like that, than those from Microsoft (unfortunately, open source fonts will probably never reach that state, now when everybody is jumping hires "retina" bandwagon). This might be crucial for some users, and I believe they should not be left in the dark, at least yet. Webfonts package contains only handful of fonts and most new fonts being hires LCD "optimized", whitelist could be an effective option. I think you're conflating several things here, FreeType's rendition of Microsoft's core web fonts with the new v40 code is *very* similar to how they are rendered by DirectWrite on Windows, HiDPI or not. Keep in mind that millions of Windows users are exposed to a very similar rendering every day on crappy low-resolution displays and can read it fine. Internet Explorer, Edge and Chrome all use DirectWrite to render fonts by default, only Firefox uses GDI for several fonts on an internal whitelist. Ubuntu employs a similar look and is the most visible Linux distribution. What you mean is, you want GDI-like rendering of fonts that were instructed for clean black-and-white display. Think Windows 95+ and XP. That's what the previously default v35 code did, but *only* when the font was hinted accordingly. Read: Microsoft's core web fonts and the DejaVu (+ antialiasing) and Ubuntu family. Font hinting is an extremely confusing and messy topic. ___ Freetype-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts
>> BTW, the next FreeType version will be 2.7.0 (actually, 2.6.4 >> should already have been called 2.7.0 due to the new TT hinting >> engine level). > > Are you going to enable subpixel rendering by default as well? You mean FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING? No. It's still patented stuff, AFAIK. Werner ___ Freetype-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts
> BTW, the next FreeType version will be 2.7.0 (actually, 2.6.4 should > already have been called 2.7.0 due to the new TT hinting engine level). > Are you going to enable subpixel rendering by default as well? ___ Freetype-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts
On Thu, 7 Jul 2016 07:28:37 +0200 Nikolaus Waxweiler wrote: > Hi! I've been expecting you :) Heh! > I think everyone with Wine installed has Microsoft's fonts :) Well I don't use Wine anymore, and I wanted to make clear enough that this is "standalone X + toolkits + webfonts" setup. Maybe it affects other such "weird" combinations in different ways? Sorry for the poor wording. And for not being clear enough. >I don't know of any other way than recompiling. Fontconfig doesn't >support the property and likely won't as it isn't a font-property but >something that affects all TrueType fonts. Cairo/Qt would need to go >along with it, too. Strange thing about this is, that gtk2 program and qt5 program windows don't explode, and such applications display fonts in window controls normally, but Gecko engines and some things (yes, I am too lazy check again) do have problems, indeed. How come in some of these programs fonts work as expected and somewhere else they break? Is this fontconfig related somehow, then? How? I do also understand fontconfig is separate mechanism, and you are telling me there is no way of this getting solved in "their domain", so to speak? >Whitelist? Where? Keep in mind that FreeType is not the place for >configuration and white/blacklists unless it's critical for rendering >things correctly. I was reffering to this email from Werner I found: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.fonts.freetype.devel/10497 And, well it breaks rendering to almost unreadable levels indeed. So I would say it is kind of "critical". Lower resolution displays and CRTs are still not the thing of the past yet. One can hardly find higher quality fonts for situations like that, than those from Microsoft (unfortunately, open source fonts will probably never reach that state, now when everybody is jumping hires "retina" bandwagon). This might be crucial for some users, and I believe they should not be left in the dark, at least yet. Webfonts package contains only handful of fonts and most new fonts being hires LCD "optimized", whitelist could be an effective option. On Thu, 07 Jul 2016 08:49:03 +0200 (CEST) Werner LEMBERG wrote: > Hmm. I can imagine to have (optional) environment variable support in > FreeType to provide default values for font driver properties, e.g. > > FREETYPE_PROPERTIES=truetype:interpreter-version=35 \ > cff:no-stem-darkening=1 \ > autofitter:warping=1 In my opinion this would be great solution (at least for users with "no desktop environment" and "custom wm/no DE" setups). Such users are usually messing with envvars anyway. It would be non invasive for most "normal" users whoever they are, and would allow one to revert to old behaviour dynamically. Though grepping for getenv() in freetype2 sources, it seems to me, only debug freetype builds use environment variables at all. More over, all these variables have 'FT2_' prefix. Shouldn't thus envvar in question be named 'FT2_PROPERTIES'? Thank you for consideration, and not dimissing this issue outright. --- Also, completely unrelated to this: http://freetype.sourceforge.net/ shows different page than: https://www.freetype.org/ News there [http://freetype.sourceforge.net/] are stale too. It would make sense to configure http://freetype.sourceforge.net/ to redirect to https://www.freetype.org/ and consolidate everything into single resource, as it makes information discovery quite confusing. --- eto ___ Freetype-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts
Well, that would do the job I think. Actually, I think the maintainers of the Infinality patch set/"fontconfig-ultimate" would love this, they maintain their own environment variable thing iirc :) Maybe they read this list. Might contact some later. ___ Freetype-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts
>> I don't care about ClearType in the slightest, I would just like my >> Tahoma and Arial to be pixel perfect crispy as I am used to. >> >> I would also like to push for this to be solved at upstream, as I >> am certainly not the only one who is having these problems. >> >> At least some fontconfig option, I can manually define for these >> few fonts I depend on, would be helpful. > > I don't know of any other way than recompiling. Fontconfig doesn't > support the property and likely won't as it isn't a font-property > but something that affects all TrueType fonts. Cairo/Qt would need > to go along with it, too. > > I don't know of a clean way to handle this in FreeType and I frankly > have little interest in bringing the "old" look back to the > foreground as I'm more of a DirectWrite/ClearType person :) Hmm. I can imagine to have (optional) environment variable support in FreeType to provide default values for font driver properties, e.g. FREETYPE_PROPERTIES=truetype:interpreter-version=35 \ cff:no-stem-darkening=1 \ autofitter:warping=1 What do you think? Due to a linking problem on OS X I have to release a new FreeType version quite soon, and I could add this rather easily by implementing a hook into `FT_Init_FreeType' that simply calls `FT_Property_Set'. BTW, the next FreeType version will be 2.7.0 (actually, 2.6.4 should already have been called 2.7.0 due to the new TT hinting engine level). Werner ___ Freetype-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
Re: [ft-devel] Something in 2.6.4 broke my windows fonts
Hi Nikolaus! Hi! I've been expecting you :) I am one of those weird "windows fonts on unix" users. Yeah minority I know, but recent update completely blew up my setup. So sorry for mailing you out of blue! I think everyone with Wine installed has Microsoft's fonts :) I don't care about ClearType in the slightest, I would just like my Tahoma and Arial to be pixel perfect crispy as I am used to. I would also like to push for this to be solved at upstream, as I am certainly not the only one who is having these problems. At least some fontconfig option, I can manually define for these few fonts I depend on, would be helpful. I don't know of any other way than recompiling. Fontconfig doesn't support the property and likely won't as it isn't a font-property but something that affects all TrueType fonts. Cairo/Qt would need to go along with it, too. I don't know of a clean way to handle this in FreeType and I frankly have little interest in bringing the "old" look back to the foreground as I'm more of a DirectWrite/ClearType person :) If you really want the pixel look back, your best chance might be http://bohoomil.com/. That's a patchset on top of FreeType and fontconfig that aims for configurability. It comes with a pixely Windows XP preset iirc. I tried to dig out info on mailing lists, but it is all really complex. However there was whitelisting proposed for these specific fonts. Can that be implemented and used to solve the problem? Whitelist? Where? Keep in mind that FreeType is not the place for configuration and white/blacklists unless it's critical for rendering things correctly. ___ Freetype-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
