A supposedly patent-free suggestion/solution to the curious subpixel rendering in Fedora

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 03/27/2009 02:25 PM, Jud Craft wrote:
> 2009/3/27 Callum Lerwick<seg at haxxed.com>:
>> Note that a FreeType developer is not so convinced that SubLCD is
>> completely in the clear:
>>
>> http://david.freetype.org/cleartype-patents.htm
>
> That is very interesting.  I would be curious to hear his opinion on
> Qt's method.  Patents are so very...complicated.

The subject of this thread is FALSE.  I wonder whether the person starting the 
thread even read the page he quoted.  All the Qt page is saying is that they 
now implement all the different subpixel filters that FreeType supports (in a 
patent-infringing build).  There is NO new algorithm involved.  Go read it for 
yourself:

   http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2008/09/01/subpixel-antialiasing-on-x11/

To quote: "Note that the filtering we use in Qt 4.4 and earlier is pretty much 
the same as Freetype’s default filtering, but unlike before we now also 
support the other filtering settings."

Any kind of subpixel filtering is covered by those patents.  Just stop it already.

behdad
Your pissed off text stack maintainer