Fonts do not look so nice as before F6

[Deron Meranda]

On 10/27/06, Jeff Gustafson <ncjeffgus at zimage.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-10-27 at 10:51 -0400, Deron Meranda wrote:
> > On 10/26/06, Joe Klemmer <klemmerj at webtrek.com> wrote:
> > >         I thought that I saw somewhere that FC6 changed to DejaVu fonts or
> > > something like that.  That's probably what you are seeing.
> >
> > Regarding the unpleasant kerning issues, it does seem to be a
> > problem specifically with the DejaVu family of typefaces;
> > although the Sans face is actually the worst offender.  In fact there
> > is an obvious difference between DejaVu and Bitstream Vera
> > in many of the kerning pairs (since DejaVu is a derivitave of
> > Vera this is surprising).  The DejaVu kerning is really messed up,
> > it doesn't look professional at all.  Isn't anybody else seeing this?
>
>         The font looked terrible initially.  The 0's (zeroes) had an
> off-centered dot in the middle.  The bold fonts in evolution's email
> list looked too bold.  I recompiled freetype with the byte-code
> interpreter and now everything looks wonderful (except for N's and W's
> on linuxtoday.com).  The zeroes have a perfectly centered dot in them
> now.

Interesting.

BTW I tried reducing the font hinting level to "slight" and all the
kerning issues went away.  But if it's set up for medium or full then
the kerning is embarrassing  Of course the letter shapes aren't
perfect, but they're passable.  Everything still just looks too bold
though; or rather the bold faces look like extra-bold faces.

Jeff, exactly how did you recompile freetype?

My understanding is that the byte code interpreter is poisoned by
being patent-encumbered by Apple Computer, and so has to be
disabled in FC6 by default.  But I never had problems with the free
alternative auto-hinting not working beautifully in FC5.  Has this
situation changed?

-- 
Deron Meranda