FC5 Test 3 font rendering

[Rudi Chiarito]

I noticed some strange rendering problems with fonts with FC5T3. Maybe
others can confirm what I am seeing. The problems are more evident with
font used by Anaconda, which should be Nimbus Sans.

First of all, kerning is wrong around characters (glyps) that are
underlined, e.g. menu or button keyboard shortcuts. At the end of the
installation, the "Reboot" button appears. The 't' is underlined so
that Alt+T will trigger the button. The spacing between the 't' and the
'o' preceding it is wrong; the two letters touch when they really
shouldn't. This is what I remember from memory, it might not be the 't'
that is actually underlined, but you get the point. You can easily see
the problem elsewhere.

Then, there seems to be medium hinting enabled, which makes text render
poorly. I've also seen this in a screenshot that Jeremy had on his blog
several months ago. It looks like there's poor grid fitting or something
close to that. Not only glyphs are uneven, the kerning is negatively
affected, too (check out 'width' in the 'Fixed width font' string). If
antialiasing is enabled, it appears to me that selecting 'None' for the
Hinting setting in the Font rendering details results in more legible
text. Unlike the other problem, though, this might be due to the fact
that I updated the box from FC4 and might have older settings left
around, so I'd welcome any confirmations that this is reproducible. Just
switch to Nimbus Sans L as the Application font and toggle back and forth
between 'None' and 'Medium' hinting in the advanced font preferences
window.

Is there a reason for defaulting to Medium given the fonts available
today?

-- 
Rudi