Re: How do I get decent fonts on Linux

On Wed, 23 Nov 2005 06:42:04 +0000, Ian Rawlings wrote:

> On 2005-11-22, Alex Butcher <alex.butcher.news1005@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Ah, OK; rather more sub-pixel kerning than sub-pixel AA, then.
>
> Err, no, it was sub-pixel anti-aliasing, almost all kerning and character
> placement will be sub-pixel on any computer depending on your zoom level.
>
>> I'll keep an open mind, but that actually sounds to me like it'd be
>> pretty ugly, as vertical strokes will change thickness depending on
>> their horizontal position. Have you got any example screen shots?
>
> No I don't have any screenshots,

Is this a representative example:
<http://members.lycos.nl/daang/riscos2.png>?

If so, that looks just like what Freetype2/xft will do if you switch to
grayscale mode:

<http://www.assursys.co.uk/people/alex/ff-aa-gray.png>

(look particularly at the 'w' glyphs)

Any differences will be down to the fonts that are used, and the Archie's
limited display resolution, rather than the technique.

> and it wasn't ugly unless you were in non-square pixel modes and were
> using vertical as well as horizontal sub-pixel AA as the greyed
> pixels were too visible due to the double-height pixels.

Ugliness is subjective, as I found when I tried to convince people that
anti-aliased fonts (using /any/ technique) looked better than
non-anti-aliased fonts! Some people really do prefer the jaggies of the
latter (or rather, they prefer the "sharpness") :-/

Best Regards,
Alex.
--
Alex Butcher Brainbench MVP for Internet Security: www.brainbench.com
Bristol, UK Need reliable and secure network systems?
PGP/GnuPG ID:0x271fd950 <http://www.assursys.com/>

.

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