Bug 96635

Summary:	Font rendering is unsharp with 2.11.95 and 2.12.0
Product:	fontconfig	Reporter:	Trygve Aaberge <trygveaa>
Component:	library	Assignee:	fontconfig-bugs
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:	Behdad Esfahbod <freedesktop>
Severity:	major
Priority:	medium	CC:	akira, andyrtr
Version:	2.11
Hardware:	x86-64 (AMD64)
OS:	Linux (All)
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:
Attachments:	Font rendering with version 2.11.94 Font rendering with version 2.11.95 and 2.12.0

Description Trygve Aaberge 2016-06-22 11:16:40 UTC

I'm having a problem with the way the font renders in the two newest releases of fontconfig, 2.11.95 and 2.12.0. After installing one of those versions, the font in my terminal looks sort of blurry and not as sharp as before. I will attach screenshots of how it looks in the different versions.

I'm running Arch Linux. There is a bug report for the package in Arch Linux
here https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/48967, where it was asked to report it
upstream.

I'm seeing this in both urxvt and xterm, using the DejaVuSansMono font
(configured with `URxvt.font: xft:DejaVuSansMono:size=8` and `XTerm*faceName:
DejaVuSansMono`).

Comment 1 Trygve Aaberge 2016-06-22 11:17:26 UTC

Created attachment 124664 [details]
Font rendering with version 2.11.94

Comment 2 Trygve Aaberge 2016-06-22 11:17:45 UTC

Created attachment 124665 [details]
Font rendering with version 2.11.95 and 2.12.0

Comment 3 Akira TAGOH 2016-06-23 02:36:14 UTC

I don't know which one was default on your desktop/distro though, settings hintslight by default was to keep consistency for non-desktop-aware applications to the desktop-aware applications which inherits the desktop configurations. I may think of some solutions/workarounds:

- if you prefer the old behavior no matter what it looks different to the desktop applications:

I won't do anything for that in fontconfig but you can do it in your own config like:

<match target="pattern">
  <test name="prgname"><string>your application name</string></test>
  <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign"><const>your_preferred_hintstyle</const></edit>
</match>

- if hintslight isn't default hinting on distro:

I'd suggest your package maintainer to change the default hinting in your distro. I've just committed the change to allow that in configure:

https://cgit.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/commit/?id=0ed1575917a28c6be56481509660bd783c7b6040

- if hintslight doesn't fit in to your desktop or your preference:

You can create a symlink or copy a file from one of 10-hinting-{full,medium,none,slight}.conf on $HOME/.config/fontconfig/conf.d.

I won't do more than that since this is subjective matter and the changes was to follow up to the desktop default configuration.

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