I ve test various versions of the upcoming FC6 and all of them have the same problem with Greek characters. Fonts everywhere have different size, they appear blured and ugly. I think that this is true only for the default size used by fedora core (10). If someone increase the size of the font then the font start looking better... In fedora core 5, dejavu installed from the extras repo showed a good quality with Greek fonts. I think that maybe this is not dejavu problem, but from where it comes from?
Created attachment 7368 [details] shows the difference in quality this image shows difference between ubuntu 6.06 (dejavu fonts) and a fedora core test release (dejavu fonts). Watch the blue headers to see the problem. I can see such differences and in comparison between FC5 and FC6test but i have not an image available. Note: this problem appears in all FC6 test releases and in FC6 devel
Created attachment 7381 [details] same picture from Fedora Core 5 + dejavu from extras
The screenshot of Fedora is not showing the latest DejaVu version. The problem was there that not all glyphs were hinted in that specific release of DejaVu. The Greek letters in Sans Bold are now fully hinted, so just updating your DejaVu fonts will fix this problem.
thanks for the quick reply but i have used latest rawhide version of FC6 with dejavu 2.10 and the problem is still there... Also there are problems with non bold fonts (different sizes and glitches)
Created attachment 7387 [details] omicron and ypsilon side by side see the second menu third from the top entry the last two letters (compare their size) Omicron and ypsilon have different size: see epexergastis keimenou (last two letters). Also see alpha:it certainly looks inferior to a FC5+dejavu from extras compination
If you get the same result as the first Fedora screenshot, you are using the bytecode interpreter in FreeType (you use the hinting from the font), but not the latest DejaVu. Resolution: update DejaVu. If you get the same result as the second Fedora screenshot, you are using the autohinter in FreeType (you discard the hinting from the font, generally resulting in worse results, like the phi which doesn't have his vertical line centered). Resolution: enable the bytecode interpreter in FreeType and disable autohinting, and make sure to use the latest version of DejaVu. Fedora by default disables the bytecode interpreter because of patent issues.
ok ben i dont know much about font technology but i have one more question: A)i use fc5+dejavu-fonts 2.10 B)i use fc6devel+dejavu-fonts 2.10 in the first system everything is fine in the second system i report these problems. i suppose that bytecode interpreter is disabled on both systems... so where is the source of the problem?
maybe you forgot to restart the programs after updating the fonts? (in case of Firefox, it will only restart if all windows in Firefox are closed). The main menus will only use the new fonts if you restart your desktop.
i think that i restarted my pc completely but i ll check it again once more (not today, but i ll do it). I will inform you as soon as possible...
Ben, do the autohinter developers study these kind of screenshots to improve the autohinter in particular characters? For example, we see that ypsilon "υ" is particularly big. Some other improvements might include somewhat big omega "ω" and ni "ν" and the upper-right part of alpha "α" being too fuzzy. Unfortunately, Fedora is pretty strict about patents etc, so I don't think enabling the bytecode interpreter is a choice. Especially if we consider that this affects all languages, then unless someone ensures somehow that they won't get into trouble, then I see that as a WONTFIX.
There is a person from FreeType we could assign this bug to. I don't have time anymore now to do that, maybe you could look it up? He has been assigned in a few other autohinter bugs in this bugzilla. Indeed, Fedora would probably never switch to the bytecode interpreter. But all I can wish for is that the users switch to it as much as possible. We have no control at all about the behaviour of the autohinter, yet users will always think it's an error in the font. Also, I'm coming back on the claim that the first screenshot from Fedora is showing an old version of DejaVu. After looking into it a bit better, the wrong glyphs are too big for that. The autohinter is being used in that screenshot, so I'm afraid that it's also an autohinter bug...
i have some news. After further testing on this problem i realized that bigger and smaller font sizes (than the default 10) works good. Also tiny fonts used in graphical boot (rhgb) are also fine. What is the problem here?
Nikos, can you give us a screenshot showing this behaviour of size-10 fonts in various languages? You can grab some multilingual test from the DejaVu site I guess.
Created attachment 7519 [details] Shot of default FC6 desktop's browser splash page Ben, Firefox and the Fedora menus seem not OK in default FC6 (see attached shot). Boxes in shot: * #2 : The bold Sans font is very ugly> * #3 : While in #4 the Serif is OK, in #3 where the font size is decreased, it is ugly again. Any ideas?
Created attachment 7520 [details] Abiword behaviour Check out this Abiword shot. On the bottom of the screen there are two titlebars that show ugly fonts. I have no idea what's going wrong, we would really need some help...
Created attachment 7521 [details] Same as 7519, but with increased fonts -- yellow box on the right is OK now Oh, and another observation. In attachment #7519 [details], in box #3, some of the characters are not even Dejavu Sans (like "χ")! This screenshot shows that when the font size is increased from the Firefox menu, the text is not ugly any more and "χ" is displayed in DejaVu Sans. The ugly headings seem to use the same font though in both shots.
(In reply to comment #16) > Oh, and another observation. In attachment #7519 [details] [edit], in box #3, some of > the characters are not even Dejavu Sans (like "χ")! I presume you mean DejaVu Serif there. Anyway, the glyph looks like it's DV Serif to me, the autohinter just stretches some parts, while it doesn't stretch other parts, which makes the glyph look different. η has the same behaviour. Why it happens? I don't know, you should ask the Freetype people who are in charge of the autohinter. I think the autohinter sees the height of the curved lines, which is a little higher than the straight lines, and interprets it as a significant difference at those sizes. That's the difference between manual hinting and autohinting: the autohinter has to guess all that with some clever algorithms, in manual hinting we tell how the glyph should look. With the effect that the autohinter guesses wrongly from time to time, and makes the glyphs look bad. Anyway, I don't remember any reports about this earlier. Maybe try out an earlier Freetype version, to see if it's only in the latest versions of Freetype. You should really report this to the Freetype project.
going to close this as NOTOURBUG as this is a Freetype autohinter bug.
Mass move of freetype bugs to the new freetype product
Reopen the NOTOURBUG reports now they're correctly affected
Looking at a recent DejaVuSans version, I can't see problems with Greek. In case you still have issues, please test the affected font with a FreeType demo program like ftview ftstring. Providing just screenshots is of no great help since it is hard to guess what exact parameters influence the rendering process.
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