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The new TrueType interpreter in FreeType 2.7.0

lists.nongnu.org

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Re: The new TrueType interpreter in FreeType 2.7.0

#31

Post by mikekchar »

adambrod wrote: post #16
mikekchar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with that assessment (although I think OS X font render has problems as well). I'm a bit worried because now Infinality is removed from the code base by default, so I suspect I'm going to have to stick to customer builds to get the font rendering that I prefer. I suffer from ocular migraines and as hard as it is to believe (even for me), the way fonts are rendered makes a difference. I will literally go blind…

Have you tried a retina display? I find that the higher DPI panel reduces my eye strain.

Yeah. I have the most bizarre setup up. I have a 13.3" display (with about 165 DPI), so not retinal, but still relatively high resolution. Anything bigger than this seems to trigger my migraines. I'm really waiting for the day when I can get 30 fps on an e-ink display. Something about staring into the light seems to be a problem. But low contrast is also a huge problem. So I usually have my backlight set at around 10% (!!) and my colour themes are set so that you would think that I subscribe to the clown school of programming. Everything is done in a 16 colour console with a 25 point font. You have no idea how many hours I've spent comparing the contrast ratios of various 16 colour schemes. All I can say is that it's a good thing that I come from a time where 80x25 column terminals were state of the art ;-)

I'm considering moving to very large wall mounted TV and sitting far enough away so that the display angle of the screen is about the same as my 13.3" laptop. Unfortunately, I don't have the ability to wall mount a TV in my current apartment, so it may have to wait until I buy a house (I bet the e-ink display comes first ;-) )

Re: The new TrueType interpreter in FreeType 2.7.0

#32

Post by Quppa »

Meanwhile Microsoft has basically given up on sub-pixel smoothing: it's missing from Windows Store/Modern/Metro apps (including Edge) and IE10 and newer and is mostly absent from Office 2013 and newer when running on Windows 8 and above†. More's the pity - not all of us have high DPI screens yet.

† https://www.quppa.net/blog/2012/07/17/office-2013-further-ev...

Re: The new TrueType interpreter in FreeType 2.7.0

#33

Post by sctb »

supermatou wrote: post #2

Direct link to the announcement: http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/freetype-devel/2016-07/... (includes images with the old/new renderings)

Thanks, we updated the link from http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=FreeType-..., which points to this.

Re: The new TrueType interpreter in FreeType 2.7.0

#34

Post by honkhonkpants »

Esau wrote: post #23

FreeType is not "Linux" software but "UNIX" software. I don't understand why this keeps happening.

A randomly selected unix system has a 99.999% chance of being a Linux system. Nobody cares about the other variants except for their own developers and a few historians and hobbyists.

For that matter I have no idea why you think freetype is even unix software. It builds and runs on numerous non-unix platforms.

Re: The new TrueType interpreter in FreeType 2.7.0

#35

Post by cmrx64 »

wbl wrote: post #4
mrob wrote: post #3

"Switching to the new mode might take some getting used to though, so if you think your fonts are suddenly fat, fuzzy or weird, give your brain some time to adjust." This is true, and IMO it's the reason font rendering is much less important than people think. When I got a new pair of glasses I disabled font anti-aliasing to make the edges as sharp as possible. I did this so I could more quickly learn to focus my eye…

Little value for the screen when all you want is 80x40, but massively necessary for desktop publishing. Metaphont exists for a reason.

Is that a typo of metafont, or is there another system called metaphont? I did a few web searches and didn't come up with anything.

Re: The new TrueType interpreter in FreeType 2.7.0

#36

Post by wbl »

cmrx64 wrote: post #35
wbl wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Little value for the screen when all you want is 80x40, but massively necessary for desktop publishing. Metaphont exists for a reason.

Is that a typo of metafont, or is there another system called metaphont? I did a few web searches and didn't come up with anything.

Is a typo. no idea what my head was doing.

Re: The new TrueType interpreter in FreeType 2.7.0

#37

Post by thaumasiotes »

krig wrote: post #5
mrob wrote: post #3

"Switching to the new mode might take some getting used to though, so if you think your fonts are suddenly fat, fuzzy or weird, give your brain some time to adjust." This is true, and IMO it's the reason font rendering is much less important than people think. When I got a new pair of glasses I disabled font anti-aliasing to make the edges as sharp as possible. I did this so I could more quickly learn to focus my eye…

To be fair, the main reason for algorithmic fonts is so that non-latin characters scale up nicely. Storing chinese characters at a high bitmap resolution gets expensive fast, and you'd need several bitmaps for each character to keep them legible at smaller sizes.

Trying to have chinese characters legible at "smaller sizes" is a hopeless cause; they contain much more information than letters do and they consequently need more space. Check out the rendering of the very common character 疆, which HN would like to slot in at basically the same size as the rest of the text. As it shows on my computer, it's legible -- but not correct. (Most egregiously, the horizontal stroke at the bottom of 土 (bottom left quadrant) is missing.) I've seen denser characters show up as blocks of pure black.

Re: The new TrueType interpreter in FreeType 2.7.0

#38

Post by derefr »

honkhonkpants wrote: post #34
Esau wrote: post #23

FreeType is not "Linux" software but "UNIX" software. I don't understand why this keeps happening.

A randomly selected unix system has a 99.999% chance of being a Linux system. Nobody cares about the other variants except for their own developers and a few historians and hobbyists. For that matter I have no idea why you think freetype is even unix software. It builds and runs on numerous non-unix platforms.

A randomly-selected UNIX workstation has a pretty high chance of being an OSX system, I'd think. UNIX servers are 99.999% Linux, though, yes.

Re: The new TrueType interpreter in FreeType 2.7.0

#40

Post by farva »

derefr wrote: post #38
honkhonkpants wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A randomly selected unix system has a 99.999% chance of being a Linux system. Nobody cares about the other variants except for their own developers and a few historians and hobbyists. For that matter I have no idea why you think freetype is even unix software. It builds and runs on numerous non-unix platforms.

A randomly-selected UNIX workstation has a pretty high chance of being an OSX system, I'd think. UNIX servers are 99.999% Linux, though, yes.

Surely *BSD accounts for more than 0.0001% of UNIX-like servers.
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