The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)
pandasauce.org
The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)
1–10 of 104 posts
Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)
#2One thing that used to be possible with Freetype was configuring how "heavy" hinting was: I remember the time when autohinted fonts looked the best with "light" hinting. They were smooth, non-bold and I couldn't see colour fringing either.
You could also set the RGBA vs whatever pixel layout in the same Gnome settings dialog. Easy-peasy adjustment for a VA panel.
After, it was available only in gconf/dconf or a tool like gnome-tweaks or similar.
MacOS is definitely terrible today, but I prefer Linux over Windows still.
Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)
#3the art of drawing pixels generally appears to elude free software. its always kind of sucked. if you're talking about compute shaders, its ok. but the moment it hits the screen, ouch!
Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)
#4Subpixel rendering works completely fine on Linux. I'm using it right now, using "full" hinting and "RGB" subpixel rendering. It even works completely fine with "non-integer" scaling in KDE, even in firefox when "widget.wayland.fractional-scale.enabled" is enabled.
Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)
#5To me one of the most influential pieces of writing about subpixel rendering and in particular an exploration of the ways Microsoft got it wrong was the writings by the late developer of Anti-Grain Geometry, Maxim Shemanarev (R.I.P.)
https://agg.sourceforge.net/antigrain.com/research/font_rast...
Though to be fair to this article, Microsoft did improve things with DirectWrite, and yes the situation on Linux is quite bad unfortunately.
Also bonus, a pretty great article here talking about gamma correctness in font rendering, an issue that is often somewhat overlooked even when it is acknowledged.
https://hikogui.org/2022/10/24/the-trouble-with-anti-aliasin...
Just some additional reading materials if you're interested in this sort of thing.
Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)
#6The article is from 2018 and that should be mentioned in the title
Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)
#7Windows has the worst font rendering of all modern operating systems. Wanting anything like Windows font rendering is insane. Windows 10 makes it near impossible to properly turn off subpixel hinting without also turning off all anti-aliasing, which on a QD-OLED screen makes for horrific color fringing. Windows 11 is better, but still pretty weak. Linux is roughly as good as Mac OS, both of which are miles better than Windows.
Mac OS dropped the subpixel garbage (it really is garbage if you're at all sensitive to fringing or use anything other than a standard LCD) in favor of high pixel density screens. Sharp, readable text and zero color fringing. This is the way.
Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)
#8Windows has the worst font rendering of all modern operating systems. Wanting anything like Windows font rendering is insane. Windows 10 makes it near impossible to properly turn off subpixel hinting without also turning off all anti-aliasing, which on a QD-OLED screen makes for horrific color fringing. Windows 11 is better, but still pretty weak. Linux is roughly as good as Mac OS, both of which are miles better tha…
With OLEDs with funky pixel layouts starting to become more popular, I hope Windows starts making their system less crap...
Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)
#9The article is from 2018 and that should be mentioned in the title
Yes definitely. I stopped reading after the OS X section because it was clearly talking about a different era.
Re: The sad state of font rendering on Linux (2018)
#10the art of drawing pixels generally appears to elude free software. its always kind of sucked. if you're talking about compute shaders, its ok. but the moment it hits the screen, ouch!
Rendering can become extremely nuanced and finicky. Sometimes it can be solved with better, harder to implement algorithms and sometimes it requires tradeoffs that lead to good design. All of this needs time and time is a resource that is scarce in open source.