Still better font smoothing

Edit: Unfortunately, the images originally included in this post are gone, because of hosting problems in late 2009. My apologies.

I took a few minutes to experiment with more font smoothing and this seems to work better on my LCD. I had most of these settings already in my .fonts.conf file, but I edited it slightly and now things look … smoother. 😛

< ?xml version="1.0"?>
< !DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>

 <match target="font" >
	<edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
	 <const>rgb</const>
	</edit>
 </match>

 <match target="font" >
	<edit mode="assign" name="hinting">
	 <bool>true</bool>
	</edit>
 </match>

 <match target="font" >
	<edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle">
	 <const>hintfull</const>
	</edit>
 </match>

 <match target="font" >
	<edit mode="assign" name="antialias">
	 <bool>true</bool>
	</edit>
 </match>

 <match target="pattern" >
	<edit mode="assign" name="autohint">
	 <bool>true</bool>
	</edit>
 </match>

 <dir>~/.fonts</dir>
</fontconfig>

Most of this was trimmed from the sample .fonts.conf file posted on the Arch Linux wiki. I don’t doubt for a second that it’ll work in Ubuntu too. 😉

Edit: I’m rather foolish, to post this like a note to myself, and not even think about a screenshot. 😐 Here’s before, on the left, and after, on the right.

The only difference was that I didn’t really have the rgba set for my LCD before, so the antialiasing is a little smeared. Or at least I think that’s why it looked so sorry.

P.S.: I should mention that my GTK2 fonts still didn’t look perfect after I set this configuration, but when I changed them to use a specific font, and not just the “Sans Serif” generic setting, they smoothed out nicely.

19 thoughts on “Still better font smoothing”

n2j3 2007/12/27 at 8:05 PM

A screenshot or two wouldn’t hurt 😉

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K.Mandla Post author2007/12/27 at 10:58 PM

Ah … oh darn. How obvious was that, and I never even thought about a screenshot. 😐 Okay. Before and after, coming up. …

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urukrama 2007/12/28 at 9:54 AM

I should try this too. Bhutto is killed with no smooth fonts, but only wounded with smooth fonts! :p

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K.Mandla Post author2007/12/28 at 9:56 AM

BWAAHAHAHAHA! 😆 Omigosh, that’s the funniest comment EVER.

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cyberbuff 2007/12/31 at 9:25 PM

well said urukrama! 😀

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eric 2008/02/11 at 7:48 PM

Remove the typos in your .fonts.conf file !

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K.Mandla Post author2008/02/11 at 11:05 PM

Can you be more specific please?

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eric 2008/02/13 at 4:55 PM

Remove the space after < in the first two lines !

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eric 2008/02/13 at 5:50 PM

Also add the following :

medium

false

See : http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/XOrg_Font_Configuration#Autohint_works_great_but_not_for_my_bold_fonts._How_can_I_turn_it_off_only_for_bold_fonts.3F

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eric 2008/02/13 at 6:04 PM

Something went wrong ?

What I add is the following :

medium

false

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eric 2008/02/13 at 6:10 PM

Ok copy and paste does not work :

Try again :

medium

false

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eric 2008/02/13 at 6:11 PM

I give up ! Just follow the link.

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K.Mandla Post author2008/02/13 at 6:25 PM

Sorry, WordPress.com eats XML at times. It’s something that I have learned to suffer.

I’ll double-check the XML against the wiki when I get home. I had originally left out the bold-to-medium effect because I didn’t like how my fonts in particular looked. But if someone wants to add that term, it’s always an option.

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sector 2009/09/23 at 1:33 AM

Reupload pics of you dont mind.

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mulenmar 2009/09/23 at 2:13 AM

As nice as that would be, I seriously doubt that the original screenshots are still around after nearly two years. 😉

Here’s hoping omploader doesn’t go belly-up as well… 😦

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1. K.Mandla Post author2009/09/24 at 11:38 AM
  
  Unfortunately, that’s the problem. After two or three years it seems that almost any image host will erase the less popular stuff, so there’s little to be done. Sorry I can’t keep on top of the old posts too. 😐
  
  Reply ↓