[Devel] Re: [Freetype] Bad truetype rendering? still not satisfied!!

[Brian Stell]

Robert Schelander wrote:
> 
> After comparing the results with an old freetype1 I'm
> again not really satisfied.
> 
> [FreeType2] Rendering of seperate letters is now more or 
> less ok with activated bytecode interpreter, 

(I assumming that the FreeType2 glyphs here were rendered
with the interpreter as indicated by the statement above.)

Even with the bytecode interpreter the FreeType2 glyphs are 
far *blurrier* than the FreeType1 glyphs. Use 'xmag' and 
compare the pixels between the 2 'E' glyphs:

              ===========           
##########    ###########         
#             #=                   
#             ##                   
#             ##========-          
##########    ##========-         
#             #=                   
#             #=                   
#             #=                   
##########    ###########         
                                    
                                    
> but spacing between ':' and '.' characters makes still not a 
> good result. Look at the link and compare:
> http://members.aon.at/schleppealm/rendertext4.png

I vagely I remember hearing that FreeType2 is more mathmatically
correct. My guess is that being more mathmatically correct has 
some kind of relationship with the blurring and changed spacing
for the colon and period glyphs.

> Is there another option that either everyone except me
> knows or nobody cares?

I care a lot. FreeType is going to be used by the Mozilla
browser in the near future and as I am one of the lead Linux 
Mozilla font engineers I am concerned that I will get a lot 
of bugs about this.

Since Mozilla (ie: gecko) is intended to be embedded in 
commercial products I have to assume that there will be
many users that cannot "fudge" and turn on the patented
hinter.

Based on feedback I recieved on my experimental builds I
ended up turning off the non patented hinter I got
feedback about glyphs with dropouts:

     #####            .   .       
   ##     ##        ##     ##     
 ##         ##    ##         ##   
#                #                
#                #                
#                #                
#                #                
 ##         ##    ##         ##   
   ##     ##        ##     ##     
     #####            #####       


> Is freetype1 anyway better than freetype2 -  is freetype2 
> just another hack around some patents?

The same thing happens with Mozilla: developers build better
code and there is a period of time when the people prefer the
results of the old *tuned* (or hacked) code better than the 
new *untuned* code.

The FreeType developers are not getting paid for this so
I am always so *very* thankful for their work.

-- 
Brian Stell