[Freetype] Light text on dark background

[spiffgq]

Hi, 

I’m writing a program that uses Freetype2 for font loading.  The problem is 
thin fonts (for example, arial.ttf and cour.ttf at 12 point) do not look 
good when rendered as light colored text on a dark background. 

FT_Render_Glyph (face->glyph, FT_RENDER_MODE_NORMAL); 

The characters look smudged or half-erased.  Does any one have any good 
ideas on how to prevent this? 

For example, the following image is Arial, 12 pt rendered using my program 
in Windows 98:
http://engr.oregonstate.edu/~royer/images/image_one.png 

The following image is Courier, 12 pt rendered using my program in Windows 
98:
http://engr.oregonstate.edu/~royer/images/image_two.png 

The version of Freetype I am using is 2.1.3 

I know the alignment of the letters is off; I'm just worried about the 
glyph's quality right now.  After this I'll fix the kerning and such.  
Thanks for your help. 

Daniel Royer