I'm sorry if I don't ask this question correctly, because
it may sound as if I'm trying to make a claim about
FreeType's quality (which I'm not! if anything FreeType
proved to be essential to me, so I cherish it very much!)
but here it goes anyway.
I was trying to build a system for a really picky somebody
who has noticed that certain TrueType fonts are being
rendered in a subjectively more appealing way by the
ClearType enabled Windows XP compared to the X.org + FreeType.
Now, investigating this issue further confirmed that especially
with subpixel rendering enabled FreeType seems to generate
less pleasing rasterizations (mainly because of excessive "coloring")
what's even more interesting was the fact that when I disabled
antialiasing on both systems Windows XP still seems to get
more glyphs "right" compared to FreeType.
I'm attaching a .png file to illustrate my point. In this example
you can see how:
1. subpixel rendering with FreeType suffers from excessive
coloring which makes smaller fonts apear with a yellowish
tint (see smaller Xterm windows on the right)
2. with AA disabled FreeType doesn't quite retain the basic
properties of some of the glyhps (such as keeping 'Q' round,
etc.)
I can definitely submit more evidence if needed but at this
point all I'm after is finding out whethere this is a known
issues or not.
Thanks in advance for any potential leads...
Thanks,
Roman.
P.S. Here's how I invoked xterm on Linux:
$ xterm -fa
'monofonto-10:antialias=0:hinting=1:autohint=1:hintstyle=3:rgba=0'
$ xterm -fa
'monofonto-14:antialias=0:hinting=1:autohint=1:hintstyle=3:rgba=0'
$ xterm -fa
'monofonto-10:antialias=1:hinting=1:autohint=1:hintstyle=3:rgba=1'
$ xterm -fa
'monofonto-14:antialias=1:hinting=1:autohint=1:hintstyle=3:rgba=1'