Re: [ft] blurry texts

[Peter Grandi]

> Hello, Is there any Environment Variables to enhance font
> rendering on Linux?  Why Windows 7 font rendering is perfect?
> but font rendering for Linux is not? [ ... ]

As W Lemberg points out in another reply, FreeType just renders
outlines into "masks", and how these are stenciled into text
depends on the text-setting libraries used by applications, and
most do a rather coarse job. For example then characters appear
to have a rather different weight when antialiased, and on dark
and light background; most text setting libraries cannot set
text on fractional boundaries and much else.

Personally I find the fuzziness and "boldness" of antialiased
characters not very good under any system, and the fringing of
subpixel antaliased characters quite annoying, never mind with
different light/dark backgrounds and lack of color and gamma
correction as W Lemberg says. Some observations:

  http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/12-two.html?120225#120225
  http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/12-two.html?120206#120206

To get neat, high contrast shapes that allow my eyes to focus
quickly (less tiring) I usually like in order of decreasing
importance:

* Disable subpixel antialiasing.
* Disable antialiasing altogether.
* Well hinted fonts.
* Bitmap fonts, as in the original X11 BDF/PCF fonts.
* PS1 fonts with the full PS1 autohinter.
* "Full" autohinting on for unhinted TTF.

This is mostly still reliable:

  http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/anno06-2nd.html?060509#060509

I particularly like the original "web standard" Microsoft set of
fonts, the Ubuntu typefaces, the DejaVu typefaces, as well
hinted and good on a low resolution screen.

I also increase the apparent DPI by keeping the monitor a fair
bit away and increasing declared DPI (e.g. monitor 1m away and
declared DPI 130):

  http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/14-one.html?140228#140228

Ultimately switching to a HiDPI/"Retina" monitor, e.g. a 4K one,
might help a lot. Long page on font handling under GNU/Linux:

  http://www.sabi.co.uk/Notes/linuxFonts.html