This Freetype release contains many important enhancements, including much improved automatic and Postscript hinters, resulting in higher quality of anti-aliased text. Announcement here, more information about this release here, and here is how you enable the bytecode for best quality (patented, not enabled by default – scroll down to read how to).
FreeType 2.1.3 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Just tried the SuSE rpms on my desktop, but dont really see huge improvements there. The reason could be that the display was pretty good to begin with. Cant wait to try it on the laptop: maybe it will show more of a difference with the LCD.
If you have an LCD you will have to install Fontconfig’s XFT2 to work better with Freetype, because it offers subpixel smoothing which is specifically for LCDs (like XP’s ClearType).
Check the two fontconfig’s tools in this shot:
http://osnews.com/img/1842/redhat1.jpg
(currently, Red Hat is the only main distro shipping these tools and libs by default)
While the bytecode trick works great for previous versions of FreeType, 2.1.3 is a whole lot different. Now, the reccomended course of action is to leave the bytecode interpreter disabled. The major reason for this relates to how hinting interacts with anti-aliasing. Hints are not usually written with the consideration to the increased preceived resolution provided by anti-aliasing, so the grid-snapping that the hints do tend to make anti-aliased fonts look deformed. MacOS X gets by this by ignoring hints, which just destroys legibility. FreeType’s improved auto-hinter takes more of a methodical approach, hinting very gently so that major features are pixel-aligned, while fine details remain unaligned in order to preserve their shape.
Of course, you’re milage will vary. FreeType 2.1.3 is different enough to warrent taking a hard look at your font setup. If you’ve been disabling hinting for small point sizes, it might be worth it to check out what it looks like with the new rendering. You should try the library with both the bytecode interpreter on and off to see which one looks better to you.
More info can be found in this FreeType mailing list message:
http://www.freetype.org/pipermail/devel/2002-September/003961.html
Also, you can check out
http://www.freetype.org/freetype2/smooth-hinting.html
(This one’s down at the moment, but you can find it in Google’s cache).
Oh, one more thing. This release is a development release, and breaks sub-pixel rendering in Xft. Of course, the rendering looks good enough without it, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
Check the two fontconfig’s tools in this shot:
The tools in that shot are RH’s own, not part of fontconfig. Those options are not included in the stock freetype, and so the stock XFT2 doesn’t support them. Red Hat modified freetype hinting, and then modified XFT2 to support configuration of their modifications.
Anyway, I am experimenting with the autohinter and taking a different approach than RH took with their modified freetype for 8.0. What they did was to turn off parts of the autohinter, for instance, disabling stem alignment and/or stem width quantization. While this results in a less distorted shape, it can cause a fair amount of blurriness. What I am doing is trying to improve the algorithms that are used for stem alignmnent and width quantization so that they pay more attention to the overall shape of the glyph, but still provide good contrast.
Here’s a screenshot: http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/hintprev.png
Well, I reinstalled my desktop with FreeBSD 5.0-DP2 and figured I’d rebuild my hacked freetype package, only to discover that FreeType 2.1.3 was out. Applied the Xft hack to the 2.1.3 source, installed that as a FreeBSD package, and proceeded to build X.
Excellent timing… it looks wonderful… it’s not OS X caliber yet, but it’s certainly much better looking and easier on the eyes than ClearType. From what I’m reading here though, it seems things may have possibly been fixed so the hack is no longer necessary? If someone cares to clarify this matter (with screenshots, hopefully) I’d love to hear.
I can post some screenshots tonight as well.
>> Red Hat modified freetype hinting, and then modified XFT2 to support configuration of their modifications.
Ah, could that be the reason why the Tahoma font looks really shitty on my RH8 system?
(it looks like they aren’t evenly spaced)
I think I like this Xft hack better by the way.. I like crisp fonts, not those fuzzy wuzzy thingies
I wonder how much better the Freetype hinter can get vs the patented hinter (which is how I am used to viewing things, it just looks “right” to me).
The “before” picture of the last link is how KDE has looked for me, no matter how much I messed around with it (besides recompiling to use the patented hinter).
Which hinter does the RH8 distro use by default?
Well, here’s my Freetype screenshot, as promised (although to whom, I don’t know)
http://fails.org/freetype.png
OSnews rendered in the FreeBSD native Opera, using Freetype 2.1.3 with the Xft hack.
Here are some Mandrake 9.0 rpms with the bytecode interperter on. They are the same version that comes with Redhat and:
“Finally, there is probably no need to upgrade to 2.1.3 if you’re using RedHat 8.0, since it basically contains the same improvements. See the following question for more details.”
http://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/linu…
distributions/mandrake/9.0/rpms/freetype2-2.1.2-3tex.i586.rpm
http://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/linu…
distributions/mandrake/9.0/rpms/freetype2-devel-2.1.2-3tex.i586.rpm
Also grab the Freecurve (bluecurve) rpm from here. No need to get Redhat 8.0 anymore… (-; And it looks much better than that cheap knockoff “lighthouseblue” that has been floating around.
http://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/linu…
mandrake/9.0/rpms/freecurve-artwork-0.47-1tex.i586.rpm
I had trouble compiling Gnome2 things until I upgraded lib pange also:
http://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/linu…
mandrake/9.0/rpms/libpango1.0_0-1.0.4-2tex.i586.rpm
http://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/linu…
mandrake/9.0/rpms/libpango1.0_0-devel-1.0.4-2tex.i586.rpm
Just curious. It seems the real challenge is to have good looking fonts on *all* apps. I can get nice fonts on old KDE 2.2 with Woody, but once I stray from the KDE path things get ugly quick.
I use FreeBSD too, what kind of Xft hack are you talking about? Where can i try it? If it helps looking good, i want it too.
MacOS X gets by this by ignoring hints, which just destroys legibility.
Please get your head examined, and quickly! MacOS X has one of the nicest antialiasing implementations out there. See:
http://fails.org/macosx.png (OmniWeb, OS X)
versus
http://fails.org/freetype.png (FreeType 2.1.3, Opera, FreeBSD)
I think the screen shots speak for themselves. I’ve talked to hardline antialiasing haters who shut up instantly upon seeing OS X, and all they can say is “That looks really good”
I use FreeBSD too, what kind of Xft hack are you talking about? Where can i try it? If it helps looking good, i want it too.
It’s a patch against Freetype, and works with 2.1.3. It can be found at http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/xfthack/
See http://elektron.its.tudelft.nl/~rbos36/moz-rh80.png (Mozilla-xft2 build on RedHat 8.0)
Grab this mozilla version at http://komodo.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/experimental/xft/
RedHat 8.0 only (for now), but I hope that all major linux distributions will have Xft2 soon.
Why I use RedHat 8.0
See http://elektron.its.tudelft.nl/~rbos36/moz-rh80.png (Mozilla-xft2 build on RedHat 8.0)
Looks a lot like my Opera screenshot
I do notice you have sub-pixel hinting enabled. I’m on an LCD here, and it just looks strange. Looks pretty good on a CRT though, although I’ve heard I’m supposed to think the opposite. Oh well…
Rayiner, you never did replied my email……..
Besides, who’s that person that says OS X’s AA is terrible? He really need professional help. OS X has the best AA fonts I have ever since, if you use their high end LCD screens that is.
I think it must be a matter of opinion. IMHO FreeType passed MacOS antialiasing quality ages ago, and that screenshot reinforces my opinion. The OS X antialiasing is too heavy for my opinion, it makes the fonts look too blurry, whereas the FT aa is much less distracting – it smooths jaggies without overdoing the effect.
I believe the OS X betas had much better AA but they had severe speed problems with it, so lowered the quality in order to get the UI feeling more acceptably fast. Well, that’s what I read anyway.
Sorry for talking out my ass (again), when Bascule bashed you, I wonder who he was bashing. I thought someone said Mac OS X’s fonts is ugly. Besides, on the reply to my mail, I think it was wiped out with the rest of my other mail by a pesky brother… Sorry again for talking out of my baby donkey.
Anyway, I don’t know why people say Postscript is better than TFT, but with XFt2 coupled with FreeType 2.1, I found the latter much more nicer (and clearer) on my (very) cheap monitor, and a *old* high end Sony Trinitron 15″… I used the fonts inside Acrobat 5.0..
I do agree on low end LCD screens (also used with iMacs) they do look blury, and the screenshot does justice for that, but with the LCD monitors made for those PowerMacs, it looks more clear than blury.
The bad thing about Mac OS X is that it uses AA for small fonts. Which is terrible, 8pt fonts on Mac OS X is close to unreadable. Frankly, they should off AA after a certain size of fonts.
I do notice you have sub-pixel hinting enabled. I’m on an LCD here, and it just looks strange. Looks pretty good on a CRT though, although I’ve heard I’m supposed to think the opposite. Oh well…
Yes, I have. But the pixel composition of your LCD does matter a lot (horizontal / vertical / RGB / BGR etc.) Take a magnifying glass and look close at your LCD 🙂
For me, sub-pixel antialiasing does make a huge difference. Normal antialiased fonts look blurry on LCD, but with sub-pixel antialising, they look great. So I would recommend the following:
For CRT displays: use antialiasing, but disable it for certain point sizes (say, between 8 and 12.) Furthermore, use the bytecode interpreter to enhance the look of the fonts for these un-antialiased point sizes.
For LCD displays: use antialiasing for all point sizes and use sub-pixel antialiasing.
Maybe I should put this recommendation on my site too.
Your aa text (excluding the aa text for the GPL document which seem a bit blurry) in your screenshot are aboslutely gorgeous. How do I get fonts to render like that!?
The bad thing about Mac OS X is that it uses AA for small fonts. Which is terrible, 8pt fonts on Mac OS X is close to unreadable. Frankly, they should off AA after a certain size of fonts.
And that’s *exactly* what it does. Go to the Control Panel > General
“Turn off text smoothing for font sizes (9) and smaller”
I’m fairly certain 9 is the default as well…
As for the quality of Apple LCDs, the LCDs on iBooks/TiBooks are some of the nicest I’ve ever seen.
>Why I use RedHat 8.0
>See http://elektron.its.tudelft.nl/~rbos36/moz-rh80.png
>(Mozilla-xft2 build on RedHat 8.0)
Sorry, but your Mozilla does not render correctly! Check the 00s on the “Ati Radeon 9700 Pro”, they are glued. Check the word “Windows” and you will see the characters colliding too. Check the word “release” and you will see the “lea” glued too. Check the words “Computer Systems” and see how the two “te” there are glued too. Many such examples on that screenshot!
The XFT hack from Chester really helps, but overall, Freetype/XFT1/2 can’t compete with neither the Windows or MacOSX font rendering. Freetype is getting better, but very slowly…
You’re absolutely right. At small point sizes, the fonts in this Mozilla look like crap.
But it looks much better than the default RedHat 8.0 mozilla, which does not have antialiasing at all!
To Bascule:
I’ve used OS X on a flat-panel iMac and can’t stand it. The fonts are
smooth enough, but the “color” (read Microsoft’s typeography site) is really uneven. And they are too blurry for extended reading (IMO). Maybe things look better on a higher quality LCD or a CRT?
To Rajan:
I did to reply to your email, on 11/14/02. That said, one of the primary reasons I prefer FT’s rendering over OS X’s is because FT goes easy enough on the AA to allow you to keep antialiasing on at all point sizes without making things look blurry. Makes the day to day reading of 12-point Courier and Times *much* more pleasent.
You’re absolutely right. At small point sizes, the fonts in this Mozilla look like crap.
But it looks much better than the default RedHat 8.0 mozilla, which does not have antialiasing at all!
Well, I’d definately recommend something like this (It’s what OS X does) in whatever your X freetype config file is (XftConfig with just the regular old Xft, dunno how to do it with fontconfig)
match any size < 11 edit antialias = false;
Antialiasing small fonts just looks bad.
Eugenia, what do you think of my freetype config? I still don’t think it looks quite as nice as OS X, but it’s certainly not bad looking.
>Eugenia, what do you think of my freetype config?
>http://fails.org/freetype.png
Not too bad at all quality-wise, only problem is that Opera (or Freetype) is rendering the fonts wrongly. It renders them 1-2 pt bigger than it should have.