fontsrv: imperfect font rendering at certain sizes

[9fans]

fontsrv: imperfect font rendering at certain sizes

[4ad]

Ok, I tested on X11 too. Results are very interesting.

A picture makes a thousand words, so:

The font size is very different between X11, acme in OS X, and TextEdit in OS X. 10p in X11 is sized approximately like 14p in acme in OS X.

Note however, that the letter aspect ratio is different. X11 letters are less tall. The X11 letters are rendered correctly though. The problem with 'g' is not present in X11.

Font size in acme on OS X and TextEdit on OS X is almost the same but not quite.

Btw, these are the same .ttf fonts on both OS X and X11/Linux.

[4ad]

Same test but with Lucida Grande Mono:

[paulzhol]

the X11 code has the DPI hardcoded for 96, also hinting was disabled
recently.
I was toying with the prospect of rewriting it using pango, as freetype2
wasn't really fun last time..

On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 7:29 PM, Aram Hăvărneanu [email protected]
wrote:

Same test but with Lucida Grande Mono:

[image: LGM]
https://camo.githubusercontent.com/814ae15a9548d0dcfaec4011ef2cb0c1b8531388/687474703a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f4c4539614f69452e706e67

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#18 (comment).

[4ad]

Using pango instead of freetype would be unfortunate, but I believe you when you say freetype is hard to work with.

crimson:aram$ apt-rdepends --build-depends --follow=DEPENDS libpango-1.0-0
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
libpango-1.0-0
  Build-Depends: autotools-dev
  Build-Depends: cdbs (>= 0.4.93)
  Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 8.1.3)
  Build-Depends: dh-autoreconf
  Build-Depends: gnome-pkg-tools (>= 0.11)
  Build-Depends: gobject-introspection (>= 0.9.12-4~)
  Build-Depends: gtk-doc-tools (>= 1.15)
  Build-Depends: libcairo2-dev (>= 1.12.10)
  Build-Depends: libfontconfig1-dev (>= 2.10.91)
  Build-Depends: libfreetype6-dev (>= 2.1.7)
  Build-Depends: libgirepository1.0-dev (>= 0.9.5)
  Build-Depends: libglib2.0-dev (>= 2.34.0)
  Build-Depends: libharfbuzz-dev (>= 0.9.9)
  Build-Depends: libthai-dev (>= 0.1.9)
  Build-Depends: libx11-dev (>= 2:1.3.3-2)
  Build-Depends: libxft-dev (>= 2.1.14-2)
  Build-Depends: libxrender-dev (>= 1:0.9.0.2-2)
  Build-Depends: libxt-dev
  Build-Depends: perl
  Build-Depends: pkg-config
  Build-Depends-Indep: libglib2.0-doc
crimson:aram$ apt-rdepends --build-depends --follow=DEPENDS freetype
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
freetype
  Build-Depends: autoconf
  Build-Depends: automake
  Build-Depends: bzip2
  Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 8.9.4)
  Build-Depends: docbook-to-man
  Build-Depends: gettext (>= 0.10.36-2)
  Build-Depends: libpng-dev
  Build-Depends: libtool
  Build-Depends: libx11-dev
  Build-Depends: libz-dev
  Build-Depends: quilt
  Build-Depends: x11proto-core-dev
crimson:aram$ 

Hardcoding DPI in X11 explains the different font size, so one mystery is solved. The others remain, however.

[paulzhol]

I don't remember that well, but I think X11 doesn't cut letters due to
https://github.com/9fans/plan9port/blob/master/src/cmd/fontsrv/x11.c#L83
and
https://github.com/9fans/plan9port/blob/master/src/cmd/fontsrv/x11.c#L132-L134
which I shamelesly took from the then OSX version.