maximilionus/freetype-envision

FreeType font rendering library adjustments to improve visibility on the Linux platform

About

Carefully tuned adjustments for the font rendering software library FreeType, designed to improve visibility and refine appearance on the Linux platform.

You can find demo images to compare the changes here.

Basic Usage

Install

1. Download the latest release here and unpack it to any user available location.
2. Open the terminal in the unpacked directory.
3. Run the command below, root required:

   $ sudo ./freetype-envision.sh install

4. Reboot.

Remove

1. Run the command below, root required:

   $ sudo ./freetype-envision.sh remove

2. Reboot.

Modes

Currently, there are several configuration presets with different levels of safety. Normal preset is considered least likely to cause visual errors in the user's environment and is therefore used by default, while the Full one tries to maximize the readability of the rendering for all the font drivers and options, at the cost of severe distortions in the rendering of some elements.

• Configurations in profile.d

  • Stem-darkening (embolden) for drivers

    	Normal	Full
    autofitter	Yes	Yes
    type1	Yes	Yes
    t1cid	Yes	Yes
    cff	No	Yes

  • Stem-darkening enabled for the small font sizes

    Normal	Full
    No	Yes

• Configurations in fontconfig

  • Enforce grayscale antialiasing (disable sub-pixel)

    Normal	Full
    Yes	Yes

Normal mode

Used by default if no second argument provided.

# Install
$ sudo ./freetype-envision.sh install normal

# Remove
$ sudo ./freetype-envision.sh remove normal

Full mode

# Install
$ sudo ./freetype-envision.sh install full

# Remove
$ sudo ./freetype-envision.sh remove full

freetype-envision's Issues

CJK characters rendering issue with sans-serif fonts

About

As stated in the issue title, rendering of some CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) characters with sizes within the stem-darkening range will be partially corrupted with Sans-serif fonts. It is currently unknown what is causing this problem.

Suggestion

This issue can probably be solved by disabling the hinting for all CJK fonts with a special fontconfig entry, but this solution seems a bit hard-coded and would completely disable stem darkening for these fonts. There has to be a better way.

Screenshots

• Sans-serif issues:
  

  Replicate:

  pango-view -t 你好 --font 'sans'

• Serif:
  

  Replicate:

  pango-view -t 你好 --font 'serif'

hinting of the letter "p" freetype 2.10 vs. freetype 2.12

I also do not like Antialiasing since it was introduced in Windows Vista. Now I am in Linux and do still not like Antialiasing. But I do also not like the grey shadow rendering. In Debian 10 I have made the wohle system free of theses techniques and have used "Arial".

This is what I had in my Debian 10 based System (please click on it and look at it at zoom 100%):

Now I have changed to Debian 12. So now it has also changed the freetype version. It was version 2.10 in Debian 10 and now it is 2.12 in Debian 12. And now the hinting in Freetype 2.12 has deteriorated. Please pay attention to the small letter "p". This is how it looks now in Debian 12 (please click on it and look at it at zoom 100%):

This is an ugly "p".

And now enlarged:
Debian 10:

Debian 12:

But I also don't like it with shadows (it's blurry):

Is there a way, to change the hinting of this single pixel of the letter "p"?
Or is this project only concerned with the grey shadows?

Thank you.

Thanks!

Just wanted to say thank you! This works great and makes everything nice and crips!