[haiku-development] Re: freetype update from 2.6.5 to 2.7
- From: Stephan Aßmus <superstippi@xxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2016 11:54:04 +0200
Hi,
Am 12.09.2016 um 03:07 schrieb waddlesplash:
On Sun, Sep 11, 2016 at 7:28 PM, Jessica Hamilton
<jessica.l.hamilton@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
-1. I have to agree with Axel here. All except the Terminal text and
the small labels in Tracker look worse. Seems overly heavy, and our
current setup is already pretty heavy for other fonts.
If we switch, then perhaps we'd have to replace DejaVu, as it simply
looks terrible with the new renderer.
Isn't there some other version of DejaVu that looks better with
FreeType's ClearType engine? I seem to recall that it looked pretty
good on Ubuntu, are they on some other version of DejaVu that we
aren't using?
The hinting mode may be for sub-pixel rendering, but it's not actually
turned on. The glyph rendering in these image is grayscale.
It would seem that the hinting works vertically only. This is what Maxim
of AGG fame proposed in his much quoted font rendering article.
The problem with the old rendering is that it looks good only for
certain fonts and then only at certain sizes. Had the comparison
included other fonts than Deja Vu, this may become much more apparent.
With these sample images, the old renderer looks vastly superior when
crispness is the focus. But test it with a bunch of other fonts and the
old render will start to suck. In that sense, the new renderer may be
"more consistent" in other ways: More consistent trade-offs across a
much wider range of font faces. It also looks more consistent with
regards to different font sizes for the same font, in that the
differences in string width are consistent with the font scale, i.e. a
string at 150% is about 150% wider. Same for the impression of weight.
Our old renderer produces skinny glyphs at various font sizes until it
snaps to the next multiple pixel stem width.
I would propose to use the new hinting with actual sub-pixel rendering
and also with horizontal sub-pixel positioning. This requires more
changes than replacing Freetype, including changes to the glyph caching
(multiple cache entries per glyph for different sub-pixel positions).
It's worth it and not all that hard, but I have no free time for this.
Just stating my opinion. :-}
Best regards,
-Stephan
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