Re: non-antialiased font configuration

Hi Ed, Werner


Ed, I have added monochrome support to cooledit.
See the 'devel' branch: https://github.com/paulsheer/cooledit/tree/devel

try:
   cooledit -fn LiberationMono-Regular.ttf:16M

See screenshot.

Note that cooledit has a builtin unicode terminal on Shift-F1, so if
it is a terminal you want, then this gets you there.


Werner, I tend to agree that downstream vendors ought to be
responsible for proper configuration options. The problem is that they
don't listen to users and don't support tail use cases. It is probably
prudent to have an override on certain settings. Until then if I were
Ed, I would get the Ubuntu source package and change
FT_Load_Glyph/FT_Render_Glyph in the freetype source to only render
monochrome. Luckily freetype is a DLL, so it takes effect for every
dependent package.

BTW I have never used Kanything.

Kind regards

Paul


On 10/28/22, Ed Fardos <[email protected]> wrote:
> Great info thanks again Werner,  keeping this in the realm of
> freetype/ftview, what
> option might I pass to ftview to get the ftview rendering looking like the
> amber terminal
> in the attachment?   Again, I'm trying to avoid antialiasing, particularly
> in small
> console/monospaced consoles.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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> On 10/28/22 8:32 AM, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
>>> Thanks Werner,  the images were embedded/smime,
>> Nope, see
>>
>>    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/freetype/2022-10/msg00005.html
>>
>>> but they're attached to this email.
>> Now they are, thanks.
>>
>>> Fonts are antialiased in ftview, is there a way to have ftview
>>> render fonts without antialiasing?
>> Assuming a recent `ftview` version, call
>>
>> ```
>> ftview -m hintslight -e unic 17 LiberationMono-Regular.ttf
>> ```
>>
>> to see the text string 'hintslight' using your terminal font at
>> 17ppem.  Press 'H' to cycle through hinting modes, eventually
>> selecting 'v35' (which supports B/W hinting).  Then press 'A' to
>> activate monochrome rendering.  I get identical rendering to the upper
>> part of your image.
>>
>>> Please see the attached image and send me on my way if this isn't a
>>> freetype thing.
>> It's definitely not a FreeType thing.  BTW, the above xrdb output in
>> your image shows 'hintslight', which the used terminal font definitely
>> is not.  I suspect that somewhere your main FontConfig configuration
>> file gets overridden with an exception for 'Liberation Mono Regular'.
>> An alternative but less likely theory is that the terminal app ignores
>> FontConfig settings completely, doing the rendering (and
>> configuration) by itself.
>>
>>> I'm still looking at DPI,  Do non-antialised fonts prefer a DPI, is
>>> it the fractional scaling that causes the pixelation perhaps?
>> Whatever scaling value you use, the result is rounded to get an
>> integer 'pixels per em' (ppem) value.  You have to reduce the font
>> size if the system's DPI value is (automatically?) set to a larger
>> value.
>>
>>
>>      Werner
>
>