Re: Fonts working "out of the box"

[Robert van der Meulen <rvdm@cistron.nl>]

Hi,

Quoting Claes Andersson (claes2001@hotmail.com):
> >Antialiasing is a hack, to 'fix' bad fonts. The fontsizes you want to use
> >antialiasing on, depend on the size of your monitor, the resolution you're
> >using - lots of variables. This is not a trivial task.
> Calling antialiasing a hack is wrong I think. But it should not be applied 
> to all fonts in all sizes. Part of setting up good fonts on a system is 
> configuring antialiasing to only apply to fonts larger than a certain size 
> etc. This is also something that debian do not do.
Ehm, no :)
Antialiasing is a mental hack, to make your eyes think that your fonts are
nice and round and sharp. Antialiasing blurs them up to make you think that.
If you use _good_ fonts in the first place, you won't need it, and your
fonts will actually look more crisp and sharp.
This is also the reason antialiasing is useless with small fontsizes.

> >If you're dissatisfied with the way fonts work, i guess your best bet would
> >be locating the packages you'd like to see fixed, make patches for config
> >files, and submit them as wishlist bugs.
> Sure. I have problems with blocky fonts in kdm, and I thought that an 
> updated XftConfig could perhaps solve it in my case. But I can not send the 
> kdm maintainer my XftConfig because it belongs in X and also changes the 
> behavior for all applications that depend on antialiasing, so it might as 
> well break something else. So I thought that fixing fonts must start with 
> first defining what the problems are, and where they best are fixed, on a 
> global basis.
I'm not sure what to do about all this - I think antialiasing is not the way
to go to get your fonts look pretty in a default X; picking the right fonts,
and the right fontsettings is way more important, IMHO.
But then again, i'm no font expert _and_ no X expert, so maybe you shouldn't
believe a word I say :)

Greets,
	Robert
-- 
			      Linux Generation
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	    Insanity is hereditary.  You get it from your kids.