Ubuntu Hardy's LCD sub-pixel font rendering in Fedora 9

[brebs]

Hi, following on in spirit from cleartype-like fonts, here is a collection of RPMs to port Ubuntu Hardy's excellent LCD sub-pixel font rendering to Fedora 9

Here are SRPMs and 32 & 64-bit binaries - all 5 of pixman, freetype, fontconfig, libXft & cairo are needed.

x86_64 users will also want the i386 packages if they use 32-bit libraries such as Wine.

If you wish to compile from source: Use rpmbuild to prepare. Install rpmdevtools:

yum install rpmdevtools

rpmdev-setuptree (as non-root user)

The commands I used, in strict order, were (using su/sudo for the rpm installations):

cd ~/rpmbuild/SPECS

rpmbuild -ba pixman.spec
rpm -Uvh --force ../RPMS/i386/pixman-0.11.8.20080826-1.fc9.i386.rpm ../RPMS/i386/pixman-devel-0.11.8.20080826-1.fc9.i386.rpm

rpmbuild -ba freetype.spec
rpm -Uvh --force ../RPMS/i386/freetype-2.3.7-2.fc9.i386.rpm ../RPMS/i386/freetype-demos-2.3.7-2.fc9.i386.rpm ../RPMS/i386/freetype-devel-2.3.7-2.fc9.i386.rpm

QA_RPATHS=$[ 0x0001|0x0010 ] rpmbuild -ba fontconfig.spec
rpm -Uvh --force ../RPMS/i386/fontconfig-2.6.0-1.fc9.i386.rpm ../RPMS/i386/fontconfig-devel-2.6.0-1.fc9.i386.rpm

rpmbuild -ba libXft.spec
rpm -Uvh --force ../RPMS/i386/libXft-2.1.12-6.fc9.i386.rpm ../RPMS/i386/libXft-devel-2.1.12-6.fc9.i386.rpm

rpmbuild -ba cairo.spec
rpm -Uvh --force ../RPMS/i386/cairo-1.7.4.20080826.fc9.i386.rpm ../RPMS/i386/cairo-devel-1.7.4.20080826.fc9.i386.rpm

Reboot after installing these, and be prepared to recompile the Nvidia/ATI display driver if xorg does not start.

Note that there are a lot of configuration options possible, in ~/.fonts.conf and ~/.Xresources, including:

lcdnone, lcddefault, lcdlight, lcdlegacy - these no longer contain the word "filter" in the middle
hintnone, hintslight, hintmedium, hintfull

Some common complaints are "blurry fonts" and bold appearing too bold - the fixes are explained in that thread I won't re-iterate them here, because everyone's got a different viewpoint on beautiful vs ugly fonts, so just find your own pleasing setup.

[djselbeck]

thank you, This is an important feature.

[Danapani]

in ~/rpmbuild/SPEC there are no *.spec files. Where do these come from?

[Danapani]

~/rpmbuild/SPECS that is.

[brebs]

Danapani, as your non-root rpm-building user, run e.g.:

rpm -i fontconfig-2.5.0-2.fc9.src.rpm

Note that it is a src.rpm file - this will populate ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/ and put the .spec file in ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/

[Danapani]

Thanks, Brebs!

[brebs]

Freetype in Fedora 9 has been updated to 2.3.5-6 for a private security bug which will be this "moderately critical" advisory:

%changelog
* Tue Jun 17 2008 Behdad Esfahbod <...@redhat.com> 2.3.5-6
- Add freetype-2.3.5-CVEs.patch
- Resolves: #451213

So, updated freetype 2.3.5-6 RPMs and SRPMs for i386 & x86_64 with the Ubuntu font-rendering patches and the above CVE patch are available here

[mohbana]

Originally Posted by brebs

Freetype in Fedora 9 has been updated to 2.3.5-6 for a private security bug which will be this "moderately critical" advisory:

%changelog
* Tue Jun 17 2008 Behdad Esfahbod <besfahbo@redhat.com> 2.3.5-6
- Add freetype-2.3.5-CVEs.patch
- Resolves: #451213

So, updated freetype 2.3.5-6 RPMs and SRPMs for i386 & x86_64 with the Ubuntu font-rendering patches and the above CVE patch are available here

hi brebs,

after reading your post it seems that the new freetype only addresses a single issue, am i correct? so it doesn't include any of the features listed on the changelog (http://sourceforge.net/project/shown...ease_id=605780)?

can you take print screens of how the patched rpms leigh posted - http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/sho...1&postcount=25 - differ from the ubuntu ones - http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/sho...7&postcount=27. i'm not sure how the two set of packages he posted differ from each other, i.e., what's so good about the ubuntu version, they're all patched aren't they?

[brebs]

*Look* at the version numbers:

2.3.6
2.3.5-6

Not the same.

Screenshots are not that useful, and can be downright misleading. There's too many variables - dots per inch (e.g. 96x96), screen resolution, quality & characteristics of monitor, personal preference, what the geezer's eyesight is like, etc.

[brebs]

For the fun of it, I've updated the packages to Ubuntu's Intrepid, for freetype, fontconfig, libXft and cairo. SRPMs and RPMs are available here.

With these new versions, remove "filter" from the Xft.lcdfilter variable name choices in ~/.Xresources, e.g.:

! Choices:  lcdnone, lcddefault, lcdlight, lcdlegacy
Xft.lcdfilter:  lcddefault

Then make the change take effect for newly-opened apps:

xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

It is necessary to reboot, to see the effect on the whole screen.

[Olcay]

I feel lazy nowadays, thanks for the i386 packages.

[brebs]

I've updated to cairo-1.7.4 (here is a better announcement), which needs a later version of pixman than in standard Fedora 9. So, cairo, pixman, and all the other RPMs are available in the usual place.

[dhlacik]

Originally Posted by brebs

I've updated to cairo-1.7.4 (here is a better announcement), which needs a later version of pixman than in standard Fedora 9. So, cairo, pixman, and all the other RPMs are available in the usual place.

Hi Brebs, thank you very much for update, but unfortunatelly after installing it , (updated cairo package + pixman) , my fonts looks ugly just as without your patches. older cairo ,which i am using, works fine. Are you sure, everything is correct there?

Thanks in advance!

[brebs]

Originally Posted by dhlacik

fonts looks ugly just as without your patches

That's normally a sign that you haven't updated *all* the packages. Check:

$ rpm -q freetype
freetype-2.3.7-1.fc9.x86_64
freetype-2.3.7-1.fc9.i386

$ rpm -q fontconfig
fontconfig-2.6.0-1.fc9.x86_64
fontconfig-2.6.0-1.fc9.i386

$ rpm -q libXft
libXft-2.1.12-6.fc9.x86_64
libXft-2.1.12-6.fc9.i386

$ rpm -q pixman
pixman-0.11.8-1.fc9.x86_64
pixman-0.11.8-1.fc9.i386

$ rpm -q cairo
cairo-1.7.4-1.fc9.x86_64
cairo-1.7.4-1.fc9.i386

Yes, that's five packages.

[dhlacik]

Well, yes i did
[boss@david ~]$ rpm -q freetype
freetype-2.3.7-1.fc9.i386
[boss@david ~]$ rpm -q fontconfig
fontconfig-2.6.0-1.fc9.i386
[boss@david ~]$ rpm -q libXft
libXft-2.1.12-6.fc9.i386
[boss@david ~]$ rpm -q pixman
pixman-0.11.8-1.fc9.i386
[boss@david ~]$ rpm -q cairo
cairo-1.7.4-1.fc9.i386

And this is how it looks now :

http://www.hlacik.eu/cairo_new.png