[SOLVED] Color fringing in fonts

jorges · Last edited by jorges on Mon Apr 16, 2007 1:25 am; edited 1 time in total

Hi,
I don't know for how long this have been happening. I just started noticing yesterday after playing a bit with ~/.fonts.conf, freetype, libXft and cairo (these last two actually from xeffects overlay). I set freetype and cairo ~amd64 to check the latest subpixel hinting improvements. The font do look nice, but at the same time I started noticing a lot of color fringing with some fonts (I can't tell which type, family, etc. Is there an easy way to know this in different apps?). See this screenshot from firefox for an example of what I am talking about.
After noticing this I went back to non-masked packages, and the effect is still quite noticeable.
Anyone know if this is something we have to live with, or if there is something that can be done to improve it? I don't even know whose blame it is, freetype, its configuration, some specific fonts (I believe this is more related to some specific font sizes)?

EDIT: The problem seems to be solved now. I had installed mozilla-firefox-bin, which was probably not using the right libraries. Installing mozilla-firefox has improved the situation a lot in firefox. Some color fringes do appear in other apps. but not as severe as it did on firefox, so this may be a side effect of subpixel hinting.

jorges

StringCheesian · l33t Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 887

Color fringes usually mean that the kind of subpixel rendering you've enabled doesn't match your monitor.

If you've got a CRT you probably want subpixel rendering off because it will aways result in color fringes. If you've got an LCD, switching between vertical/horizontal should eliminate the fringes.

http://www.grc.com/ctwhat.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering

jorges · Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 9:30 pm Post subject:

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7310

Show your ~/.fonts.conf - here's mine, and fonts look fantastic with the xeffects overlay

jorges · Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 10:31 pm Post subject:

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7310

I suspect your compilation is not correct. See wiki. Note that newspr relates to 2 packages. Recompile all 3 packages, in the order that the wiki states, then restart X.

I'm using these versions:

jorges · Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 11:09 pm Post subject:

musicman · n00b Joined: 13 Jun 2004 Posts: 66

I seem to have this same problem, but only in 32-bit applications running on my amd64 machine. Everything I compiled myself from scratch looks fine. For example, I have both 32 and 64 bit Firefox installed. When run with "firefox," it runs the 64 bit version and looks great. When run with "firefox-bin," it runs the 32 bit version and has lots of fringing.