On 18/11/2009, Adam Williamson <awilliam(a)redhat.com> wrote:
On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 10:26 -0600, Jason D. Clinton wrote:
> While I did mention the not-default sub-pixel, in fact, all the fonts
> look poorer in contrast to other distributions even when comparing
> sub-pixel to sub-pixel. And while font weighting can be quite
> subjective as you mention, the font hinting and kerning for the
> default desktop UI is just algorithmicly wrong. Look at "About this
> Computer" in the System menu. "b" has a giant loop while the adjacent
> "o" is 3/4's of b's width. There are, of course, examples all over
the
> place of these hinting issues. In some cases, vertical lines fail to
> weight to an integer position resulting one side or the other having
> additional aliasing. Some fonts appear to be affected by this
> shortcoming more than others.
I can't argue with that as I don't have a default-configuration
reference handy, but I'm using stock Fedora freetype - not freeworld -
and my fonts don't look like that:
http://www.happyassassin.net/extras/fonts.png
that's using subpixel smoothing, full hinting, 96dpi resolution (which
is actually 'wrong' for my screen, but oh well) and RGB subpixel
ordering (varies by monitor, of course).
But the default for F12 isn't that. It's grayscale smoothing, slight
hinting, 96 dpi, RGB order. In the past the default was medium
hinting.
The new default looks a lot like Mac OS X. Whether people "like" it is
a matter of the fonts in use and taste/visual acuity.
Rui