Re: Font rendering slightly degraded in recent rawhide

[Matěj Cepl <mcepl redhat com>]

Dne 29.10.2009 15:34, Nicolas Mailhot napsal(a):
> It is well known that some old fonts like Microsoft core fonts have bad/buggy
> hinting (MS hides the problem by adding font-specific workarounds in its text
> stack). They should certainly never be used to evaluate if a general default
> is good or not.
>
> (that is also something to consider before activating the patented bytecode
> engine: in-fonts hints are not necessarily better than what freetype
> auto-computes in many cases)

I don't think we should back progress in order to be friendly to buggy 
closed Microsoft fonts. I know they are quite common outside of the 
Linux world, but I think

a) our free fonts are now so good, that we could limit ourselves to this 
FSF-nirvana ghetto, it doesn't cost that much,
b) many modern fonts (e.g., my preferred Inconsolata) just rely on real 
hinting being present, and it doesn't work that well with auto-hinter. 
Just because of this font, I have switched to freefont-freeworld and I 
cannot be more happy with it.

Really looking forward to Behdad freeing us from the old freefont stuff.

Matěj

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