Screen font problems with latest freetype2 affect XEmacs fonts

[robert delius royar]

Sun, 1 Aug 2010 (18:13 +0900 UTC) Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> robert delius royar writes:
> > Stephen,
> >
> > Thank you for your help.  With it I was able to reach an aceptable
> > compromise (see interstitial comments below).
> >
> > Thu, 22 Jul 2010 (23:40 +0900 UTC) Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> >
> > > robert delius royar writes:
> > >
> > > > See the before/after screen shots at BEFORE:
> > > > and AFTER:
> > >
> > > That's pretty spectacularly ugly....
> >
> > While I have found ~/.fonts.conf to be the main problem, I still cannot
> > get Charis SIL to display any better than in the screen shots.
>
> Have you had any further experience/luck with this?

I now have the default XQuartz freetype (with the new defines).  I also 
added the directory ~/.fonts.conf.d/ and the 10-autohint and 
10-sub-pixel file to it.  Today, I changed my (set-face-font) commands 
to match the syntax you showed, below.  Charter now displays the italic, 
bold, and bold-italic fonts correctly.  There is a slight difference 
between the stock setup and the one with the autohinting on as you gave 
in your example.  I do not notice that one is better than the other. 
Both are readable and much better than the old screen shots. Plus, I now 
have my serif font back which is better for my eyes.

>
> I just installed the Xquartz 2.5.2 distribution on a MacBook Pro with
> Mac OS X 10.5.8, and I got definitely different display from my
> previous installation (2.5.0).  I had no custom configurations.  I put
> the file below in ~/.fonts.conf.d/10-autohint.conf, and as far as I
> can tell all of my fonts have returned to 2.5.0 form.
>
> <?xml version="1.0"?>
> <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
> <fontconfig>
> <!--  Use the Autohinter -->
> <!--  This file is copied from
>      /usr/X11/lib/X11/fontconfig/conf.avail/10-autohint.conf
>      (Xquartz Project distribution version 2.5.2) -->
>  <match target="font">
>    <edit name="autohint" mode="assign"><bool>true</bool></edit>
>  </match>
> </fontconfig>
>
> I'm not sure I don't like the bytecode interpreter results better in
> my environment :-) but since the PNGs you posted clearly show a
> problem, I thought I'd post my experience.
>
> > After trying the steps you outlined below, I am now able to get
> > clean fonts drawing with Bitstream Vera and Bitstream Charter.  I
> > like the latter, but I do not have italic or bold versions of
> > Charter, or if I do, they will not display in XEmacs.
>
> These set-face-font invocations work for me.  I would not bet on
> Customize or the Options menu doing the right thing, though.
> Customize might work if you ignore the "bold" and "italic" options and
> type the fontconfig modifiers in the font family text field.
>
> (set-face-font 'default "Bitstream Charter-16:Italic" (current-buffer))
> (set-face-font 'default "Bitstream Charter-16:Bold" (current-buffer))
> (set-face-font 'default "Bitstream Charter-16:Bold:Italic" (current-buffer))
>
> Note that the modifier for bold italic is ":Bold:Italic", not ":Boldtalic".
>
> I plan to do some work on Customize and menus later this month.
>
> Steve
>
>



-- 
Dr. Robert Delius Royar                   Associate Professor of English
Morehead State University                             Morehead, Kentucky