[Devel] my experience with 2.1.4

[David Chester]

Greetings,  
 
-- Bulia Byak wrote: 
> as I understand it, what was once David Chester's "Xft hack" has been 
> incorporated into Freetype 2.1.4. Is this correct? 
 
I did propose an FT_LOAD_TARGET_SMOOTH option for a less aggressive hinting 
configuration.  This option--which would align horizontal stems on pixel 
boundaries, and slightly adjust those stems' widths, but leave other stems 
untouched--was not integrated into 2.1.4.  This is presumably because there
is 
already a similar option called FT_LOAD_TARGET_LIGHT, which aligns stems,
but 
leaves their widths alone.  Personally, I prefer my proposed configuration
for a 
default low level of hinting, as it seems to yield higher contrast and less
distortion.  
Of course it is a subjective matter, and depends on the monitor as well, but
here 
is a comparison: 
 
http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/rendermodes.png 
 
As you can see, with FT_LOAD_TARGET_SMOOTH, kerning is better, and contrast
is 
sometimes better (e.g. the cross bars of the e's), but the weight of
vertical stems 
not entirely consistent. 
 
> So, is there a way that I can enable the same low level of hinting as in
the  
> original "hack"? 
 
You can still try applying the relevant part of my patch to the current
sources, or to 
2.1.4, but you may have to do it by hand.  The ft-smooth.diff file in the
following 
archive is the patch that adds FT_LOAD_TARGET_SMOOTH: 
 
http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/xfthack/ft-smooth-20021210.tar.gz 
 
In general, I think this is only a short-term solution--eventually, we
should be able 
to get high contrast with a negligible amount of shape distortion. 
 
David Chester 

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