Re: [gentoo-user] Fontconfig messed up my fonts

[Henson Sturgill]

OK, so this is sort-of unrelated, but does have to do with font rendering:

I've been trying to only enable the most necessary use flags this time
around (it's fun), and I built my fonts without 'X' enabled. Still, I can't
see a noticeable difference when using them in urxvt. How is the X version
of a font different than its regular version -- and does that still apply
with xft fonts?

(Sorry for jumping in.)


On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 3:34 AM, Yuri K. Shatroff <yks-uno@××××××.ru> wrote:

> On 05.03.2013 01:39, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>
>> On 04/03/2013 22:48, Yuri K. Shatroff wrote:
>>
>>> Hello gentoo users,
>>>
>>> Today I updated my system, including fontconfig from 2.9.0 to the
>>> latest unstable 2.10.2, and after reboot I was quite unhappy to see
>>> all my fonts become ugly, well, can't describe exactly, kind of as
>>> if back in 1980s. (not that antialiasing disappeared or bad
>>> hinting, it was just the fonts being ugly -- a well antialiased,
>>> hi-res crap) I don't know the reason, but I don't think the problem
>>> was in the /etc/fonts/conf.d settings, at least I didn't notice
>>> major changes after the update (using diff). And all the stuff like
>>> lcdfilter remained enabled. I didn't have any special settings,
>>> neither in /etc/fonts/conf.d, nor in my home dir or elsewhere,
>>> because I really enjoyed the default rendering style. So after all
>>> I downgraded fontconfig and the fonts' rendering is restored and
>>> now I enjoy it again, so I deem the issue to be the problem of the
>>> fontconfig-2.10.2 package. Regardless of whether it's
>>> configuration- or library-related, with the latter more likely,
>>> one wouldn't like package updates to break existing setups. P.S.
>>> I've just thought it could be fonts cache which I noticed to
>>> contain entries as old as September, but if the new package can not
>>> work with old cache, I believe its ebuild should clear it,
>>> shouldn't it?
>>>
>>
>> Well, it's probably not fontconfig, it's more likely the GUI
>> software you use that has issues.
>>
>
> It's hard to imagine a modern GUI software rendering fonts bypassing the
> font rendering engine. It's not kind of pixel-art, you know :)
> And moreover, see below.
>
>
>  fontconfig-2.10.2 is fine here with KDE-4.10 apps and most of
>> Mozilla's stuff.
>>
>
> I have updated @world to unstable as of the date I was writing, incl.
> latest KDE and *zillas.
>
>
>  What GUI software do you run that has issues? And is it ALL apps, or
>> just a few you use often and might notice it more?
>>
>
> Yes, it is ALL apps. That's why I almost immediately began to blame
> fontconfig, and eventually downgraded it.
>
> Again, as usual, the problem occurring with my setup is not due to occur
> with another one's, it might be the stars misaligned corrupting bytes in
> memory during compilation, or whatever, but the evident cause was
> fontconfig because otherwise I can't explain how downgrading it did help.
>
>
> --
> Best wishes,
> Yuri K. Shatroff
>
>