FS#25333 - [Fontconfig] change: hintslights started (31/07/11) producing enormously large and distorted fonts

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Marek Kozlowski (guayasil) - Sunday, 31 July 2011, 08:27 GMT
Last edited by Andreas Radke (AndyRTR) - Saturday, 15 September 2012, 07:51 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category System
Status Closed
Assigned To Jan de Groot (JGC)
Andreas Radke (AndyRTR)
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description:
It difficult to precisely describe the source of the problem. `pacman -Suy' done on 31/07/11 changed transparently the bahaviour of fontconfig hinting in some very annoying way:

I'm using XFCE 4.8. I'm using BCI hinting (not autohinting). I have `hintfull' set in XFCE and `hintslight' in `/etc/fontconfig/local.conf'.
It's a well known workaround: Mozillas (Firefox and Thunderbird) ignore the desktop settings and only use `/etc/fontconfig/local.conf'. It's a well known bug and it's well known that setting hinting to sth. more than `hintslight' results in too thin fonts in page contents. It work fine under Gentoo and it worked fine till the latest upgrade.

Since the latest `pacman -Suy' setting hinting to `hintslight' results in enormously large and way too tall fonts. As a result I have laaaarge fonts in all system elements of Mozillas :-(
This task depends upon

Closed by  Andreas Radke (AndyRTR)
Saturday, 15 September 2012, 07:51 GMT
Reason for closing:  No response
Comment by Ionut Biru (wonder) - Sunday, 31 July 2011, 09:44 GMT
only freetype2 was updated recently, try to downgrade to 2.4.4 and then report upstream this issue
Comment by Marek Kozlowski (guayasil) - Sunday, 31 July 2011, 11:44 GMT
Yes it's freetype. Reverting to 2.4.4 helped. Thx.

BTW: Look at this:

# ls /var/cache/pacman/pkg | grep freetype2
freetype2-2.4.4-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
freetype2-2.4.6-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
lib32-freetype2-2.4.4-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

There is freetype 2.4.6 but lib32* is only for 2.4.4. I'm using an x86_64 system. Isn't the problem of incompatible freetype and lib32-freetype?
Comment by Ionut Biru (wonder) - Sunday, 31 July 2011, 11:45 GMT
lib32-freetype2 2.4.6 was pushed couples of hours ago but firefox shouldn't be affected by that.
Comment by Marek Kozlowski (guayasil) - Tuesday, 09 August 2011, 16:43 GMT
I suppose that it's an upstream bug. I experience the same with freetype-2.4.6 under Gentoo too. Any patch welcome, anyway ;-)
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Monday, 03 October 2011, 13:42 GMT
The only thing that was changed in freetype2 2.4.6 regarding font rendering was more consistent line spacing. This resulted in fonts having smaller line spacing compared to previous versions, depending on font and size. The fonts themselves don't get larger.
Comment by Marek Kozlowski (guayasil) - Saturday, 08 October 2011, 16:38 GMT
Sorry, you are all wrong. Take a look at the attached pictures. There is a completely different font with 2.4.4 and 2.4.6!
   2.4.4-1.png (224.5 KiB)
   2.4.4-2.png (203.8 KiB)
   2.4.6-1.png (199 KiB)
   2.4.6-2.png (232.8 KiB)
Comment by Ionut Biru (wonder) - Saturday, 08 October 2011, 16:40 GMT
is the same font but a bit larger.

as a side note, is not a package bug and if you are interested you should report upstream
Comment by Marek Kozlowski (guayasil) - Saturday, 08 October 2011, 16:43 GMT
More precisely: the same but distorted (a different aspect ratio). I'll send it to the upstream, anyway.
Comment by Allan McRae (Allan) - Saturday, 28 April 2012, 12:32 GMT
Status? Link to upstream report?
Comment by Marek Kozlowski (guayasil) - Wednesday, 02 May 2012, 08:18 GMT
http://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?34507
http://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?34156
Comment by Andreas Radke (AndyRTR) - Thursday, 06 September 2012, 09:02 GMT
Status with new fontconfig 2.10.1-2 in testing?

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