Enable sub-pixel rendering

Bug #141288 reported by Scott James Remnant (Canonical)
8
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
fontconfig (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned
freetype (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned
gnome-control-center (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
libcairo (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned
xft (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

This is a request to the ubuntu-release team to consider a Feature Freeze Exception for patches to freetype, xft, cairo and gnome-control-center to enable "sub-pixel rendering" (aka. ClearType) in Ubuntu when the appropriate option is selected.

More information about ClearType can be read here, which has explanatory screenshots:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearType

With these patches enabled, the quality of font rendering in Ubuntu matches that of Windows XP and Mac OS X. We go from the right-most example in the following screenshot to the middle example:

    http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=43911&d=1190296417

The patches are written by the FreeType upstream David Turner, and already exist in our freetype copy (but are commented out); the patch uncomments that option, and adds the necessary same patch to Xft and Cairo which are in its rendering pipeline.

My reason for wanting this to be in for Beta is that it's a visual change, and Beta is the first milestone release which gets wide-spread attention. We need a neutral, wide-spread point of view to decide whether these patches are "better" or "worse" (since such thing is highly subjective).

I propose the following:
 - upload patches for Beta
 - review sometime after Beta, but before Release Candidate
 - if there is an overwhelmingly positive response, keep the patches
 - if there is an overwhelmingly negative response, reject the patches
 - if the response is largely positive, but with highlighted issues or a significant majority who prefer the older look, we revert the patch for Gutsy and enable again in Hardy and fix the issues

Revision history for this message
Steve Langasek (vorlon) wrote :

There appears to be broad agreement that this behavior change is an improvement for large fonts and variable width fonts, but there is fervent argument that it's a regression for small monospace fonts. Discussion on #ubuntu-devel yielded a compromise proposal to use fontconfig to select the previous LCD filter behavior for fonts with small pixelsizes. All parties seem to be happy with this proposal, so I will also be happy to accept such an implementation for the beta.

Revision history for this message
Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott) wrote :

Updated source packages (and debdiffs) of the packages which include the patches that Matthew wanted are now available here:

    http://people.ubuntu.com/~scott/lcdfilter/

The fontconfig-config package ships with a default configuration that uses the legacy lcd filter for Monospace fonts that will appear at 12px or less.

Revision history for this message
Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott) wrote :

Matthew has withdrawn his objections, however has noted a possible problem with the use of Slight hinting; we reached a decision about that already though:

<mjg59> Ok, let me see how this turns out in a minute
[...]
<mjg59> Keybuk: Ok, playing with hinting seems to suggest that stuff Just Works
<Keybuk> mjg59: your monospace appears with legacy lcd filtering?
<mjg59> Keybuk: Yup
<Keybuk> ok, seems that we're both happy now? :)
<mjg59> Keybuk: Hm. No, I've got some very ugly rendering here with slight hinting
<mjg59> Hang on, let me try to figure this out
<mjg59> Ok. I'd say at the moment that this change plus full hinting seems to work fine
<mjg59> Slight hinting is generating severe colour blurring
<Keybuk> mjg59: yeah, I've alternated between Full and Slight for a while ...
<Keybuk> I think the upload should not include the gnome-control-center change, and instead the mail should ask people to compare both and see which they like
<mjg59> Keybuk: Yeah, I'd go with that for now

Revision history for this message
Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott) wrote :

Uploaded

Changed in fontconfig:
status: New → Fix Released
Changed in freetype:
status: New → Fix Released
Changed in libcairo:
status: New → Fix Released
Changed in xft:
status: New → Fix Released
Changed in gnome-control-center:
status: New → Invalid
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