Still better font smoothing « Motho ke motho ka botho

I took a few minutes to experiment with more font smoothing and this seems to work better on my LCD. I had most of these settings already in my .fonts.conf file, but I edited it slightly and now things look … smoother.

< ?xml version="1.0"?>
< !DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>

 <match target="font" >
	<edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
	 <const>rgb</const>
	</edit>
 </match>

 <match target="font" >
	<edit mode="assign" name="hinting">
	 <bool>true</bool>
	</edit>
 </match>

 <match target="font" >
	<edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle">
	 <const>hintfull</const>
	</edit>
 </match>

 <match target="font" >
	<edit mode="assign" name="antialias">
	 <bool>true</bool>
	</edit>
 </match>

 <match target="pattern" >
	<edit mode="assign" name="autohint">
	 <bool>true</bool>
	</edit>
 </match>

 <dir>~/.fonts</dir>
</fontconfig>

Most of this was trimmed from the sample .fonts.conf file posted on the Arch Linux wiki. I don’t doubt for a second that it’ll work in Ubuntu too.

Edit: I’m rather foolish, to post this like a note to myself, and not even think about a screenshot. Here’s before, on the left, and after, on the right.

The only difference was that I didn’t really have the rgba set for my LCD before, so the antialiasing is a little smeared. Or at least I think that’s why it looked so sorry.

P.S.: I should mention that my GTK2 fonts still didn’t look perfect after I set this configuration, but when I changed them to use a specific font, and not just the “Sans Serif” generic setting, they smoothed out nicely.

13 Responses to “Still better font smoothing”

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1 n2j3 December 27, 2007 at 8:05 pm

A screenshot or two wouldn’t hurt
2 K.Mandla December 27, 2007 at 10:58 pm

Ah … oh darn. How obvious was that, and I never even thought about a screenshot. Okay. Before and after, coming up. …
3 urukrama December 28, 2007 at 9:54 am

I should try this too. Bhutto is killed with no smooth fonts, but only wounded with smooth fonts! :p
4 K.Mandla December 28, 2007 at 9:56 am

BWAAHAHAHAHA! Omigosh, that’s the funniest comment EVER.
5 cyberbuff December 31, 2007 at 9:25 pm

well said urukrama!
6 eric February 11, 2008 at 7:48 pm

Remove the typos in your .fonts.conf file !
7 K.Mandla February 11, 2008 at 11:05 pm

Can you be more specific please?
8 eric February 13, 2008 at 4:55 pm

Remove the space after < in the first two lines !
9 eric February 13, 2008 at 5:50 pm

Also add the following :

medium

false

See : http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/XOrg_Font_Configuration#Autohint_works_great_but_not_for_my_bold_fonts._How_can_I_turn_it_off_only_for_bold_fonts.3F
10 eric February 13, 2008 at 6:04 pm

Something went wrong ?

What I add is the following :

medium

false
11 eric February 13, 2008 at 6:10 pm

Ok copy and paste does not work :

Try again :

medium

false
12 eric February 13, 2008 at 6:11 pm

I give up ! Just follow the link.
13 K.Mandla February 13, 2008 at 6:25 pm

Sorry, WordPress.com eats XML at times. It’s something that I have learned to suffer.

I’ll double-check the XML against the wiki when I get home. I had originally left out the bold-to-medium effect because I didn’t like how my fonts in particular looked. But if someone wants to add that term, it’s always an option.