Strange AA (anti-aliasing) woes..

[hugo]

    Hi list,

I'm having some issues with KDE-3.2 (which I compiled myself), regarding 
the rendering of Anti-Aliased Fonts. I have a feeling I am overlooking 
something *really* simple, or something plain weird is happening. Either 
way, it's something that I cannot explain.

-- Problem description
I downloaded Konstruct, made sure my libraries were up-to-date, and 
started the build-process. This all went OK. After it was installed, I 
ran it, and wanted to enable Anti-Aliasing.

After I have enabled it, and start up, say Konsole, from the panel, it 
comes up, without any anti-aliasing. So I thought I needed to restart X, 
which I did.

When the KDE comes up, it displays the Splash Screen, in which the 
progress-text (like Initializing peripherals, etc) *does* appear 
anti-aliased, but when kdesktop and kicker load, they just show the 
crappy un-anti-aliased font.

After some tinkering, I also noted that, when I start Konsole manually 
from a running Konsole, the Konsole application *does* appear with the 
fonts rendered anti-aliased (except the title bar). This also happens to 
be the case when running konqueror from the Konsole.

If the KDE has come up, and the session is restored, I see an 
un-anti-aliased Konsole-window. If I run konqueror from that manually, 
the browser *does* come up with anti-aliasing. (See 
http://homebaze.net/img/freakin-weird.png for a screenshot.)

I find this terribly odd, and I can't seem to find anything on the Web 
describing a similar problem.

What makes this whole situation even weirder, is when I want to run, for 
instance, Kword from Run command... If I type in just ``kword'', it 
appears un-anti-aliased and also a lot of fonts are missing from the 
Select Font thingy.

If, at Run command...  I supply the path to the executable (i.e. 
``/opt/kde-3.2/bin/kword''), it *does* appear anti-aliased, and also all 
the fonts appear in the font-selection thing.

[ PS: This is not because of multiple binaries in the path, because 
there is only one KDE directory on this machine. The previous KDE 
installation (a 3.2-beta release) was totally removed from disked, as I 
have ~/.kde and ~/.kderc.  Also, I have only 1 QT library on this 
machine, and all the KDE applications seem to be correctly linked 
against that, too.]

I have Googled extensively and double checked XF86Config and XftConfig 
file, etc. but all to no avail; at initial start-up of the KDE it seems 
to ignore the anti-aliasing setting (except for ksplash; which appears 
perfectly anti-aliased when starting up.)

I have attached them below this email but I don't think anything is 
wrong with it, as Anti-Aliasing *does* work in the situation I describe 
above, so I am kind-a convinced X11 is set up correctly.

Somehow I have a feeling this is either QT or KDE related, I just can't 
put my finger on what's causing this.

I have checked and compared environment variables, before running the 
KDE and from the Konsole session to check if that might be the problem, 
but I can't find it. :(   I even tried adding the QT_XFT=1 before 
running startx, but that doesn't seem to do the trick either...

This problem has been haunting me for a few evenings now, and I'm kinda 
running out of ideas here.

I was hoping anybody could give me any suggestions where to look at next...

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Best regards,
Hugo


*** XF86Config (relevant sections) ***

Section "Module"
    Load        "dbe"
    Load        "dga"
    Load        "dri"
    Load        "type1"
    Load        "freetype"
    Load       "glx"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    RgbPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local"
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype"
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
    FontPath    "/usr/local/share/fonts"
EndSection





*** XftConfig ***

#
# Substitute TrueType fonts for Type1 versions
#
match any family == "Times"             edit family += "Times New Roman";
match any family == "Helvetica"         edit family += "Verdana";
match any family == "Courier"           edit family += "Courier New";

#
# Use monotype.com (andale) face where possible
#
match
        any family == "mono"
        all slant == roman
        all weight < bold
edit
        family += "monotype.com";
#
# otherwise, use courier
#
match any family == "mono"              edit family += "Courier New";

#
# Alias between XLFD families and font file family name, prefer local
# fonts
#
match any family == "charter"           edit family += "bitstream charter";
match any family == "bitstream charter" edit family =+ "charter";
match any family == "Lucidux Serif"     edit family += "LuciduxSerif";
match any family == "LuciduxSerif"      edit family =+ "Lucidux Serif";

match any family == "Lucidux Sans"      edit family += "LuciduxSans";
match any family == "LuciduxSans"       edit family =+ "Lucidux Sans";

match any family == "Lucidux Mono"      edit family += "LuciduxMono";
match any family == "LuciduxMono"       edit family =+ "Lucidux Mono";

#
# TrueType font aliases
#
match any family == "Comic Sans"        edit family += "Comic Sans MS";
match any family == "Comic Sans MS"     edit family =+ "Comic Sans";
match any family == "Trebuchet"         edit family += "Trebuchet MS";
match any family == "Trebuchet MS"      edit family =+ "Trebuchet";
match any family == "Monotype"          edit family =+ "Monotype.com";
match any family == "Andale Mono"       edit family += "Monotype.com";
match any family == "Monotype.com"      edit family =+ "Mincho";

dir "/etc/fonts"
dir "/usr/local/share/fonts"
dir "/usr/share/fonts"
dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts"
dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local"
dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype"
dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"

includeif "~/.xftconfig"

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