Bad looking fonts on Fedora 7 and latest KDE Branch 3.5

Tue Jun 5 11:10:51 BST 2007

On Tue, 5 Jun 2007 08:17:23 +0100
sheep <sheepzilla at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Steven,
> 
> If the fonts are changing like that when you log into root, then it
> *must* be a problem with a user configuration file - it may be that
> the default user configuration file is the problem, if you tried a new
> user and still had aliased fonts. I can only suggest comparing
> fonts.conf and any other font related configuration files you can find
> in /root/ to those under your home directory.
> 
> On an unrelated note, even what you call the beautiful fonts do not
> have hinting enabled, which would make them even prettier :D This is
> probably because hinting is disabled in the build of freetype you are
> using. To enable the hinting when building the freetype library, you
> should edit the ftoption.h file, and uncomment the various hinting
> #defines.
> 
Hello
A little clarification.  The fonts that don't look good on our system
aren't that way because I am not logged in as root.  The only time
fonts look bad on our system is when I am running Branch 3.5 KDE
compiled from SVN.  The only reason that root came into the picture is
that when I clicked the "Administrator Mode" in Branch 3.5's KControl
font installer, root just happened to not have Branch 3.5 set as the
KDE that it uses.  To make that a little clearer, if I put this:
export YACC='byacc -d'
QTDIR=/usr/local/qt-src
PATH=$QTDIR/bin:$PATH
MANPATH=$QTDIR/doc/man:$MANPATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$QTDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
#export QTDIR PATH MANPATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export QTDIR MANPATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH

KDEDIRS=/usr/local/kde-svn-f7
PATH=$KDEDIRS/bin:$PATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$KDEDIRS/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
#export KDEDIRS PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH LIBRARY_PATH
export KDEDIRS LD_LIBRARY_PATH LIBRARY_PATH

into root's .bash_profile, opened KDE Branch 3.5 KControl from my own
user account and then clicked on the "Administrator Mode" button, then
the fonts would look just as bad as the rest of the fonts in Branch 3.5
KDE.  Again, all the other fonts on our system display beautifully.
GTK2 applications, Firefox, OpenOffice.org.  Even the KDE that ships
with Fedora 7.  It's just the way that fonts display in Branch 3.5 KDE
that is a problem.

Here's something else that I just tried.  I just found out that the
antialias settings in Branch 3.5 KDE's KControl DO "work."  Like I have
been belaboring, all fonts look good on our system except the one's
that are in Branch 3.5 KDE compiled from SVN.  When I chose in KControl
to disable antialiasing, the fonts got ugly everywhere else as well.
When I reenabled antialiasing in KControl and restarted the GTK2 app
that I was using as an experiment, the fonts looked great again:
http://www.afolkey2.net/Projects/emelfm2-screenshot-1.jpg

Before I get off of this, I just tried an experiment.  I put the above
quoted lines from My .bash_profile into root's .bash_profile and logged
into KDE as root.  Because of what I put into root's .bash_profile, it
logged into Branch 3.5 KDE as expected.  Also as I expected, the fonts
looked just as bad for root (using Branch 3.5 KDE) as they do for me
when I use Branch 3.5 KDE.  Also (as root still) if I open up a KDE app
from the Fedora 7 install of KDE, the fonts look great.  So, the
behavior is the same whether I am logged in as root or not.

One final thought.  This is something I saw last night.  I think this
really narrows this issue down.  So much so, I'm tempted to start a new
thread so that this revelation does not get buried in the middle of a
long thread :)
OK.  Here it is:
If I were to set, let's say, Comic Sans as the TrueType font that I
want the fonts to use in Branch 3.5 KDE, it would look bad.  But, I
discovered that if I open up KFontView (Branch 3.5 version) and open up
that Same TrueType font that looks bad if I set it as the font for my
applications to use, KFontView displays the font perfectly.  The fonts
in KFontView's menus and GUI look bad, but it displays the font
perfectly.  I THINK that this ties in with the fact that Branch 3.5
Konqueror can't even display a web page correctly, while the F7
Konqueror displays the fonts perfectly:
http://www.afolkey2.net/Projects/cnn-screenshot-1.jpg (F7 Konqueror)
http://www.afolkey2.net/Projects/cnn-screenshot-2.jpg (Branch 3.5
Konqueror)

Like I've said repeatedly in this thread, I have tried all of this with
completely brand new user accounts, and the result is the same: fonts
look bad in Branch 3.5 KDE, but they look excellent everywhere else
(even in the Fedora 7 shipped KDE)

Steven P. Ulrick

-- 
 04:19:44 up 11:53,  0 users,  load average: 1.83, 1.00, 0.48
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