Fontconfig - Nov 2005 - Too much bold

Around 0 o''clock on Apr 9, Ciprian Popovici wrote:
> I''ve noticed that, although the "weight" property for
the font
> configuration is supposed to have 5 levels of bold, only 2 can actually
> be used, on my system at least. There is a threshold around 160 weight
> value which simply divides"no bold" and "bold".
I''ve recently changed fontconfig to use the OS/2 table entries for
weight
to provide more accurate weight values to applications.  That should let 
applications (and users, presumably) see finer gradations in weight.

You''ll still be limited to the weights available in the fonts you have;
fontconfig can only show what''s present.

-keith

Hello everybody,

I''ve noticed that, although the "weight" property for the
font
configuration is supposed to have 5 levels of bold, only 2 can actually
be used, on my system at least. There is a threshold around 160 weight
value which simply divides"no bold" and "bold".

That wouldn''t be a problem, except the bold I get is too heavy and it
makes some fonts difficult to read at small sizes. Can something be done
to get a more fine-grained setup for weight? Does everyone get only 2
levels instead of 5 or it''s just my setup that does that? In case
I''m
stuck with these two levels, can I somehow "lighten up" the bold
rendering (source hacking, anything)?

I use fontconfig and xft 2.1, compiled from sources.

-- 
Ciprian Popovici

On Tue, 08 Apr 2003 15:11:09 -0700 Keith Packard <keithp@keithp.com>
wrote:
> Around 0 o''clock on Apr 9, Ciprian Popovici wrote:
> > I''ve noticed that, although the "weight" property
for the font
> > configuration is supposed to have 5 levels of bold, only 2 can
> > actually be used, on my system at least. There is a threshold around
> > 160 weight value which simply divides"no bold" and
"bold".
> 
> I''ve recently changed fontconfig to use the OS/2 table entries for
> weight to provide more accurate weight values to applications.  That
> should let applications (and users, presumably) see finer gradations
> in weight.
> 
> You''ll still be limited to the weights available in the fonts you
> have; fontconfig can only show what''s present.
I''ve gone and applied a little trick, in case anyone''s
interested. I''ve
altered the matrix for bold fonts and reduced their horizontal rendering
space a bit. It''s slightly better. Here''s the thing, I changed
the first
double from 1 to 0.9.

<match target="pattern">
  <test qual="any" name="weight"
compare="more">
    <int>150</int>
  </test>
  <edit name="matrix" mode="assign">
    <times>
      <name>matrix</name>
      <matrix>
        <double>0.9</double><double>0</double>
        <double>0</double><double>1</double>
      </matrix>                        
    </times>
  </edit>
</match>

If I understand this correctly, the a certain font''s specification
decides how the font should look bold. Fontconfig has no say, it
just renders it. I''m guessing letting the user have access to some
mechanism of altering the rendering process wouldn''t be such a good
idea or would it? The matrix does this already, but it doesn''t touch
the
issue of "how much meat does a character have on it''s bones"
if I may
say so for lack of actual terminology. :)

-- 
Ciprian Popovici