Fontconfig - Aug 2008 - Make GTK+ apps (and Gnome) fully respect your .fonts.conf

Since this has bothered me for a long time, as I imagine it would 
anybody who likes to uber-tweak their .fonts.conf, I figured I would put 
it out there.  Gnome and GTK+ apps never respected my per-font hinting 
settings in .fonts.conf which drove me totally bonkers.  Apparently, 
what causes them to ignore the hinting settings is actually due to cairo 
overriding it.  I found a solution on Ubuntu forums and created a patch 
for Cairo that will make it respect .fonts.conf:


--- cairo-1.4.12/src/cairo-ft-font.c.orig    2008-06-05 
19:34:45.000000000 -0500
+++ cairo-1.4.12/src/cairo-ft-font.c    2008-06-05 19:35:17.000000000 -0500
@@ -1641,7 +1641,7 @@
     options->base.subpixel_order = other->base.subpixel_order;
     }
 
-    if (options->base.hint_style == CAIRO_HINT_STYLE_DEFAULT)
+    //if (options->base.hint_style == CAIRO_HINT_STYLE_DEFAULT)
     options->base.hint_style = other->base.hint_style;
 
     if (other->base.hint_style == CAIRO_HINT_STYLE_NONE)

That''s a bit odd. I had no trouble getting pango-view, which uses
Cairo on Fedora 9, to render fonts as instructed in .fonts.conf...

On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 5:24 AM, Erik <erik at beanbasket.com>
wrote:
> Since this has bothered me for a long time, as I imagine it would
> anybody who likes to uber-tweak their .fonts.conf, I figured I would put
> it out there.  Gnome and GTK+ apps never respected my per-font hinting
> settings in .fonts.conf which drove me totally bonkers.  Apparently,
> what causes them to ignore the hinting settings is actually due to cairo
> overriding it.  I found a solution on Ubuntu forums and created a patch
> for Cairo that will make it respect .fonts.conf:
>
>
> --- cairo-1.4.12/src/cairo-ft-font.c.orig    2008-06-05
> 19:34:45.000000000 -0500
> +++ cairo-1.4.12/src/cairo-ft-font.c    2008-06-05 19:35:17.000000000 -0500
> @@ -1641,7 +1641,7 @@
>     options->base.subpixel_order = other->base.subpixel_order;
>     }
>
> -    if (options->base.hint_style == CAIRO_HINT_STYLE_DEFAULT)
> +    //if (options->base.hint_style == CAIRO_HINT_STYLE_DEFAULT)
>     options->base.hint_style = other->base.hint_style;
>
>     if (other->base.hint_style == CAIRO_HINT_STYLE_NONE)
> _______________________________________________
> Fontconfig mailing list
> Fontconfig at lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/fontconfig
>
>

Well, specifically, what I had in my .fonts.conf was a default setting 
of BCI full hinting for all fonts.  After that, I had configuration to 
use slight hinting for specific fonts.  I found that Gnome (Cairo) apps 
would not respect this, for whatever reason, whereas KDE (Qt) would.  
Gnome apps would just do brute-force full-hinting of everything.  This 
patch on cairo fixed the issue and things then rendered as they do in 
KDE.  I actually was using MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 before starting firefox, 
and now I no longer have to with the patched cairo. 

Perhaps I have a unique configuration in my .fonts.conf that exposed 
this.  All I know is that it works now.

On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 21:39 -0500, Erik wrote:
> Well, specifically, what I had in my .fonts.conf was a default setting 
> of BCI full hinting for all fonts.  After that, I had configuration to 
> use slight hinting for specific fonts.  I found that Gnome (Cairo) apps 
> would not respect this, for whatever reason, whereas KDE (Qt) would.  
> Gnome apps would just do brute-force full-hinting of everything.  This 
> patch on cairo fixed the issue and things then rendered as they do in 
> KDE.  I actually was using MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 before starting firefox, 
> and now I no longer have to with the patched cairo. 
> 
> Perhaps I have a unique configuration in my .fonts.conf that exposed 
> this.  All I know is that it works now.
I''m fairly sure that it comes down to having to remove the currently
set
hinting on pattern before setting your new value.

-- 
behdad
http://behdad.org/

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little
 Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
        -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759