[rrd-developers] Re: --no-antialiasing and LINEx patches [was: Unsigned chars and optind]

[Tobias Oetiker]

Today John wrote:

> In the back of my head I was actually thinking of
> --antialiasing-threshold=x, which would disable antialiasing for font
> sizes <= x. This makes sense, because it might be useful to have the
> graph's title (which is large) anti-aliased, but the legend and so on
> bitmapped.
>
> Even if added as a global (canvas) property, it would require an extra
> argument to many gfx_*-functions (like gfx_string_create), right?
>
> As I see it, one could have both --antialiasing-threshold=x and
> --font-render-mode={normal,light} ("mono" might be confusing with a
> threshold-option). Obviously, this would add two options instead of
> one, which isn't too good either. A "lcd" mode, FT_RENDER_MODE_LCD,
> might be cool, but I'm afraid I don't know how to implement it.
>
> Personally, I'll probably go with bitmapped all the way, so
> --font-render-mode=mono would suffice for me, but I believe a
> threshold/strength pair is more common (used for example in
> Mac OS X).

the threshold bit sound cool ...

the LCD bit might be a bit over the top :-)

regarding the propperties ... you can make them properties of the
canvas like zoom for example ... the canvas gets passed to every
funtion already ... so you can take the information from there ...

> Please tell me what you think and I'll try to update the patch.
>
> > you have to update the *.pod files ...
> OK.
>
> > using currrent versions of freetype I have stopped using the
> > bytecode interpreter because the output looks so good ... but if
> > you can provide a patch for
> >
> > --font-hinter={none,bytecode,auto}
> >
> > I will be glad to include it too ... (with documentation)
> The patended code, which I believe is superior, requires compile time
> options. Hence, if the user (or the user's system) enabled the code
> it's probably safe to assume that it should be used.

You mean you would enable the bytecode hinter by default if one has
an bytecode enabled freetype ? The question is what happens to
normal fonts which do not come with handcrafted hinting
information, I guess there the autohinter might do a better job ...


> I'm using freetype-2.1.9, and the output with auto-hinting isn't
> good at all if you ask me. The difference isn't that obvious for
> VeraMono.ttf (although some characters, such as '8', look really odd
> with auto-hinting), but for Verdana (and others) the difference is
> _HUGE_.

cheers
tobi
>
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