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Date:      Sun, 06 May 2001 18:53:29 +0300
From:      Konstantinos Konstantinidis <kkonstan@daemon.gr>
To:        ports@FreeBSD.org
Cc:        will@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: resend: Re: ms-fonts build
Message-ID:  <3AF57379.7ADD9FF5@daemon.gr>
References:  <200105041430.f44EUeG22828@aldan.algebra.com> <3AF2CDCB.882F4891@daemon.gr> <01050412050001.12402@david.thecafe.ca> <3AF557A2.F78B07B@daemon.gr>

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Hello,

There was a recent discussion regarding the new (short-lived) ms-fonts
port, the webfonts port (which I maintain), and AntiAliasing with the
KDE desktop. This was held mostly privately by email, so I decided to
post the outcome on ports@FreeBSD.org since it might be of interest to
a lot of KDE users out there, and will@FreeBSD.org, the maintainer of
the qt23 port, since I'm proposing a minor change to the qt23 port.

First of all, all you need to do to have AA on your KDE desktop is
compile qt with Xft support. This is as easy as adding '-Xft' to the
CONFIGURE_ARGS. A WITH_AA knob would be nice then, and to be frank I
see no reason for this to not be the default with a WITHOUT_AA knob
instead.

With a properly compiled QT and the webfonts, all you need is a proper
XftConfig. I managed to get AA to work satisfactorily, and the key was
to mimic Windows and not AA font sizes 9, 10, 11 and 12. At those sizes
the fonts do not need AA, it only makes them worse. Hence, there is no
longer any blur, and AA kicks in at sizes 13 and above which does make
a hell of a difference. Here's a screenshot of the KDE 2.1.1 desktop
with the webfonts port and the webfonts specific XftConfig:

http://avdira.cc.duth.gr/~kkonstan/stuff/screenshots/aakde.png

I think it is as good as it can get. I'll be adding the XftConfig in
the webfonts port real soon now (tm), but here's the copy I used in
that screenshot for those of you that want to try it out now:

http://avdira.cc.duth.gr/~kkonstan/stuff/software/XftConfig

I hope you'll like the results. I am still not happy with Andale Mono
though for a fixed font (observe how much the taskbar sucks in the
screenshot), and I'll be tweaking it a bit more before I include it
in the webfonts port.

FYI, for some idiotic reason KDE defaults *ALL* fonts to Andale Mono
(perhaps because it is the first font alphabetically?) when you switch
on AA, so you'd have to change the font settings in the KDE Control
Panel after enabling AA. I just hit "Use Defaults" and then substituted
Helvetica with Arial all over the place, because for some reason KDE
ignores the aliasing in XftConfig and defaults to Andale even though
helvetica is aliased to arial. These are most *definitely* bugs in KDE,
and I'm not going to even attempt to fix them. Hopefully they will be
fixed though, they are quite annoying :)

As always, I'm looking forward to your commments.

Also, please keep me on the CC: if post a followup since I am no longer
subscribed to ports@freebsd.org.

Regards,

K. Konstantinidis

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