Among other new features, this recent release of the popular font engine which used in many projects “is a must have if you’re using XFree86 with anti-aliased text, since it features enhanced glyph rendering and better (more consistent) letter spacing“. Download FreeType 2.0.6. Update: As some of our readers have spotted out, FreeType 2.0.8 was released just yesterday.
FreeType 2.0.6 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Wow… this is gorgeous!
I use a serif font in my desktop and this is much clearer. I’m not sure what came with Redhat 7.2 but this is nice.
the fonts have always sucked, and until we get folk in there who actualy care about Nice text, they will continue to suck….back to to command line I guess 😉
<HTML>The serif fonts rendered by Xft/freetype have always irked me. Finally, with Freetype 2.0.6, they got the kearning right, and the sans serif fonts look pretty good.<p>I have been working on a hack for Xft that uses freetype to render a mono bitmap, and then uses my own algorithm for the antialiasing. I’ve left the sans serif fonts alone; my changes only apply to serif fonts. <p> I would be interested in what y’all think of what I’ve done so far. There’s obviously a good bit of work still to be done, but it’s a start at least.<p>Take a look: http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/shot-1.png“>screenshot | http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/shot-2.png“>screenshot <p>
You can get 2.0.7 from the download site. I don’t see a change log like they have for the 2.0.6, but it appears to be the next in line, released almost a month later. I don’t know for sure, but that appears to be the newest one.
I’ll take one for the team and install it.
Fonts are one of my linux complains (QNX also), however that hack of yours looks great, very clean, grasp and neat text. Where is it so we can try it?
Only thing I don’t like is the aqua theme. One of the best linux screenshot I’ve seen so far is the following:
http://www.gentoo.org/images/shots/desktop-drobbins.html“>Daniel (Chief Architect of Gentoo Linux). Anyone knows what theme is that? Looks like a BeOs theme.
DaCh, are you running RedHat7.2? I know it is not much relevant here, but I’m doubting about trying it, didn’t like much 7.0.
I’m downloading FreeType 2.0.6 right now, I’ve been waiting for this a looong time.
DaCh: That looks awesome.
In fact, have you put your work online somewhere so that others may use it? You never know, you may get help completing your anti-aliasing algorithms.
Btw, if it’s part of Xft, does that mean it will work in any window manager that uses X?
Marques: He could be using <a href=”http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/“>fluxbox (tabbing can be done with fluxbox, at least). But theme wise… I dunno. The internal windows look like gnome does by default. Mozilla is themed independently in that screenshot.
Marques: he uses pwm, a very simplistic windowmanager. See also http://www.students.tut.fi/~tuomov/pwm/
Fluxbox looks really good I think I try it out.
Fluxbox looks really good I think I’ll try it out.
It’s better. But it still sucks.
from their site:
Patents issues
Some small aspects of the TrueType specification being covered by several patents owned by Apple Computer, it is generally not possible to render TrueType glyphs exactly as they should without infringing on Apple’s IP rights (without a license).
This explains that we’ve taken some special measures to deal with this problem:
First of all, a default build of the FreeType 2 sources will not use any of the patented techniques to render TrueType glyphs. You’ll thus be safe to use it freely in all kinds of projects.
Unfortunately, this freedom comes at the price of sometimes less-than-ideal glyph quality, depending on the font design, and most surely different glyph metrics for a given font.
In the case where you want the best TrueType glyph quality (for example if you’re in a country where the patent doesn’t apply, or if you have a patent from Apple), you’ll simply need to toggle a simple configuration macro before compiling and installing the library, and voila !!
More information regarding this topic is available at our TrueType Patents page. In case you’d like to obtain a license from Apple, please contact their Legal Department, as we’re unable to give you any information regarding its availability or pricing.
There have been 2 minor bugfix releases after 2.0.6!
Follow the sourceforge <a href=”http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3157“>link… and you should be taken there!
They are up to 2.0.8!
I installed 2.0.7 expecting a change, and yes it still sucks, ttfonts are not displayed properly, it’s a dreadfull mess. I know I’m going to be told again I’m being nonsensical by the usual diehard xlovers, but X is the one that really make it suck. It’s the year 2002 and Linux still has major problems with antialiasing, 2003 maybe?…wow, what a nice piece of dated bloated crappy window system. Genius Jim Getty X-Aliased.
Still complaining about that?
just compile it correctly =P
Before you go bashing X, try fixing you’re install. I’m sitting here running XFree 4.1 on a RivaTNT (using NVIDIA’s drivers), freetype 2.05, and Microsoft’s free webfonts. Everything looks ultra-sharp. Freetype2 renders the (awesome) Monotype webfonts better than Windows does!
<p> Btw, if it’s part of Xft, does that mean it will work in any window manager that uses X?
<p> No. An application has to request an antialiased glyph from Xft either way. It can’t be expecting a mono glyph and recieve an 8-bit one. <p> [/i] … however that hack of yours looks great, very clean, grasp and neat text. Where is it so we can try it? [/i] <p> It’s surely not ready yet, but maybe in a week or a few I will post a patch. That would be at http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/.<p>
The screenshots showing the hack in action look terrible. The fonts are too thick and aren’t sharp at all. The idea behind anti-aliased fonts isn’t to make things fuzzy. It’s to smooth the edges of the fonts.
If you simply turn on the hinting engine in the freetype code and recompile, you’ll be pleasanty surprised. The only thing that still needs work is really kerning. But I now use aa fonts all the time (mainly the ms ttf web fonts) and things look totally awesome.
See a screenshot at http://divit.cs.byu.edu/~torriem/shot-1.png
and
http://divit.cs.byu.edu/~torriem/shot-2.png
Notice it’s a lot cleaner than the shots posted earlier. However, there are still issues with fonts spacing and things. But all this is done with standard freetype rendering. (Notice especially the difference in the way the Times New Roman font is handled.)
Michael
Maybe I can make them live:
They are:
http://divit.cs.byu.edu/~caseih/shot-1.png
http://divit.cs.byu.edu/~caseih/shot-2.png
or try:
<a href=”http://divit.cs.byu.edu/~caseih/shot-1.png“>shot-1.png
<a href=”http://divit.cs.byu.edu/~caseih/shot-2.png“>shot-2.png