SGI: Development

One for the gipper, this is a fixed version of the previous one that worked well, but doesn't crash xpdf. Works great.

Over to current here, happy with it.

But , I forgot what happened last time, if you have a customized fontconfig, save your config files just in case. I suddenly had an unusual browsing experience. Normally I don't use Comic Sans

(Screenshot is resized, can't judge sharpness by it.)

The fix turns out to be a workaround for a bug in MipsPro... At -O2, my patch isn't needed. An updated .tardist has been uploaded to /incoming...

Not totally on topic, but I figured I'd mention it. Adobe/Google just introduced a new Freetype rasterizer which is said to be "dramatically improved". It's part of Freetype 2.4.12 but not enabled by default. http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2 ... t-cff.html

And freetype 2.4.12 has actually been released in the meantime. I'll have to check how that new renderer is enable (runtime or compile time)...

There's also the question, which fonts will be rendered by that CFF renderer at all, apparently it's not the TrueType ones. I this is intended for Postscript Type 1 fonts.

It's enabled by applying a patch to the code ... Instructions are in /doc/CHANGES. They say it will be the default for the next release. Hey, that's some serious testing, ain't it ?!


Seems like Adobe wants back in the game, they are pushing their support for "Open Source ! We believe in Open Source !" ... you just have to shake your head sometimes. But if it delivers better rendering for CCF aka OTF aka Type1 fonts, I'll take it

Just went past the infinality site ... that is one of the biggest group of stupid fucks I've come across. What a bunch of useless buffoons

Otherwise, the new CFF freetype compiles fine. I don't notice any huge change in the Adobe fonts yet tho .... maybe a little nicer. Or maybe my imagination

that's definitely one of the worst screenshots i've ever seen

Not fair to canavan, his infinality worked fine I don't remember what was going on then but every time I opened fireflop it had different fonts. Getting everything stabilized for high-res was a bit tricky for a while. Plus screenshots have to be resized now, which is whence some of the awfulness of that one comest.

Not sure if there's any difference with the new freetype rendering, will report back after I've used it some more.

oh i meant the image quality not the content

Yes, it looked quite awful. Then I resized it and it didn't get any better

The weird thing was, every time I opened Firefox it chose different fonts. It was as if someone put a random-selection roulette wheel in the code. Gremlins ?

About the newer freetype ... tried it out, made the change in the source (it's not really a patch, just changed one line in a c code file). Didn't bother with infinality: that was a nice feature but their website sucks dead donkey organs, absolutely stoopid and ghastly, how do these people graduate from third grade ? Anyway, Freetype-Adobe compiles fine, installs fine, runs fine.

Is it better ? Hard to say. Is it different ? Maybe. It's easy for the mind to play tricks - "Is that T cleaner than before ? Could be. I think so. Yes, definitely cleaner than before. It's new code, must be better, right ?"

It's definitely not worse and other code looking for the big number when they do configure should be happy so what the heck, may as well leave it. It's not a step backwards at least.


Edit : note on the infinality page saying that it crashes when used with the new Adobe cff font engine. Maybe they will get around to fixing it before that becomes the freetype default