[arch-general] blurry fonts at Qt4 apps

[Maik Beckmann]

Hello

I did send the follwing to the kde and qt mailing list:

<my message>
I have an issue with the fonts off apps which are based on Qt4.  This png
    http://img403.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gtkkde3kde4qt4za7.png 
shows the "File" menubar entry at
   (left to right): gtk+ - kde3 - kde4 - Qt4
apps.

As you see the fonts of gtk and kde3 are same.  The kde4 and qt4 fonts are the 
same too. 

Please focus on the "F"s in "File".  The "F" of gtk/kde3 are plain lines, 
since no curves are involved.  The "F" pf kde4/qt4 has something like 
shadows, which results in a blurry look.

Currently I'm running arch-linux, but I saw the behavior on previous gentoo 
and debian installations when I played with qt4.

The screenshots which are placed at the kde4 programming tutorials show that 
there must be a way do make the fonts in kde4 behave like those in kde3
    http://techbase.kde.org/images/a/a3/Introtokdetutorial3.png
Just zoom and pan to "File" and compare with the screenshot I provided.

My $HOME/.fonts.conf is attached.  The font I'm using is Bitstream Vera Sans
</my message>

The mentioned files are attached to this email too.

 James Richard Tyrer answered:
<answer>
> This is interesting.
>
> If you simply showed these to me without any context, I would say that
> the first two (left to right) are hinted for screen display and the
> second two are unhinted for WYSIWYG printing.
>
> KDE-3 and Qt-3 always did fonts as screen hinted which is why some
> applications (e.g. KWord) had font printing issues.  Since Qt-4 can do
> it either way, KDE-4 needs to decide which way that the fonts should be
> rendered.  So, this would appear to be a bug -- the GUI should always be
> screen hinted.
</answer>

So Qt4 apps maybe do silently the wrong type of font rendering.  

If you know about this and how to fix it on arch, please share your knowledge.

Since there are configuration which are not hit by this (obviously James has 
one) I would like to ask you're to test if your installtion handles fonts on 
qt3 and qt4 apps the same way or not.

To do so start the i.e kwrite(the kde3 version) and qtconfig (which is a Qt4 
app).  Pan the "File" entry of qtconfig's menubar to the right of the "File" 
entry of kwrite's menubar.  Now take a screenshot (I used GIMP) and zoom into 
the "File" - "File" area. 

To make your results comparable to mine, please chose Bitstream Vera Sans as 
toolbar font.

Thanks in advance,
 -- Maik
-------------- next part --------------
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
   <const>rgb</const>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="hinting" >
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="autohint" >
   <bool>false</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
   <const>hintfull</const>
  </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
  <edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
   <bool>true</bool>
  </edit>
 </match>
</fontconfig>