bugUnifont - Bugs: bug #48145, TTF Unifont since version 7.0.04...

 
 

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bug #48145: TTF Unifont since version 7.0.04 renders badly with hinting, but no antialiasing

Submitter:  None
Submitted:  Mon 06 Jun 2016 01:53:14 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  None Severity:  3 - Normal
Item Group:  None Status:  Works For Me
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  unifoundry
Open/Closed:  Closed

Discussion locked!

Jump to the original submission

Thu 21 Jun 2018 02:54:46 AM UTC, comment #7: 

I have tried various versions of Unifont with ftstring under Debian GNU/Linux with no antialiasing. The last was the newly-released Unifont 11.0.01, comparing it with Unifont 7.0.01, Unifont 7.0.02, Unifont 7.0.03, and Unifont 7.0.04. I cannot see a difference with Unifont 11.0.01 glyphs versus Unifont 7.0.01 to 7.0.03 and neither could other people I asked to look for differences.

I am attaching the last tests I did, between Unifont 7.0.01 and Unifont 11.0.01 on a 4k monitor for its high resolution. I set the point size for this to 48 pt in order to try to magnify any differences between hinting being active and hinting being disabled.

I am closing this bug as "works for me" because after trying multiple Unifont versions with hinting toggled on and off, neither I nor anybody I have asked can see any difference.


Paul Hardy



Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Group administrator
Sun 10 Sep 2017 09:32:43 PM UTC, comment #6: 

Felix,

I have not written software with Freetype, so I would not have known the ftstring command that you mentioned until your last message when you posted it. When reporting a bug, it helps to let a maintainer know your operating environment, and steps the maintainer can follow to reproduce the bug.

Your initial report did not provide that information, and you posted anonymously so I did not know how to contact you. So I spent time looking into using the Freetype library and realized I would not have time to learn my way around it in the near future, with other demands on my time. It certainly would have saved me time if you included that ftstring command in your initial report.

I had hoped to work in a collaborative, cooperative manner with you to sort this out. The abusive language in your last message is counterproductive.


Paul Hardy

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Group administrator
Thu 17 Aug 2017 05:14:43 PM UTC, comment #5: 


> First of all, what operating system are you using?


Originally Arch Linux, but the issue reproduces on Debian sid as well.

> I do not have time to learn how to write software for Freetype


Excuse me, what? All you need to do to test this on your own is to run


sudo aptitude install freetype2-demos
ftstring -m '$vS' 16 path/to/unifont.ttf


(assuming Debian because I see you're listed as the maintainer of Debian's unifont package) and spend some time toggling hinting and antialiasing options (keys 'h' and 'l'). Two lines of shell code hardly counts as 'writing software for Freetype'. If that is too hard for you, I don't know what you're doing maintaining a font package.

> I also would not post an unreleased version of Unifont anywhere publicly available.


...because?

I mean, your choice ultimately, but most other FLOSS projects aren't so shy about public test versions.

felix <felix_s>
Thu 17 Aug 2017 12:21:36 PM UTC, comment #4: 

First of all, what operating system are you using?

I do not have time to learn how to write software for Freetype, but I could have someone who does test trial font builds. I have a backlog of a lot of other things I would need to get done first. I also would not post an unreleased version of Unifont anywhere publicly available.

I will have to follow up with this after the next release.

Thank you,


Paul Hardy

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Group administrator
Wed 16 Aug 2017 03:51:47 PM UTC, comment #3: 

I'm seeing this quite late, but I can say I haven't seen significant improvement in Unifont 10.0.05.

My e-mail should be visible; thought I don't see why you couldn't post it as an attachment here: even full Unifont TTF is 12M, which is below the maximum size limit. It shouldn't be too hard to test this issue yourself either: ftstring is available in the freetype2-demos package.

felix <felix_s>
Wed 28 Jun 2017 12:58:17 PM UTC, comment #2: 

To the anonymous poster of this issue: please contact me. I will need to give you some trial font builds to test. Thank you.

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Group administrator
Wed 08 Jun 2016 02:52:14 AM UTC, comment #1: 

Thank you for taking the time to investigate and report this problem.

I am preparing the Unifont 9.0 release to follow the Unicode 9.0.0 release (expected on 21 June 2016). I will release that with the current hex2sfd, and after that will experiment to try to figure out what change in hex2sfd changed the rendering. Theoretically nothing should have. If I revert back to the old hex2sfd, glyphs above the Basic Multilingual Plane (Plane 0) won't be handled correctly in all cases.

Paul Hardy <unifoundry>
Group administrator
Mon 06 Jun 2016 01:53:14 PM UTC, original submission:  

When rendering TTF Unifont 7.0.04 and later with hinting enabled, but antialiasing disabled, FreeType generates ugly-looking artifacts (screenshot of ftstring attached). Either disabling antialiasing or disabling hinting makes the artifacts disappear. Enabling antialiasing is out of the question, however; with subpixel antialiasing, some applications will render Unifont slightly off the pixel grid, which sometimes strains eyes severely (screenshot attached; rendered with gamma 3 to exaggerate the effect, since it's not very visible in ftstring)

Reverting to the version of hex2sfd released with 7.0.03 and recompiling Unifont generates a TTF file which renders with no artifacts.

This problem might be possible to work around by a fontconfig setting, but thanks to cairo bug #11838 <https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11838> (open for NINE YEARS) the setting is not respected by some applications.

I haven't actually tried it, but I think adding bitmaps to the TTF version may also mitigate the issue.

Anonymous

 

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Attached Files
file #37403:  artifacts.png added by None (880B - image/png)
file #37404:  subpixel-aa.png added by None (891B - image/png)

 

Depends on the following items: None found

Items that depend on this one: None found

 

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    Follow 11 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2018-06-21 unifoundry Attached File- Added unifont-7.0.01-hinting-active.png, #44399
        Attached File- Added unifont-7.0.01-hinting-ignored.png, #44400
        Attached File- Added unifont-11.0.01-hinting-active.png, #44401
        Attached File- Added unifont-11.0.01-hinting-ignored.png, #44402
        StatusPostponed Works For Me
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
        Discussion LockNone Locked
    2016-06-08 unifoundry StatusNone Postponed
        Assigned toNone unifoundry
    2016-06-06 None Attached File- Added artifacts.png, #37403
        Attached File- Added subpixel-aa.png, #37404

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