Chrome broken fonts
Posted: 2017-08-22 Filed under: desktop, network | Tags: chromium, font, google chrome, hinting, rendering Leave a commentI recently upgraded to Google Chrome 60.0.3112, using the script in Slackware 14.2 /extra. I immediatelly noticed a problem with fonts rendering, which affected not only web sites, but the browser itself. The same problem exists in Alien Bob’s Chromium package, version 60.3112.78.
I googled around and finally found a discussion about this in Linux Mint’s forum. They say it is a font hinting bug in this particular version of Google Chrome and should be fixed in the upcoming version. Meanwhile, they suggest executing the following command, before starting the browser:
export FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="truetype:interpreter-version=35"
To make thins more automated, I opened /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome
and added the above line in the beginning, like this:
#!/bin/bash # # Copyright (c) 2011 The Chromium Authors. All rights reserved. # Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style license that can be # found in the LICENSE file. # Fix font issues export FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="truetype:interpreter-version=35" # Let the wrapped binary know that it has been run through the wrapper. export CHROME_WRAPPER="`readlink -f "$0"`" HERE="`dirname "$CHROME_WRAPPER"`"
Now, font hinting looks as before:
Phew!