Freetype hinting mode
Posted: 2019-04-17 Filed under: desktop, system | Tags: dejavu, font, freetype, hinting, monospace Leave a commentI just upgraded to -current, which should become Slackware 15.0 at some point. I immediately noticed that hinting was awful. I tried changing the settings in Xfce, but there was no improvement. Finally, I realised that it should be set up elsewhere.
I needed to set it up in /etc/profile.d/freetype.sh
. I opened the file and uncommented the following line:
#!/bin/sh # Configure Freetype properties. Here this is used to set the default mode # for font hinting. Other controllable properties are listed in the section # 'Controlling FreeType Modules' in the reference's table of contents. # # Three hinting settings are available: # This is the classic hinting mode used in Freetype 2.6.x: export FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="truetype:interpreter-version=35" # This is Infinality mode, which was never enabled by default. It is slower # than the new subpixel hinting mode, but said to be more accurate: #export FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="truetype:interpreter-version=38" # This is the new default subpixel hinting mode used in Freetype 2.7.x. It is # derived from the Infinality code base stripped to the bare minimum with all # configurability removed in the name of speed and simplicity: #export FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="truetype:interpreter-version=40"
Also, many of the traditional fonts, such as Monospace, somehow look like crap in the text editors. I ended up specifying the DejaVu fonts, instead.