[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
On 06/06/13 21:53, Simon Waters wrote: > On 06/06/13 20:31, bad apple wrote: >> Better yet, it also works on Debian (which as much as I love >> it, has *the* worst default font rendering of any OS ever). > The font rendering improved markedly with Squeeze, but still the kerning > is borked. I may have tweaked the default rendering a little in the > past, but in Wheezy the only issue of note is the kerning on Debian to > my eyes. It certainly isn't the worst OS ever, I remember when it was > all monospaced because - well that's how wide a character was. > > No current distros are as bad as the PDFs (and thus printing) rendered > by Google Chrome; Google have brought this bad quality kerning to all > the platforms that Chrome runs on - equally opportunity kerning gaff. > > Wonder how much coding it took to make the font rendering worse than the > Debian default? Sometimes you have to wonder at progress in computing. I > vaguely recall that on screen font rendering is sometimes worse in > Chrome than Firefox, but I can't remember the specifics. > > I've tried using the source to fix the PDF issue but working through the > relevant innards of the libraries broke my will to create a fix after > substantial effort. So I've documented as much breakage as I can and > linked together some of the relevant bug reports, and it does look like > someone will try and fix that one by replacing the rendering engine.... > > Mostly I conclude that bad font rendering doesn't seem to hold products > back, even web browsers, but then for Chrome it mostly affected printing > and who prints web pages? I believe Safari didn't have the same PDF > issue on MacOS as Chrome had, curious that. > Ok, I guess I might be guilty of a bit of hyperbole there... "worst font rendering ever" might be overstepping the mark a bit. But Debian fonts are hideous - there are plenty of font.config tweaks you can experiment with but in my experience it's like putting lipstick on a pig. I have nothing to say about Chrome in general, because it's yet another entry on my list of despised entities that I won't touch. But, yeah, you really do have to wonder about 'progress' in computing - a long, long time ago HP-UX and Solaris/SunOS both had boot screen splash logos advertising their full PostScript compliance. Sure, the WM (CDE) may have looked like hell but at least the fonts within it were rendered nicely... And I'm still waiting for something as awesome as AIX's smitty to come to any modern platform - webmin and YaST aren't a bad attempt, but they still suck compared to smitty or even smit. Bah humbug get off my lawn etc etc I suppose. Cheers -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq