For as long as I can remember Porteus has been using TrueType interpreter version 35 by setting the variable FREETYPE_PROPERTIES in /etc/profile.d/freetype.sh. It's known that TrueType interpreter has been updated to 40 in 2016 through FreeType 2.7.0 -- there is a controversial version 38 released in between, but it's not relevant to us at this moment. Why is this relevant?
Have you noticed that when opening a root instance of an application on Porteus, regardless of the Desktop Environment, the font looks fatter? Here is a comparison (please, make sure you're seeing the images in their actual size, so click on the image and then, if available, on the square-with-an-arrow icon at the top):
At left running Thunar (Xfce) as guest, and at right running Thunar with sudo. Pay special attention to the words 'DEVICES', 'PLACES' and 'NETWORK' and notice how fatter they become when using interpreter version 40 (at right).
After a long journey, I found out that this happens because the variable FREETYPE_PROPERTIES is not being exposed to the root user, so it uses the default version of the interpreter, which is 40. So this raises a question: why the new version of the interpreter looks uglier than the old one? Well, it depends on the font we use.
By default Porteus uses DejaVu Sans Book, released in 2004, way before the new release of TrueType interpreter. For that reason, it looks beautiful with the old interpreter 35 -- some users have been reporting the same impression: here and here and here. However, newer fonts look terrible when rendered by interpreter 35. Take a look at this recent port of Geneva being rendered using interpreter version 35 (at left) and version 40 (at right):
Notice that not only the spacing between some characters looks odd, but also some letters look really terrible, like 'w'.
In fact, in this article FreeType website confirms that this may happen:
'Modern fonts like Calibri, Cambria, Consolas, etc., render well with [new interpreter version 40].
[...]
Switching to the new mode might take some getting used to though, so if you think your fonts are suddenly fat, fuzzy or weird, give your brain some time to adjust.
[...]
If someone finds ways to make older fonts render better without introducing lists or overly complex hacks, I'm interested.'
So this leads us Porteus developers to take a tough decision: if we update the interpreter to 40 then Porteus default font will look ugly, but if users want to change their system font, chances are that they will choose one that looks better on interpreter 40.
Another thing that I learned is that when using anti-aliasing is better to set subpixel to RGB. Take a look at this Twitter page:
At the top we have subpixel set to none and at the bottom we have subpixel set to RGB. Notice that while Twitter on Firefox (top) respects system settings -- in this case, RGB --, Twitter on Chromium family (bottom) doesn't, working like if subpixel is set to none. If we zoom-in we can see how subpixel is actually being done in both case:
To sum up I give you 2 tips and 1 question:
1- if you like anti-aliasing try to set subpixel to RGB and you'll notice that it will probably look better. How to do that is a matter for another post, since usually there's more than one place to change;
2- if you prefer subpixel set to RGB you'll probably get mad at Chromium family because some websites will not respect system settings. In this case, I'm afraid I have no ideal solution;
3- what would you do if you were a Porteus developer: would you set interpreter to 35, or change it to 40?
Cheers
