fontconfig: new changes from Debian require merging

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical)]

New changes from Debian require merging into Ubuntu.

Some, if not all, of this work has been done automatically;
however the changes should be reviewed before signing and
uploading.

The new source package, along with various patches to aid
your review are available at:

        http://people.ubuntu.com/~scott/ongoing-merge/fontconfig/

In particular see the REPORT file for details.

 -- Your friendly neighbourhood Merge-O-Matic.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

I noticed in looking at the merge conflict in fontconfig that Debian has changed
the way they set the default for subpixel rendering. They now do this:

+ if db_fget xserver-xfree86/config/monitor/lcd seen; then
+ if [ "$RET" = true ]; then
+ db_get xserver-xfree86/config/monitor/lcd
+ if [ "$RET" = true ]; then
+ db_set fontconfig/rendering_type "Subpixel rendering (LCD screens)"
+ else
+ db_set fontconfig/rendering_type "Bytecode interpreter (CRT screens)"
+ fi
+ fi
+ fi

what we had been doing in Ubuntu was to set the default based on laptop-detect.
 Is it better to use the xserver-xfree86 config data (or in our case,
xserver-xorg)? Or is laptop-detect a better idea?

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

I'm actually somewhat suspicious of that whole "funt around with
/etc/fonts/local.conf" business now. I have a hunch that once set it
permanently locks your X server into being subpixel rendered, making the GUI
option in the Font Preferences dialog quite useless.

In particular, it sets the sub-pixel alignment to RGB, which may be totally wrong.

Cc'ing people in on this discussion in general.

I'm also a bit dubious over this change in general -- they've actually switched
the autohinter off for subpixel rendering, and I don't see where the change to
turn the bytecode interpreter on is. This reverts the previous change which
made all the fonts much crisper and shinier (to my eyes).

[Shaya Potter (spotter)]

at least on my laptop (1600x1200 T42p) if I have subpixel rendering on w/ the
autohinters the fonts look really ugly as there's only what I can refer to as
"color bleeding". I always turn it off (heck, I turned off everything in
loca.conf as gnome takes care of the subpixel stuff anyways)

(In reply to comment #2)
> I'm also a bit dubious over this change in general -- they've actually switched
> the autohinter off for subpixel rendering, and I don't see where the change to
> turn the bytecode interpreter on is. This reverts the previous change which
> made all the fonts much crisper and shinier (to my eyes).

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

This is a reminder, further changes have occurred in Debian
since this report was filed. The URL above has been updated
with the new source package.

[Daniel Stone (daniels)]

I'm not entirely qualified to comment on the hinter versus subpixel interaction,
but I suspect they *may* possibly be mutually exclusive. As for picking LCds,
xresprobe should probably have a way to work that out. But if local.conf
overrides ~/.fonts/config, or whatever it is, then that's a fontconfig bug that
needs to be fixed (so you can set the subpixel order, e.g, since not everyone
has RGB).

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Reminder: tomorrow (2004-01-12) is the deadline to close these bugs by
completing merges from Debian unstable. This is the last of the final batch of
merge bugs, and everyone has a manageable number to deal with, so please
complete them by the end of your day tomorrow

[LaMont Jones (lamont)]

Fixed in 2.2.3-4ubuntu1

[Adam Conrad (adconrad)]

Remerged with version 2.3.1-2ubuntu2