Doesn't automatically enable subpixel hinting on a non-laptop flat panel

[Ville Heikkinen]

PROBLEM:
When user is using a flat panel (non-laptop), fonts with a fresh ubuntu
installation will glow red/green from their sides.

PROPOSED SOLUTION:
Ubuntus' flavour of debian-installer should prompt if the users monitor is a
flat panel. This option is already available in the sarge-version of
debian-installer. It should be done more intuivitely than debian does it, for
example:

"Is your monitor an LCD device? Most laptops' built-in monitors and flat panels
are LCD devices. This option will adjust the on-screen rendering of fonts. So if
you are using a flat panel or a laptops' built-in monitor, answer yes."

This option should modify the value of gconf's
/desktop/gnome/font_rendering/antialiasing

FROM grayscale TO rgba

For Subpixel Anti-aliasing to be enabled.

I think, for most cases,
/desktop/gnome/font_rendering/rgba_order
can be left to the default value of rgb.

/desktop/gnome/font_rendering/hinting
Can most likely be left to the default "medium", I think it's just a matter of
preference.

This should be made to affect kubuntu-desktop as well, but I do not know where
kde stores it's font-settings.

[Daniel Stone (daniels)]

This should happen automatically, really. Asking is rather dumb.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

(xserver-xorg is a better place to start than debian-installer, since the
installer basically delegates responsibility for anything graphical. It may not
be entirely accurate; feel free to pass it on further ...)

[Daniel Stone (daniels)]

GNOME needs to do this then, not xorg, but we already do it in fontconfig ... I
honestly think this bug can probably be closed.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

If I'm not mistaken, you can change this using System->Preferences->Font, which
is much better than asking a question during installation. At any rate,
fontconfig is supposed to handle this automatically now:

    - Drop our use of laptop-detect on first install, as fontconfig
      now defaults to an "Automatic" subpixel_rendering option,
      which is supposed to only turn on subpixel rendering if an LCD
      screen is detected.

[Adam Conrad (adconrad)]

fontconfig's automagic guessing should certainly be working here. If it's not,
someone can always reopen this and yell at me, but it seems to DTRT.