Default font rendering should be "Subpixel smoothing" intead of "Best shapes"

[Rick Spencer]

As most monitors today are LCD monitors, the default for Ubuntu should be changed.

To track "automatic" antialiasing feature see bug 340422

[Rick Spencer (rick-rickspencer3)]

related?
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fontconfig/+bug/34937

[Rick Spencer (rick-rickspencer3)]

Declined as nominated for Jaunty. We will not hold up the release for this. However, we do want to fix it.

Currently, fontconfig uses subpixel smoothing by defaul. However, Gnome overrides this behavior. To solve this, there are two options:

1. flip the default gconf (for users who have not tweaked their settings and new users)
2. find a fix that prevents gnome from overwriting fontconfig

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

this problem can either be hacked around by enabling subpixel rendering everywhere by default, or by doing the right thing.

The right thing (for now) would be to add the notion of "automatic" fontrendering that ensures that the good defaults shipped by fontconfig are actually used.

The good fix would patch the backend (gnome-settings-daemon) and also extend the control panel to provide a automatic radio button.

I think i can prepare a fix for backend swiftly. If it rocks we might want a UI freeze exception as this will probably land a few days late.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

adding gnome-control-center as discussed above.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

i dont think there is a general issue with fontconfig here ... if there are issues with the fontconfig defaults, we can open new bugs.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

hmm .. some indentation mess ... probably should be fixed on upstream submission

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

sigh ... simple patch is just annoying ... those are a bit dirty ;). will clean them up asap.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

you can test it by going to gconf-editor and flipping automatic on and off ... play with the other particles there and see how it goes smooth if you are on automatic.

UI code drop will do tomorrow.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

as discussed we will change the default now and put the real fix (auto detection and fontconfig) into a PPA for testing.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-settings-daemon - 2.25.92-0ubuntu5

---------------
gnome-settings-daemon (2.25.92-0ubuntu5) jaunty; urgency=low

  * debian/gnome-settings-daemon.gconf-defaults: use subpixel
    rendering and slight hinting as the default in jaunty (even on CRT
    monitors for now) (LP: #332172)

 -- Alexander Sack <email address hidden> Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:06:03 +0100

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

i made a new bug for the "real" fix -> bug 340422