Comment 5 for bug 109734

After looking on the Freetype mailing list it looks like this is a known problem with rendering Verdana bold in anti-aliased mode:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/freetype/2006-11/msg00011.html

In particular in this post one of the Freetype authors says certain sizes of Verdana bold cannot be rendered properly in anti-aliased mode:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/freetype/2006-11/msg00042.html

It's damn annoying Linux still has these basic problems rendering the Microsoft fonts which are used so extensively on the web. As a work around I've added this rule to my .fonts.conf file in my home directory which (I think) disables anti-aliasing for bold Verdana at some font sizes:

<!-- Disable antialiasing for Verdana Bold at some font sizes-->
<match target="font" >
  <test compare="more" name="weight" >
   <const>medium</const>
  </test>
 <test name="family" qual="any" >
   <string>Verdana</string>
  </test>
  <!-- check font size -->
  <test compare="more_eq" name="pixelsize" qual="any" >
   <double>11</double>
  </test>
  <test compare="less_eq" name="pixelsize" qual="any" >
   <double>18</double>
  </test>
  <edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
   <bool>false</bool>
  </edit>
</match>