Keyboard layout indicator should respect font anti-aliasing settings

[Ilja Sekler]

Keyboard layout indicator uses wrong font anti-aliasing (gray instead of sub-pixel) and probably wrong (medium?) hinting as well. A 400% magnified screenshot of the notification area is attached as seen on Lucid daily liveCD from 2010-04-02 with Clearlooks gnome theme.

libgnomekbd4 version: 2.30.0-0ubuntu1

Reported as a separate bug upon request <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/+source/libgnomekbd/+bug/513152/comments/19>.

[Andrej Rohaŭ (arohau)]

Please pull the latest changes from git. The label rendering changed from 'toy' API in cairo to proper pango-cairo usage.

[Ilja Sekler (ilja-sekler-)]

I've applied the changeset in question <http://git.gnome.org/browse/libgnomekbd/commit/?id=342b82bfd0308275618180652dc56e7d9b663642> locally, built and installed resulting libgnomekbd4 and libgnomekbd-common on Lucid daily live CD from 2010-04-05. The patched keyboard layout panel indicator gets greenish fringes due to horizontally squeezed glyphs, especially visible with the default Ambiance gnome theme. Enlarging the panel height to 32px or even far beyond this as well as reducing font size to 9pt doesn't help: glyphs remain squeezed despite sufficient free space available.

Considering this issue with the patch, the comment <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/+source/libgnomekbd/+bug/513152/comments/22> is fully justified, IMHO.

It would be great if a real fix could be backported to the Lucid version of libgnomekbd during normal maintenance of this LTS release, once upstream provides a solution for the issue.

[Ilja Sekler (ilja-sekler-)]

Deleting the irritating assignment to <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=612371> as upstream decided to workaround color fringing with dark gnome themes by breaking things which were working fine

<http://git.gnome.org/browse/libgnomekbd/commit/?id=9b4b27724e97686521b7daacf7f8c4c4936e339b>

instead of fixing things which were broken, meaning the impossible situation with the indicator being forced into a square space. A decision to hardcode gray AA is actually equal to marking this bug WONTFIX.

[Elijah Obraztsov (elijah.obraztsov)]

Not sure I'm ready to discuss patches, however. I have same issue but generally I use flags for indicator instead of letters. After recent update flags become squared and blurred. I think it's related. Changing version of libgnomekbd4 back to 2.30.0 helped for flags only. And I do think that “Keyboard layout indicator should respect font anti-aliasing settings”.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The indicator has been updated in lucid now, do you still consider the current version has having the issue?

[Ilja Sekler (ilja-sekler-)]

I'm not sure that comment #7 was addressed to me. I've installed the version 2.30.2-0ubuntu0.1 of libgnomekbd4 and libgnomekbd-common built locally from source and none of visual glitches mentioned in this bug are fixed.

I don't have any issues with flags as in comment #6 and don't see any changes in the way how my custom SVG flags are displayed.

[Elijah Obraztsov (elijah.obraztsov)]

Just updated. Same greenish letters and squared flags, New vave

[Ilja Sekler (ilja-sekler-)]

Since there is not enough space for a 3-char description in a *square* status icon if the font size should match the rest of desktop, I see only 3 possible options for a consistent appearance:

1. revive keyboard layout indicator as gnome applet

2. use 2-char ISO codes

3. use flags

[Ilja Sekler (ilja-sekler-)]

> Same greenish letters and squared flags

Any image used as flag is scaled to fit into a square area. This behavior didn't change since this bug was reported. To avoid unwanted effects, embed flags into square transparent images or svg.

[Elijah Obraztsov (elijah.obraztsov)]

> This behavior didn't change since this bug was reported
I'm sure it changed between 2.30.0-0ubuntu2 and 2.30.1-0ubuntu1

> To avoid unwanted effects, embed flags into square transparent images or svg
Or simply roll-back to 2.30.0

[Ilja Sekler (ilja-sekler-)]

> I'm sure it changed between 2.30.0-0ubuntu2 and 2.30.1-0ubuntu1

You are right, I was wrong, sorry. As far as I understand, the aspect ratio of a displayed flag is modified to square since the commit <http://git.gnome.org/browse/libgnomekbd/commit/?id=342b82bfd0308275618180652dc56e7d9b663642> which was included in 2.30.1-0ubuntu1. This didn't bother me because my custom flags were 24x24 svg graphics from the very beginning.

[Ilja Sekler (ilja-sekler-)]

The issue didn't exist on Maverick at least since Beta, though I have no idea, what has fixed this bug.

[Ilja Sekler (ilja-sekler-)]

> The issue didn't exist on Maverick at least since Beta,
> though I have no idea, what has fixed this bug.

Please disregard my last comment, I wasn't aware of indicator-application replacing the keyboard layout status icon from libgnomekbd in Maverick.