XFree86 4.4 messed up fonts

[raab]

I upgraded XFree86 to 4.4 today, and it did something to my fonts. They AA works just fine, but the fonts are all "off" a little, see here for example: http://home.comcast.net/~texture/fonts.jpg

They used to look like the ones on the right, except the antialiasing was better. Now, they look like the ones on the left. I tried removing X totally and installing it from the .tgz files but it didn't work, what can I do? Please help!

[JohnT]

Have you done a comparison between your old and new /etc/X11/XF86Config? How about your font modules? Are they enabled?

# This loads the font modules
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "speedo"

Are your font paths correct? Are you using TTF?

[raab]

JohnT,

I have all those lines in my XF86Config. It's the same one, I made a backup before I installed it and copied it over. Like I said, the fonts seem to be antialised correctly, but aren't what those fonts normally look like - they're "off"... it's like it's a different font face altogether. Look at the picture, you can see how the "m" in Times New Roman on the left looks more like "rn" than "m". Tahoma and Verdana don't look anything like they should, and Bitstream Vera Sans now looks basically the same as Tahoma.

[JohnT]

What type of video card are you using? What desktop manager? What version? Attach your XF867Config file to your next post.

[raab]

Thanks for taking the time to try and help me. I attached my config file. I'm using Fluxbox 0.1.14 on a GeForce FX 5200, although this still happens when I use KDE. Also, I never had this problem before I upgraded XFree86 from xfree86-4.3.0-i386-2 (what came with Slackware 9.0) to xfree86-4.4.0-i486-1 (what is now in the slackware-current tree).

[JohnT]

I have the same upgrade to XF86 and my configs are similar to yours.....the difference between yours and mine.....your using the downloaded "nvidia" driver and I am using the plain "nv" thats included in the Slack distro. My fonts are excellent. it must be something tunable with your nvidia driver.....look at the docs that came with it.

[raab]

K, I'll check. I don't know if it makes a difference, but I've been using the nvidia driver since I installed Slackware in August, and when I upgraded X to 4.4 was the first time this has happened to me.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by raab
K, I'll check. I don't know if it makes a difference, but I've been using the nvidia driver since I installed Slackware in August, and when I upgraded X to 4.4 was the first time this has happened to me.
Your upgrade to 4.4 is the only change in the equation. I run Slack, I upgraded to 4.4, I have an nvidia card, I run the generic driver, I have have great fonts.......that would lead me to the assumption that there is some adjustment to be made between the driver and the configs....of course assumptions can be wrong and I am not using that specific nvidia card.

[raab]

I tried with the nv driver...same thing :(

[JohnT]

Are all applications showing fonts in this way..or just some.

Try this...
"cd" to your fontdirectory which is normally.....
cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts
then run this command
fc-cache -fv ./

[raab]

It's all programs that use antialised fonts (GTK, Qt apps). I tried that command both in and out of X, no change. This was the output:

[root@hostname fonts]# fc-cache -fv ./
fc-cache: "./": caching, 0 fonts, 12 dirs
fc-cache: ".//100dpi": caching, 398 fonts, 0 dirs
fc-cache: ".//75dpi": caching, 398 fonts, 0 dirs
fc-cache: ".//CID": caching, 0 fonts, 0 dirs
fc-cache: ".//encodings": caching, 0 fonts, 1 dirs
fc-cache: ".//encodings/large": caching, 0 fonts, 0 dirs
fc-cache: ".//local": caching, 0 fonts, 0 dirs
fc-cache: ".//misc": caching, 55 fonts, 0 dirs
fc-cache: ".//util": caching, 0 fonts, 0 dirs
fc-cache: ".//Speedo": caching, 0 fonts, 0 dirs
fc-cache: ".//TTF": caching, 53 fonts, 0 dirs
fc-cache: ".//Type1": caching, 29 fonts, 0 dirs
fc-cache: ".//cyrillic": caching, 0 fonts, 0 dirs
fc-cache: ".//fluxbox-artwiz-fonts": caching, 5 fonts, 0 dirs
fc-cache: succeeded
[root@hostname fonts]#


Also, something I noticed is that Japanese characters aren't displayed in the font I choose (they're not antialised). They're all jagged bitmaps, where before they would be displayed in Bitstream Vera Sans (in Gaim for example). This makes me think, do you think maybe X for some reason is loading and using other fonts before it gets to the specified ones?

[JohnT]

You could try maybe changing the order of some of your fontpaths in XF86. I wouldn't change but one or two at a time. Try starting some applications in the terminal and look for font related errors.

[JohnT]

Check to se that you have "freetype" installed...if installed, upgrade it to the newest version. Slackware has a package for it if you don't care to compile it. Upgrade with swaret.

[raab]

:D :D :D

Got it working!

I recompiled Freetype, but I edited the file include/freetype/config/ftoption.h and uncommented the "TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER" macro.

Thanks for all your help :)

[JohnT]

Glad you got it working...I knew you would eventually narrow it down. Where did you get the hint to compile it that way? I seem to remember a hack on the "byte code interpeter?

[raab]

I searched for "XFree86 4.4 messed up ttf fonts" or something like that on Google, and found someone else that had the problem. A reply to their post said the bytecode interpreter was disabled, so I searched for "freetype enable bytecode interpreter" and found those instructions on yet another newsgroup. So all is good now.

[j79zlr]

Thats interesting, I didn't have a problem with it using swaret to upgrade to 4.4 on my slack install, but when you install XFree86 on BSD there is a make option to disable it because of the copyrights on FreeType.

[JohnT]

And thats even interesting further...:D ...I have not had this problem in Slack or BSD.