AA Font Tweaking




Better looking Anti-Aliased Fonts


1) Download the latest Freetype2 rpm from Texstar's ftp-server:

ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/

This is a tweaked version of Freetype that has the bytecode interpeter turned on which improves the look of AA fonts.


2) I Downloaded the tweaked version of libXft called libXft-nohint from the following link. There is also a new version called libXft-slight available:

http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/xfthack/


3) Make a back up copy of the /usr/X11R6/lib/libXft.so.1.1 file.


4) Untar the libXft-nohint.tar.gz and exit the xserver.  From the console cd to the directory that you untared the new libXft file to then copy the new libXft.so.1.1 file into the /usr/X11R6/lib with:

cp libXft.so.1.1 /usr/X11R6/lib


5) Restart Kde with startkdeor kde3 if running KDE 3.


Note:

Turn on the font Anti-Aliasing in the KDE Control Panel. The Windows ttf fonts look best, you can use Drakfont to install Windows ttf fonts from a windows partition or from a floppy containing your favorite ms ttf fonts.




Mozilla Anti-Aliased Fonts


1) I installed the Redhat rpm with no problems in Mandrake 8.2 by opening a console and typing:

rpm -Uvh --force --nodeps mozilla-0.9.9-0_xft.i386.rpm


This is a hacked version of Mozilla which will no longer be needed once the Xft code is re-written. Download the latest Mozilla-xft rpm from here:

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/experimental/xft/


2) To use the anti-aliased fonts with Mozilla, you'll need to issue the following command:

export MOZILLA_XFT=1


Note:

You can insert the command mentioned above into your /.bashrc file in your home directory so that you don't have to run the command everytime. The .bashrc is a hidden file so you'll have to enable "view hidden files" to see it.


Add MS TTF to Mozilla


This is how I enabled Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 2 to use my windows fonts (taken from a post by Texstar on pclinuxonline):


Open the following file with a text editor:


/usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref/unix.js


Edit or add the following lines under the // TrueType section:


1) Make sure the following line has true, not false


 pref("font.FreeType2.enable", true);


2) Remove:

 pref("font.FreeType2.autohinted", false)


3) Add if necessary:

 pref("font.FreeType2.unhinted", true);


4) Add the following about 8 lines down from the above:


 pref("font.directory.truetype.2", "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/drakfont/ttf");


Start Mozilla, click on Edit, Preferences, Appearance, Fonts. You should now have your TTF Windows fonts available to use.

Tip:  once you find a font that looks ok, uncheck "Allow documents to use other fonts"