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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Font hinting: suggestion to consistently restrict its usage to UI
From:       Albert Astals Cid <aacid () kde ! org>
Date:       2009-09-29 20:40:16
Message-ID: 200909292240.17431.aacid () kde ! org
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A Dimarts, 29 de setembre de 2009, Benoit Jacob va escriure:
> 2009/9/29 Albert Astals Cid <aacid@kde.org>:
> > A Dimarts, 29 de setembre de 2009, Benoit Jacob va escriure:
> >> Dear list,
> >>
> >> This is to start a discussion. If you want me to get to work on this
> >> rather than just talking, i'll need guidance because i'm not expert of
> >> these things.
> >>
> >> A KDE application, like KWord or Okular, shows two kinds of text on
> >> screen: 1)  UI text  (e.g. menus)
> >> 2)  Document text  (the user's document, in WYSIWYG apps like KWord or
> >> Okular. Not talking about Kate here!)
> >>
> >> I'd like to make the case that font hinting should _never_ be used for
> >> _document_ text. Yes, for _UI_ text it's a matter of taste and as such
> >> it's perfectly fine. I'm saying that the configuration dialog in
> >> System Settings should only affect UI text and not document text.
> >
> > That's where I stopped reading, you can't work on the code because you
> > are not an expert (i don't blame you for that, i'm not an expert in font
> > rendering either) and you are dictating a thing that in my opinion is
> > totally about what people do or don't like, you don't know what people
> > like, you have a rationale about why you like it that way, but that
> > doesn't convince people they are wrong.
> 
> I'm not sure at all that I was being subjective there. Skimming
> through comments on Sven's blog post, I found a very interesting
> comment:
> 
> http://slangkamp.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/kword-font-rendering/#comment-97
> 
> This makes exactly the same case as I do, only much more expertly.
> Along the way you learn that both Evince and Adobe Acrobat use
> non-hinted text.
> 
> So, please consider that there are technical reasons why hinting is
> technically broken in this setting.
> 
> The same comment also mentions that for KWord an alternative is
> possible by inserting spaces to counter the distortion caused by
> hinting. I am still not convinced as this doesn't fix the problem that
> the font will look different at different zoom levels, but oh well,
> what I really care about is Okular anyway.
> 
> Would you say that the Okular screenshot that I linked to,
> 
> http://imagebin.ca/view/OhF1EPt.html
> 
> is OK? And that it's just a matter of taste? I took it for granted
> that that rendering was terrible far beyond what could be "a matter of
> taste".

You said you are not a font expert yet you claim this is because of font 
hinting. I see a logic problem here. I'm not a font expert so i really don't 
know if this is because of hinting or not. And no, you are not the first 
person to complain yet noone seems to scratch his itch.

Albert

> 
> Benoit
> 
> >> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to
> >> unsubscribe <<
> 

 
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