[SOLVED] Font rendering messed up after latest freetype2 upgrade.

Question

I haven't touched my font configuration, but the appearance of most fonts has changed across the board (i.e. in every application) since I upgraded to freetype 2.4.6 yesterday. In particular, the fonts are less strong, and in LibreOffice Calc in particular the spacing is messed up at certain levels of magnification despite having hinting enabled. Here is my ~/.gtkrc-2.0:
gtk-icon-theme-name = "nuoveXT2"
gtk-theme-name = "Clearlooks"
gtk-font-name = "FreeSans 10"
gtk-xft-antialias = 1
gtk-xft-hinting = 1
gtk-xft-hintstyle = "hintfull"
gtk-xft-rgba = "rgb"
I have tried many combinations of AA and hinting, and nothing seems to work. Fonts do look slightly differently when I change the hinting settings (except in Calc), but they do not look as crisp as before the upgrade. Can anyone help me?
Last edited by nbtrap (2011-08-01 01:44:13)

Answer 1

It figures that I fix this right after giving up and posting to the forums. It seems that either (1) Xresources overrides gtk settings or (2) Libreoffice ignores gtk settings. I had not had any ~/.Xresources file, but after creating one:
Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.antialias: true
Xft.rgba: rgb
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
and adding
xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources
to ~/.xinitrc,, the font rendering has returned to normal across all applications, The strange thing is that I didn't have an Xresources config file before when the rendering was working fine. It's also weird that fonts in GTK apps looks crisper with Xresources configured than they do with the same configuration in ~/.gtkrc-2.0. I can't figure out why, but at least it's now working.