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Xft Support For Mozilla

keithp writes "The results of a few short hours of hacking by blizzard (with a bit of help from me) can be seen here." According to Keith, "The hope is to have a patch of less than 100 lines; currently it's more like 400 lines. ... The patch uses a new version of the Xft library available at http://keithp.com. That will be integrated into the XFree86 CVS tree after 4.2 stablizes; the existing Xft library will remain in place for backwards compatibility. One feature of the new library is that it works with older X servers that don't have the Render extension, providing AA text (including the LCD optimizations) for any screen with a TrueColor visual." Chris Blizzard provided a link to the patch itself, as it stands right now.

190 comments

  1. Nice link... by FortKnox · · Score: 4, Funny

    the first link autocloses the window...

    And am I the only one that thought "Wow, Blizzard stopped coding for WarCraft 3 to help Mozilla out?!?"

    --
    Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
    1. Re:Nice link... by XBL · · Score: 2

      I know that he has been heavily involved with Mozilla for well over a year, maybe even over two years. Cool guy.

  2. LCD what? by augros · · Score: 2, Interesting

    LCD optimizations? what are these, and how can i get them? and are they sexy?

    why is this patch HUGE compared to the older one that often gets supplied with the libgdkxft.so that you preload?

    1. Re:LCD what? by chabotc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This patch patches mozilla to fully use Xft rendering. The other patch patched mozilla to use GDK rendering.

      Mozilla is trying to move away from using gdk for its font rendering to make it more portable and less reliant on gdk. Also it should be more flexiable and faster.

      I gues the difference in size comes from the fact that it takes more code to use Xft directly then to use libgdkxft. (this is kinda obvious, since the Xft using code is then in libgdkxft).

      Bottom line though, the libgdkxft patch didnt have a chance to get included in main stream mozilla, where as this ones probably does.

    2. Re:LCD what? by Brian+Kendig · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm assuming that 'LCD optimizations' refers to antialiasing using specific units in a triad, as has been discussed here a long while ago (with regards to a technology from Microsoft known as 'ClearType', I think -- the only original idea I've ever heard of from Microsoft).

      If I remember correctly, it makes use of the concept that every pixel in a LCD display is made up of a red element, a green element, and a blue element, smooshed together horizontally. So if you antialias black-on-white text by breaking down each pixel into thirds like this, you can get much finer results than if you treated each pixel as an indivisible element. Each character antialiased in this way will be faintly edged with blue on the left and red on the right, but it's not noticeable to a casual user.

      I could be completely misinterpreting the meaning of 'LCD optimizations,' though.

    3. Re:LCD what? by Reality_X · · Score: 2, Informative

      Unfortunately, Microsoft didn't come up with ClearType. Well, they came up with the name, but the technology was in use by many others before MS, see http://grc.com/ctwho.htm for some information.

      Also, the sub-pixel font rendering was in XFree86 before it was declared "ClearType" and used by MS.

    4. Re:LCD what? by Jhan · · Score: 1

      This reminds me a lot of the Amiga Hold-and-Modify graphics mode. In this mode a pixels color is calculated by 'holding' the last pixels color, and modifying either R,G or B. This would leed to color fringing at high contrast borders.

      Funny how history repeats itself...

      ObFunny:
      <homer>Mmmm.... HAM.... Gaaaaaarh...</homer>

      --

      I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.

  3. inappropriate terms by augros · · Score: 1

    uh, what exactly is linux klugding in? if u mean MOZILLA needs to be PATCHED to use xft, i see what u mean. but mozilla is not linux nor is patching "kludging." furthermore, render and xft has been around for years as well.

  4. VERY exciting by kwj8fty1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    This patch looks very promising. One of windows XP's big claim was better LCD support; they are right, it does look quite sharp on any type of square pixel display.

    As I'm sure most of you know, most monitors use round pixels, whereas most LCDs use square or the more typical rectangular pixels. So what this means from a GUI standpoint: You need to optimize for the output device. The end result in the screenshot looks GREAT.

    Good work guys!

    1. Re:VERY exciting by Booker · · Score: 4, Informative

      An excellent explanation of antialiasing for LCDs can be found here, and a HOWTO for implementing this on Linux is here. The screenshots in the article do look better than I have been able to achieve, though.

    2. Re:VERY exciting by Otter · · Score: 5, Insightful
      From the HOWTO:
      Now, edit your /etc/X11/XftConfig file, and add a line at the end. Most LCD screens will look better with R-G-B LCD Sub-Pixel Rendering. If yours does, add this line:
      match edit rgba = rgb;

      See, this is what I love and hate about Linux. The good news is someone hacked this up and someone else documented it and now Konqueror looks *sweet* on my TiBook.

      The bad news is -- how the hell was I supposed to know to do this? I mean, besides reading every comment on Slashdot until someone posted a link. (Thank you, by the way, for two excellent links.)

    3. Re:VERY exciting by Khalid · · Score: 4, Informative

      No ! you could have looked for it in goups.google.com by sarching for something like this "LCD, TrueType, Xfree86" you would have found it in some seconds !!

      searching in groups.google.com has become a "reflex" for me, and it pays !!

    4. Re:VERY exciting by spectecjr · · Score: 3, Informative

      An excellent explanation of antialiasing for LCDs can be found here [grc.com], and a HOWTO for implementing this on Linux is here [jmason.org]. The screenshots in the article do look better than I have been able to achieve, though.

      An even better explanation not written by a muppet who doesn't seem to get it that NO, the Apple II did NOT have this first, and NO, his crappy implementation is NOT how it works -- he's only got a 1st order approximation -- can be seen here:

      http://research.microsoft.com/~jplatt/ClearType/de fault.htm

      Oh yeah; read the papers that he links to. That's where you'll get the real scoop on the technique.

      Simon

      --
      Coming soon - pyrogyra
    5. Re:VERY exciting by ywwg · · Score: 1

      yes, google has now announce you too can find out, ARE YOU A GOOP? Are you more like Lemeetri, or ... uh I can't think of any others! Looks like I need goops.google.com!

    6. Re:VERY exciting by linuxguy · · Score: 1


      Maybe that is the job of the Linux distributors.
      They are the ones doing this work. The users should not have to go hunting for these nuggets.

    7. Re:VERY exciting by sad_ · · Score: 0

      > The bad news is -- how the hell was I supposed to know to do this?

      Ha! you seem to forget that Linux is and X are OPEN. meaning you have access to everything you need: documentation and source.

      The problem is not that the information is not available. but it is hard to find if you don't know what to look for.

      This is why i don't like the windows environment. how the hell are you ever supposed to find out how to do things/how things work?

      --
      On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
    8. Re:VERY exciting by ajs · · Score: 2

      You, an average end-user, are not supposed to know this. You are supposed to do what all software end-users do. Wait for your vendor to add it as a configuration option to some gui menu somewhere.

      It's not the XFree86 folks' job to give you wizzy convinient way to do it. It's their "job", if you'll pardon the term, to provide the underlying functionality.

      I imagine that by the time the next rev of Gnome is integrated into the next rev of Red Hat, you'll see such an option in the Gnome control panel. If that's too long to wait, then you're not an end-user.

      If it only feels too long, then you're SOL ;-) Start reading them man-pages!

  5. Oh dear by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Whoopee.... blurry text, just what I needed.

    Luckily I never load Render & I never intend to - after about 5 minutes of looking at KDE with it enabled I had a bad headache. That font smoothing stuff is *really* hard on the eyes.

    I remember when the old archimedes did the same thing... it kinda worked there because they were crappy monitors anyway. With a sharp 17" it's not an improvement.

    1. Re:Oh dear by kwj8fty1 · · Score: 1

      Conversely, I find non antialiasing fonts quite hard on the eyes. I'm quite pleased that there is good support for this under xfree86. Also, the fact that it works under native X11 calls, means we can look at transparent X-terms in a whole new way. Very exciting times.

    2. Re:Oh dear by slashdot2.2sucks · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What resolution are you running in <= 800x600 ?

      I run at 1600x1200 with large, scalable truetype and type1 fonts and while without AA the fonts don't look bad, with AA the fonts appear to have perfectly, continuous, crisp edges and are not fuzzy at all.

      Also, with the way XFree is set up now, you can have AA on/off for different sized fonts, so if you are at a low resolution you can turn AA off for tiny fonts and on for larger fonts.

    3. Re:Oh dear by st.+augustine · · Score: 2, Insightful


      Whoopee.... blurry text, just what I needed....That font smoothing stuff is *really* hard on the eyes....it kinda worked
      [back in the day] because they were crappy monitors anyway. With a sharp 17" it's not an improvement.

      I love it when people can't tell the difference between "I hate it" and "It sucks."
      --

      -- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
    4. Re:Oh dear by Tyndareos · · Score: 1

      Spot on. Every time I tried it or see it in normal (font) sized texts of reasonable size my eyes get sore trying to focus right.I use Microsoft Verdana in mozilla and helvetica (9pt) for KDE programs. It's perfectly legible and doesn't looked jagged at all.

      I'm certainly not saying that this stuff isn't useful for anybody, but you shouldn't use it just because others tell you that it's better or because you think it's superior. That's plain nuts.

    5. Re:Oh dear by Howie · · Score: 1

      you shouldn't use it just because [other's say so, or because] you think it's superior. That's plain nuts.

      If not because you think it's superior, just when should you use it? At random?

      Or do you mean as a developer enabling it for others? I can't understand what you said if you meant for yourself...

      --
      "don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
    6. Re:Oh dear by drfrank · · Score: 1

      I love it when people can't tell the difference between "I hate it" and "It sucks."

      These statements are equivelant. Implicit in the phrase, "It sucks." is the phrase, "In my opinion." since there is no objective measure of "suckiness".

    7. Re:Oh dear by Tyndareos · · Score: 1

      If not because you think it's superior, just when should you use it? At random?

      That should have been: "[You shouldn't use it] just because you think that it's superior without actually comparing...

    8. Re:Oh dear by damiam · · Score: 5, Informative
      If you don't read AA fonts at normal sizes, then don't use them. I only enable them for larger fonts, where they look good.

      Put this into /etc/X11/Xftconfig:

      match
      any size > 8
      any size < 15
      edit
      antialias = false;

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    9. Re:Oh dear by KeyserDK · · Score: 1

      AA fonts doesnt make your current fonts better than they are. AA magic.

      Edgy (bad) fonts get blurry. Good fonts dont they get sharp. (removes the tiny edges visible).

      Try using some of microsoft's truetype fonts (monotype). Here they have a quite nice script for getting those fonts. Use them in kde/gnome and be amazed ;).

      --
      still reading?
    10. Re:Oh dear by st.+augustine · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      I love it when people can't tell the difference between "I hate it" and "It sucks."

      These statements are equivelant. Implicit in the phrase, "It sucks." is the phrase, "In my opinion." since there is no objective measure of "suckiness".

      Okay, then let me rephrase:
      I love it when people present their opinions as facts.
      For instance, "That font smoothing stuff is *really* hard on the eyes" would appear to be a fact, but actually it's an opinion. So is "With a sharp 17" it's not an improvement".

      P.S. Either your spelling or your typing sucks.

      --

      -- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
    11. Re:Oh dear by Malc · · Score: 2

      I primarily use Windows. I've been using AA fonts under WinNT/2K for years, and I can't stand looking at a screen without them. MSFT have done a good job. What I have discovered in my brief forrays into Linux, is that Mozilla seems to do a horrid job of rendering AA fonts, even with the same fonts taken from my Windows partition. I don't understand it, but the same page in Mozilla under Linux is far inferior to when it's displayed under Windows, to the extent some smaller point sizes become almost unreadable.

    12. Re:Oh dear by protonman · · Score: 1

      objective measure of "suckiness".

      That would be suction.

      --
      The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
    13. Re:Oh dear by spectecjr · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I primarily use Windows. I've been using AA fonts under WinNT/2K for years, and I can't stand looking at a screen without them. MSFT have done a good job. What I have discovered in my brief forrays into Linux, is that Mozilla seems to do a horrid job of rendering AA fonts, even with the same fonts taken from my Windows partition. I don't understand it, but the same page in Mozilla under Linux is far inferior to when it's displayed under Windows, to the extent some smaller point sizes become almost unreadable.

      That may be because Windows doesn't actually 'antialias' fonts until they get way too small (less than about 4 or 5 point), or way big (bigger than about 30 point). In the middle, it takes a half-antialiasing, half-hinting approach. So curves and diagonals get smoothed, but important high-frequency information in the font (ie. horizontal, vertical lines) don't get modified.

      This gives nice sharp stems in the letter I, for example. And in 'i', the dot on top is antialiased, but the rest of the font is drawn as single-pixel lines (at least, at about 10pt on my screen it is).

      It's kind of clever, and works pretty well.

      Si

      --
      Coming soon - pyrogyra
    14. Re:Oh dear by jovlinger · · Score: 2, Informative

      Good hinting is key. And is really hard.

      I believe that M$ have several fundamental patents in the area of automatic hinting (which I seem to recall involves global minimazation).
      So don't hold your breath waiting for Linux to get it.

    15. Re:Oh dear by Jay+Carlson · · Score: 2
      What a great time to read this. Now, for the second day in a row, I have a huge headache at the end of the day from using KDE antialiasing.
      • This was on a 1024x768 laptop display, with subpixel rendering correctly configured.
      • All sizes antialiased. Hey, it workes on the Mac, and I really do want to know if antialiasing is better for me for the majority of text I work with. With subpixel rendering, it seems plausible...
      • Using a variety of well-hinted fonts, primarily the "Microsoft Web core fonts"
      • At sizes comparable to what I normally use
      So why did I put up with this headache for a *second* day? Because I seem to be unusually sensitive to changes in text display. When I switched from a Diamond Stealth 64 VRAM (968) to a Matrox Millenium, I got this same headache for like four days, even though I was running the same monitor, same resolution, same refresh rate, and same fonts. IIRC, it even had the same TI ramdac! But the Millenium had higher quality analog circuitry after the ramdac, and had sharper edges. After I got used to it, it was much nicer.

      It may not be sharpness. If I get stuck in an environment where I have to spend a lot of time reading fonts I'm not used to, I get this kind of headache for a while too.

      So now, the question is, do I care enough to try another day using the Xft setup? Will it be worth it? Who knows, but I'm gonna go have a beer and go nowhere near a display for about 12 hours....

    16. Re:Oh dear by Brian+Kendig · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I find jagged fonts hard on my eyes, too... but I also find antialising under Linux to be hard on my eyes.

      Here's an example of the Slashdot page antialiased under Mac OS X. Compare it to the example above. How come it looks so much cleaner under OS X (practically as good as printed type) than it does under Linux? Will Linux ever support this quality of antialiasing?

    17. Re:Oh dear by LunaticLeo · · Score: 1

      Not to be contrarian. I found the MacOS to be so blurry that I thought your post might be a joke. The fonts on the MacOS image were smaller than the Xft example screen dump, but even then I thought the Xft were cleaner.

      --
      -- I am not a fanatic, I am a true believer.
    18. Re:Oh dear by Darren+Winsper · · Score: 1

      Err...I actually think the OS X rendering is worse than the Xft one.

    19. Re:Oh dear by NoMercy · · Score: 1

      Old archimedes? Well it is now only RISC OS the operating system which thoes old machines ran, and the font anti-aliasing works as fine today on huge resolution monitors as it did back then, every other font anti-aliasing I have seen pales in comparison. No support for LCD pannels though, but you can't have it all.

    20. Re:Oh dear by modulus · · Score: 1

      Any tech-related site looks dirty when rendered in any browser in windows.

    21. Re:Oh dear by Brian+Kendig · · Score: 2

      That's interesting... at what resolution and color depth were you viewing the OS X screenshot?

      I honestly don't see any blurriness in the OS X screenshot at 1280x1024 resolution and 24-bit color...

    22. Re:Oh dear by kilrogg · · Score: 2

      I'm on an 1400x1050 LCD (24bit), and I agree with the above poster, the OSX image looks very blurry. Were both of these screen shots intended for LCD screens?

    23. Re:Oh dear by Brian+Kendig · · Score: 1

      I don't think so -- I generated mine while I was using an LCD screen, but OS X doesn't yet do sub-pixel antialiasing.

      I still don't see any blurriness on the OS X image. Maybe it's because I'm used to it. I think of it as turning the sharpness way down on a TV set: the image becomes softer and appears to lose definition, but once you're used to it, you realize that you're actually seeing more detail than you had seen before.

      In this case, on the OS X image, I can see the curve of the capital 'C', the slight thickness on its back, the small ornament at the upper end of its curve, the way the lower end of the curve tapers off. I can see the ornamentation on the lower-case 'y' along with the very slight curve and ornament at the end of its tail. The Linux screenshot still looks harshly jagged to me, and non-antialiased text looks blocky and crude.

  6. what is this feature.. is it those nice fonts? by nervlord1 · · Score: 1

    And does windows already have this.. (YES IM STUPID and im honestly not trolling) i dont understand..

    --
    Microsoft IIS is to webserving as KFC is to healthy eating
    1. Re:what is this feature.. is it those nice fonts? by Jace+of+Fuse! · · Score: 2, Redundant

      And does windows already have this...

      Font Smoothing has been available to Windows since at least OSR2 (or Win95 with Plus). ClearType further extend this in Windows XP, and it looks REALLY nice.

      X11 as others have pointed out, does in fact have support for font antialiasing. For whatever reason, Mozilla apparently needed a patch in order to take advantage of it. I'm not too sure what the technical reasons are that all applications don't just automatically take advantage of it -- but I'm sure there are people who would be willing to clearify that.

      --

      "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

      Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
    2. Re:what is this feature.. is it those nice fonts? by spitzak · · Score: 2
      The "technical" reason is that the XFree86 people are totally paranoid about back compatability and the Xlib interface to fonts sucks.

      XRender provides an all-new and much nicer interface to fonts, and it makes sense for programs to use it. However it would be nice to see a rewrite of Xlib so that attempts to use old font calls cause emulation code to be run that draws Xft fonts.

      MicroSoft deserves credit for implementing anti-aliased fonts while both Mac and X people were convincing themselves it was impossible or too slow. They also deserve credit for having the balls to change their already existing font interface to draw the new fonts, despite the fact that some programs that depended on the exact pixels drawn would break and make people mad. It did help them that thier font interface sucked less than 1/10th as much as Xlib, though...

    3. Re:what is this feature.. is it those nice fonts? by KiwiSurfer · · Score: 1

      Font Smoothing has been available to Windows since at least OSR2 (or Win95 with Plus).

      Windows 95 OSR 2.0 (version 4.00.950B) and all earlier versions of Windows 95 does not come with font smoothing -- you have to download Microsoft's font smoother from their site or get their Plus! thing.

      However, Windows 95 OSR 2.5 (the version with the USB support) might have included font smoothing support -- but I can't confirm this as I only have OSR 2.0.

      - James

    4. Re:what is this feature.. is it those nice fonts? by marmoset · · Score: 3, Informative
      MicroSoft deserves credit for implementing anti-aliased fonts while both Mac and X people were convincing themselves it was impossible or too slow.


      Um, MacOS >= 8.5 has supported antialiasing by default since 1998, and there was defacto support even earlier than that in Adobe Type Manager 3.x and up, IIRC. The CoreGraphics (Quartz) antialiasing in OSX is visually far superior to what was available in Classic, but AA in general certainly not a Johnny-come-lately feature on Apple's platforms.
    5. Re:what is this feature.. is it those nice fonts? by spitzak · · Score: 2

      Isn't 1998 later than when MicroSoft did it? I may be confusing the dates, however.

  7. Damn..... by friedmud · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I thought I was going to get away with not upgrading to XFree4.2 - since my 4.1 is running rock solid on my GeForce3.

    But it looks like I'll have to upgrade now - and redo all of that font junk, I hope it is a little easier this time around than the last - I can remember spening at least a couple of hours getting it to work last time......

    Derek

  8. Wait for stability by kenneth_martens · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While I like the idea of making my Mozilla browsing experience more aesthetically pleasing, I am not willing to sacrifice stability.

    This new patch is great, but you shouldn't update yet. Wait until it's merged into the official release. Unless, of course, you like to try out new things, in which case go get the update.

    Anyway, I look forward to getting the final version of this. (Until then, I'll just have to buy a bigger monitor.)

    1. Re:Wait for stability by stretch_jc · · Score: 1

      Hmm I think you're missing part of your responsibility with Open Source Software. By recommmending to wait for a final release version you aren't contributing to the development process by helping to find bugs. Although most users can't program, most should be at least able to beta testing on their favorite free software

  9. Re:So what you're telling me is... by Archie+Steel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not Linux, young troll, Mozilla. Anti-aliased fonts have been available for quite a while in KDE and Gnome. Speaking of which...is it me, or does Netscape 6.2 already support anti-aliased fonts?

    In any case, I'm still waiting for important stuff, like multipe consoles and desktops, good memory management, remote graphical apps, etc. to be standard features on Windows...

    --

    Reminder: find a new sig
  10. that you dont know what your talking about... by Quazion · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Linux doesnt have any GUI feature's i am aware of.
    Nor shall this spoken feature be a standard within Linux, just cause i think Linux will never include GUI functions, or does it ?
    Next time you do OS comparising understand what your talking about first. Windows is an OS, Linux is a NotOS its just a part of a could be an OS if some people would include some use full programs with it to become a OS! Damn why do i bite ?

    Quazion.

    1. Re:that you dont know what your talking about... by GrenDel+Fuego · · Score: 1

      Never played around with framebuffer support, have ya ;)

    2. Re:that you dont know what your talking about... by Quazion · · Score: 2, Informative

      Correct me if i am wrong, but isnt the framebuffer just a buffer ? that gets send to the videocard in a sertain way ?, yeah oke its a Grapical Function/Feature, but not a GUI ( Grapical User Interface ). Its just a layer to put an GUI interface on, Xft adjusts only the GUI interface not ? The framebuffer hasnt got functions to display text i hope, but i could be wrong...

      Quazion.

      Ps. sorry but i am a bad mood and yes i never played with the framebuffer before, i really love X :)

  11. Gdkxft has had this for a while by ronmon · · Score: 5, Informative

    It anti-aliases your GNOME widget fonts and there is a separate patch for Mozilla (good up to 0.9.6), which works nicely with Galeon, BTW.

    Check it out.

    1. Re:Gdkxft has had this for a while by augros · · Score: 1

      the patch still works no matter the mozilla version, it's only off by a few lines for 9.7 and up. i just apply it manually. still, libgdkxft is not the same thing as this.

    2. Re:Gdkxft has had this for a while by daserver · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Gdkxft is a very dirty hack. I really hope this new patch is going to be included in mozilla since this a point where it's lagging behind konqueror. Right now I use truetype fonts from m$ and they work just fine. Would be nice to try the new patch though :)

    3. Re:Gdkxft has had this for a while by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sigh, just like Linux. To get AA everywhere you need to pach everything. Why can't this Just Fucking Work? Everything is tacked on the outside instead of being implemented *properly* from the ground up. "Linux: What bag of hell do you want to eat today?" No fucking thanks.

    4. Re:Gdkxft has had this for a while by matman · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well it's not too bad. Xwindows supports a generic interface for rendering things that are accelerated by hardware (falling back to software when need be). Now, please, if I'm wrong, someone correct me, but I believe that it works like this: XFT is an API for drawing fonts in XWindows - it replaces X's old font interface. XFT talks to freetype to turn a string into a vector image (font file) into a bitmap image. The bitmap image that freetype produces can either be a monochrome pixmap (what normal X font routines use) or a 256 colour pixmap with antialiasing). XFT takes the 256 colour (greyscale) image and gives it an alpha channel (through some kind of an operation like multiply or darken only in GIMP. It then passes this image to XRender to have it rendered on the screen. Right now, most QT or GTK apps use QT and GTK font rendering routines. These routines used to use the normal x font stuff... if you patch them to use XFT, they all get anti-aliasing. Mozilla has it's own widget set, so it needs it's own patch to use the better font rendering mechanisms.

      The font support is in the right place, it's just that applications need to be changed to use the new, better interface, instead of the old interface that can't do hardware accelerated alpha channel stuff.

    5. Re:Gdkxft has had this for a while by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Minor correction - XRender is an antialiased bitmap and vector drawing system (like a cut down, 2D-only OpenGL) - Xft uses freetype to get the font vector data, and passes it to XRender as a series of trapezoids.

      Xrender is much more generally useful, therefore - in theory, one could have semi-transparent, antialiased, SVG icons for example, all in a non-kludgy manner.

  12. Huh? by Score0,+Overrated · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The hope is to have a patch of less than 100 lines; currently it's more like 400 lines

    Why don't you concentrate on making sure the code works instead of aiming for some arbitrary patch size?

    1. Re:Huh? by keithp · · Score: 5, Informative
      Why don't you concentrate on making sure the code works instead of aiming for some arbitrary patch size?


      It's not arbitrary; I believe about 3/4 of the patch consist of unnecessary changes to code that shouldn't be executed in the Xft code path. Unfortunately, the internal abstractions for dealing with fonts are somewhat strained in the current code base, making this assertion testable but not easily verified by visual inspection.

    2. Re:Huh? by Grayraven · · Score: 1

      Because when the patch is small it's a lot easier
      to verify it's correct.

      --
      "Source... The Final Frontier" -- keepersoflists.org
    3. Re:Huh? by Score0,+Overrated · · Score: 1

      Not if the small number of changes was achieved by making them clever hacks instead of just doing the changes in a clearer more verbose way.

      But as keithp described in another reply - some of the changes are truely redundent and the size isn't being reduced simple because it is clever to do so.

    4. Re:Huh? by Score0,+Overrated · · Score: 1

      Thank you, that makes sense.

    5. Re:Huh? by barzok · · Score: 2

      Damn, took my comment. I'd take 400 lines of clean, clear, easy to manage/understand code over 100 lines that came from the Obfuscated C Contest anyday.

  13. Already possible, sourt of. by foonf · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Look here. This is with the version of mozilla included in Debian unstable, patched to work with the gdkxft hack. The real question is will this new patch actually be included in any commonly distributed Mozilla binaries. Because if it isn't, I don't think many are going to recompile the whole damn thing just for anti-aliasing (but that won't stop people from complaining about the lack of it!).

    --

    "(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
    1. Re:Already possible, sourt of. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Unfortunate headline in the image
      X process heavy on resources
      How well does it perform - any slowdown with AA on?
    2. Re:Already possible, sourt of. by foonf · · Score: 2

      It is slower, but on a relatively fast machine (P3-900, 384mb) its not really a big deal. To put it in perspective, its no different than the difference between AA and non-AA KDE on the same machine.

      --

      "(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
    3. Re:Already possible, sourt of. by Ilmari · · Score: 1
      What's this mozilla patch everyone keeps talking about? I'm now running Galeon 1.0.2 (Mozilla 0.9.7) and gdkxft, and all web pages are rendered with anti-aliased text (for the fonts I have chosen to anti-alias).

      My only annoyance is that the upper right arm of the letter `k' is very thin (the `x' is kinda thin all over, but that's not as annoying). This is with a 10t (12pixel) MS Verdana font.

      --

      © ilmari. All rights reserved, all wrongs reversed

  14. AA? Goog grief... by soboroff · · Score: 1

    My biggest problem is web sites that use 2-point fonts. Gaaah. It's nice that Mozilla gives a key combo to change the font size!

  15. but . . . you did reply. now i'm confused. by augros · · Score: 1

    apart from the informality of my post, i have trouble understanding your irritation with it. oh well. linux AA fonts aren't that bad if you get the right ones, not the half-broken free ones that come with enlightenment. just import the ones you purchased with your treasured windows. mine look great, and they don't make me feel embarrassed.

  16. Lets get some facts straight first. by clump · · Score: 4, Insightful
    That Linux has to kludge in a feature that Windows has had for seven years?

    So basically, we are still waiting for it to be a standard feature?

    What I think people should keep in mind is that you are comparing a multi-billon-dollar corporation with access to all kinds of patents and trade secrets to what *volunteers* do in their spare time. Keep in mind access to good fonts are what corporations like Microsoft and Apple *slow down* to keep people on their platforms.

    If you want to stick your head out against possible liability so others can *freely* use something be my guest. At least don't criticize when others do.
    1. Re:Lets get some facts straight first. by toast0 · · Score: 2

      Microsoft distributes the base true type fonts at no cost, in fact they either invented or popularized the (usually inexpensive) true type font system to compete with expensive fonts from other vendors.

      Other than the basic fonts (courer new, times new roman, maybe arial), i don't use much in the way of fonts in windows or linux, and microsoft provides those fonts to me on both platforms

    2. Re:Lets get some facts straight first. by mprinkey · · Score: 1

      Microsoft distributes the base true type fonts at no cost, in fact they either invented or popularized the (usually inexpensive) true type font system to compete with expensive fonts from other vendors.

      I must concur. TTF is something that Microsoft did right! Back in the "old" days, one had to purchase Adobe Type Manager in order to have scalable fonts in Windows 3.0. When 3.1 came out, Microsoft not only one-upped Adobe with TrueType integration, but they also innovated at bit. They included on-the-fly downloadable font generation for Laserjet compatible printers.

      That was a big deal back in the day. If you could not download fonts to the printer and tried to print a font other than the handful of built-in fonts in the printer, each page had to dump a bitmap! Try a 286 with 1 MB RAM dumping to an Okilaser 400 over the OLD slow parallel port. One word: painful.

      It made a huge difference at the time. It was an example of Microsoft's ability to really deliver value. I guess those examples have gotten fewer and fewer over the past decade.

    3. Re:Lets get some facts straight first. by Graff · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Microsoft distributes the base true type fonts at no cost, in fact they either invented or popularized the (usually inexpensive) true type font system to compete with expensive fonts from other vendors.

      Well, actually Microsoft only agreed to use TrueType when it came out. It was actually developed by Apple. They developed it for Windows and Macintosh in order to combat Adobe's strangle hold on the market. Here's an intresting quote on Microsoft's site on TrueType:
      The TrueType digital font format was originally designed by Apple Computer, Inc. It was a means of avoiding per-font royalty payments to the owners of other font technologies, and a solution to some of the technical limitations of Adobe's Type 1 format.

      You can see a pretty detailed history of TrueType on this web page.

    4. Re:Lets get some facts straight first. by david.johns · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I don't have links off the top of my head. Let me google. (Also, I'm replying kinda to the top-level poster and also to the person directly above me.)

      Ahah! Here it is. As you can see, there were some initial issues in the way that truetype was developed. Microsoft may provide the fonts free, but the original move to create truetype fonts in general was a point of contention between companies.

      The only reason I point this out is that it shows that TrueType and Windows' anti-aliasing were developed to counter various strategic threats to Microsoft. I don't pick on Apple because if you read between the lines and the rest of the history, they were burned by some 'incompatibility' that was created by Microsoft.

      Anyway - Microsoft isn't giving this away just because, and the original push for TrueType/Anti-aliasing was a major money sink for two companies. (Also, IP issues and development time made it unlinkely to end up in early Xfree, for instance - leading to the problems we've seen on free Unices.)

      On the other hand, two implementations of bluetooth drivers for linux were available before even one for Windows. Should we then accuse Microsoft of being slackers when it comes to technology adoption? Turnabout is fair play.

  17. No offense, but ... by Greedo · · Score: 1

    ... that screen grab is kinda hard to look at after a while.

    Hopefully this can be configured like Windows seems to be, and not AA fonts below a certain size (seems to be 12pt). Below that size, things look clearer to me non-AA.

    But that's just IMHO.

    --
    Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
    1. Re:No offense, but ... by augros · · Score: 1

      sure it's configurable, that's /etc/XftConfig's job. don't ask me to explain the syntax, but that's what the file does.

    2. Re:No offense, but ... by bshuttleworth · · Score: 1
      From a mail on the Render list:



      match
      any family == "xxxx"
      any size > 8
      any size


      Originally by ChaoWei (won't give email here) in reference to a Chinese font-hinting problem.
    3. Re:No offense, but ... by spitzak · · Score: 3, Informative
      Typo there, here is the correct text (on one line like this works):

      match any pixelsize > 8 any pixelsize < 15 edit antialias = false;

      This goes into ~/.xftconfig or into /etc/X11/XftConfig.

  18. Italics by pigeon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Great, I would really love to see a solution which gives me non-ugly italic fonts (especially in my webbrowser) with Linux.

  19. This is actually a new feature for Mozilla... by OneFix · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yea, the tree closed for 0.9.8 like a week ago. Tree Closes for 0.9.8. For those that don't want to click the link, here's what it says...

    ...0.9.8 will have a variety of new items including new natively drawn widgets on WindowsXP, Mac OS X, and GTK, when you are in the classic skin (We will have more on this later, including screenshots)...

    If you're really interested in what's going on with the project, try the latest Build Comments

    Yesterday was the last of the frozen trunk builds. And if that's not enough, the Tree Is Opened for 0.9.9 checkins.

    And there's now a Mozilla 1.0 Manifesto that lays down precisely what Mozilla 1.0 should be (which will come right after 0.9.9).

    Of course, it's nice to see a change in SlashDot change its view of the project. But, then again, maybe I was right all along. :)

  20. Speaking of Mozilla by astyanax · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I believe 0.9.8 is due out tomorrow. Is anyone else foaming at the mouth for this release like me? :) Can't wait... well I can wait long enough not to download nightlies and pretend it's the real release.

    1. Re:Speaking of Mozilla by loopkin · · Score: 1

      I believe 0.9.8 is due out tomorrow.
      Well, as 0.9.8 branched only yesterday, i'd reather think 0.9.8 will be out som time early next week, and mozillazine seems to say the same ;-)
      FYI, pre-0.9.8 builds are already available.

  21. Mozilla just keeps getting cooler. by BgCntry · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No matter what gets said here about feature bloat and endless delays, Mozilla is just the coolest and most ambitious browser out there. At this rate it's well on its way to becoming the Emacs of the browser world, and it might even be there now. I've been using it as my main browser for god-knows-how-long. It's been fascinating to watch it evolve from the early milestone releases up to now.

    Hell, Mozilla's never going to be finished, and I don't really care to see it finished either. I'd have to find a new religion.

    1. Re:Mozilla just keeps getting cooler. by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 1, Funny

      At this rate it's well on its way to becoming the Emacs of the browser world, and it might even be there now.

      With complements like that, who needs insults?

      --
      Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    2. Re:Mozilla just keeps getting cooler. by abe+ferlman · · Score: 3

      I agree. I've finally switched from Konqueror. Konqueror is still a little faster on my machine (200mhz pentium, 196M ram - don't laugh :), but the tabbed browsing feature just rocks *so* hard, and at this point they are about equal in terms of stability. Since I use blackbox, Konqueror isn't really any better integrated into my system, but I do kind of miss the way that it operated directly as a file browser and autocompleted things for me- it's just ever so slightly less convenient to use mozilla for such things.

      But I have to tell you the Mozilla project has done a tremendous job since I first tried it out last year and couldn't get my mail accounts to work properly. It is basically a mature browser, and it's only getting better.

      Two caveats:
      1. if Konqueror gets tabbed browsing, I may starve to death trying to choose between them.
      2. Mozilla folks: PLEASE give us a (preferably one-handed) keyboard shortcut for "next tab". So we can, you know, hold our mice while switching tabs :)

      --
      microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
    3. Re:Mozilla just keeps getting cooler. by pergamon · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm pretty sure emacs fanatics will tell you that emacs already is the emacs of the browser world.

    4. Re:Mozilla just keeps getting cooler. by LeBleu · · Score: 3, Informative

      Try control + page up or control + page down. They added those as shortcuts for switching tabs the milestone after they added tabbed browsing, as I recall. On an extended keyboard, I can easily do those with just my right hand. Of course, I use my right hand for the mouse, so I don't know if it would help with your dilemma.

      --
      --LeBleu

      If you're reading this you're part of the mass hallucination that is Kevin the Blue.

    5. Re:Mozilla just keeps getting cooler. by fawadhalim · · Score: 3, Informative

      Check out http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ui/accessibility/m ozkeyplan.html. It's got the exaustive list of keyboard shortcuts for Mozilla. (Works with mozilla, though).

    6. Re:Mozilla just keeps getting cooler. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Damn straight.

      w3

      emacs-w3m

    7. Re:Mozilla just keeps getting cooler. by Cine · · Score: 1

      Try Ctrl+PgUp/Ctrl+PgDn

    8. Re:Mozilla just keeps getting cooler. by skt · · Score: 1

      the problem with CTRL+PGUP / PGDOWN is that you have to take you hands away from the home keys when you switch tabs. That really adds no additional accessibility for me. I might as well use the mouse if I have to reach over to PGUP/DOWN. I think Windows has it correct at CTRL+TAB and CTRL+SHIFT+TAB.. those keys don't seem to do anything in mozilla, why not use those instead?

    9. Re:Mozilla just keeps getting cooler. by iceburn · · Score: 2, Funny

      vim junkies will probably say the same thing about emacs, but I don't think they'll mean it in the same way as the emacs fanatics ;)

      --
      A sphincter says what?
    10. Re:Mozilla just keeps getting cooler. by Thomas+Miconi · · Score: 2

      At this rate it's well on its way to becoming the Emacs of the browser world...

      Oh boy, now that's some mozilla-bashing ! :o)

      Thomas Miconi

  22. Re:So what you're telling me is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm still waiting for important stuff, like multipe consoles and desktops, good memory management, remote graphical apps,

    With the exception of "good memory management", those are bugs, not features. You have to make extreme performance sacrifices to get them natively. That's why we have 3rd party products that add on those functions for when you need remote management. Other than that, they're useless. And multiple desktop support is particularly useless. Download a shareware app to do it if you REALLY must have it.

    As for memory management, I suppose you missed where Linux FINALLY got decent VM support recently? And it's still not up to the standards of Windows.

    As for anti-aliased fonts, take a look at how KDE and Gnome implement them. It's unbelievably crude, and not implemented at the low-level font rendering where it should be. Basically, they send pre-fab graphic images to the X server. Yeah, that's elegant.

    There are a lot of things to like about Linux, but GUIs are not one of them.

  23. AA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I thought AA was supposed to help things looks less blurry!

  24. Mozilla(or anything) +W2K + font smoothing = good. by iamr00t · · Score: 1

    Use it this way for 3 months already.
    Takes time to get used to.
    But now the text looks as good as text written on pictures e.g. with Photoshop.

  25. Depends by jeti · · Score: 5, Informative

    Antialiased fonts can look extremely good and
    make reading less stressful for the eyes.

    Look at text in newer versions of MacOS, BeOS
    or Windows XP. Especially at LCD screens the
    quality is absolutely convincing.

    BUT you need not only a good font renderer, but
    also fonts that are hinted correctly.

  26. cool symbol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    this is a question rather than a comment, hope it doesn't get moderated for being off-topic

    how do you get that little cool /. symbol in the navigation bar? it appears there with konqueror, but i don't know how to make it in mozilla.

    1. Re:cool symbol by limbostar · · Score: 1

      That's the default.ico file, a Microsoft 'feature' that the rest of the industry has adopted (probably because they were sick of getting bad requests from MSIE). I don't know if Mozilla supports it (it would have to render a Microsoft icon format image), but if it does you may have to bookmark it.

      Personally I find it amusing that Slashdot has the icon at all, given that the overwhelming vibe here is anti-MS-influence.

      --
      this is a sig.
    2. Re:cool symbol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      THe latest mozilla builds have this feature.

    3. Re:cool symbol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      newer version of mozilla support it i think 0.9.7 and up. Mozilla shows it right before the url in the input box and in the bookmark.

    4. Re:cool symbol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mozilla Support for ( and Slashdot happiness to point to ) ProprietaryDF, Flashucks, QuickSlime, Patented GIF, et al, only show that Open Source is following, not leading.

      PDF == SWF == MOV == GIF == Open Source Loses

    5. Re:cool symbol by DGolden · · Score: 1

      Mozilla sorta supports favicon.ico, but it _also_ supports using the html tag to set the image in a much more generic fashion, it can be a png, gif, whatever, and can be at any url.

      --
      Choice of masters is not freedom.
  27. [ot] Will Moz. ever be as fast as Nav? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've really liked the increase in speed that Mozilla has undergone, and I totally dig the rendering quality and everything, but I still don't get immediate rendering on Mozilla to the same extent that I do with Navigator 4.7 . Are we ever going to see that sort of speed again?

    I am working on a P2 400, so I guess maybe it's a non-issue on P3s, P4s or Athlons, but it still seems really slow to me. Do we basically have a situation where Mozilla is going to have way higher base requirements than Nav. in order to perform optimally? Or is this something that's going to be a feature of 1.0 or 1.1 releases?

    I guess, basically, what I'm wondering is, Navigator 4.7 got the job done fast, so what's keeping Mozilla from getting the job done that fast?

    1. Re:[ot] Will Moz. ever be as fast as Nav? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hmm, I have used Netscape 4 for a very long time on windows. On that platform, mozilla surpassed the rendering performance of NS4 a long time ago. Mozilla used to (and still does to some extent) seem slower due to its memory usage, but it really does have very good rendering performance IMHO.

  28. Topic: you .sig on transgaming by Odinson · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    Hello, thanks fo the link.

    I checked out transgaming and I think I like what I see, but how do we know how many people have signed up so far.

    Are there statistics availible? It seems only fair for me since I would be signing up mainly as a way to contribute to Wine.

  29. Yup. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, you're correct. The frame buffer is just a buffer.

    Now fix your spelling!

  30. XFT is... by skia · · Score: 5, Informative
    For the uninitiated:

    Xft is a simple library designed to interface the FreeType rasterizer with the X Rendering Extension.


    FreeType is a software font engine that can be used in graphics libraries, display servers, font conversion tools, text image generation tools, etc. to produce high quality glyphs and characters. The important thing here is that FreeType supports Adobe Type1 and TrueType (that is, Windows) scalable fonts.


    the X Rendering Extension is a protocol that represents a new way to render (that is, draw) stuff on your screen in X windows.


    thus, Xft's incorporation into Mozilla gives us smooth, high quality, Windows compatible fonts while surfing the web on Linux or *BSD

    --

    --

    1. Re:XFT is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The deserved Score: 5 for the parent comment here reflects what timothy should have added to make the post clear _in the first place_.

      Thank you, skia, for doing his job.

  31. Patches for AA have been available for ages.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what is needed is *binaries* that include this. I don't know why these have not been made available on mozilla.org

  32. Re:So what you're telling me is... by Howie · · Score: 1

    XP does have remote graphical apps. Even NT4/98 can have via Netmeeting, in a sort of cheesy way, but still part of the standard install. I don't quite see why multiple consoles is an important feature in an OS, but the difference between Alt-F1, Alt-F2 to switch consoles and Alt-Tab to switch to another app that happens to be a console window seems pretty small to me.

    I don't have strong feelings for either OS - although Win2k causes me less hassle than Linux does, on my desktop - but if you're going to make it an enemy, at least know your enemy. That said, don't get me started on Win2k/NT memory management apparently swapping for fun.

    --
    "don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
  33. Unfortunately .. by Eloquence · · Score: 5, Insightful
    .. the screen-shot still shows the flaws of anti-aliasing under Linux. Take a look at the "k" in the "Bookmarks" text on the toolbar, or at the "W" in Wednesday -- this is what it actually looks like if you turn on anti-aliasing under KDE. Some fairly standard fonts just get really ugly and you have to search a long time until you have disabled all of them everywhere without removing them (webpages can probably still use them), or you have to disable anti-aliasing entirely at certain font sizes (haven't figured out how to do that yet, but haven't really looked either, KDE doesn't seem to have an option for it at least, but somewhere in the mess that is X configuration I'm sure it's possible).

    Even if Linux desktop installations weren't so horribly deployed as they are by most distributors (I completely lost faith in SuSE after their handling of the Euro-Sign, I think that they are no longer interested in ordinary desktop users), anti-aliasing algorithms itself could probably be much improved, although the Freetype page points out that Apple patents are a problem and some features had to be disabled (damn you, Apple!). All in all, I'm not happy with anti-aliasing support at all, except for subpixel rendering, which works very well on my Notebook. (And don't give me the "You didn't pay, don't complain" bullshit -- I paid a lot of cash to distributors already, but they seem to prefer to spend it on the server end).

    1. Re: Unfortunately .. by Sandmann · · Score: 4, Informative

      > the screen-shot still shows the flaws of antialiasing under Linux

      You are right that the k and the W don't look good, but that does not have anything to do with your kernel, but rather the fact that Verdana and Times should not be antialiased at that size. Antialiasing these fonts at that size with hinting enabled is really font murder.

      You don't want hinting enabled with antialiasing at that size, because hinting is a way to distort the fonts so that they can be rendered at very low resolution, and antialiasing is essentially a cheasy way to increase resolution. That is why you see the weird "k": the hints don't expect the resolution to be this high.

      Here is a piece of an actual screenshot, showing Verdana mostly un-antialiased, and antialiased in the preview box in the fontselector.

      As others pointed out, to match Windows in quality you will need high quality fonts. Of couse, the MS/Monotype fonts (Ariel, Verdana, Trebuchet, etc) are well done and especially well-hinted (if you don't antialias them at sizes where they shouldn't be), but actually the Luxi fonts that are shipping with XFree86 4.2 are not bad - their hints just need some work.

      For fun, I hinted Luxi Sans (with the Gimp) at a few sizes. This is not a real screenshot, but it does show how it could look with better hints. (Note that the bold antialiased Luxi Serif is not hinted at all - a bit of careful hinting would probably improve it somewhat).

      > anti-aliasing algorithms itself could
      > probably be much improved, although the
      > Freetype page points out that Apple patents

      This is nonsens. The Apple patent covers the interpreter for the hints in TrueType fonts. Most distributions turn the interpreter on, regardless of the patent, and in fact the bad rendering of the "k" that you complain about is there precisely because both interpreter and antialiasing were used.

    2. Re: Unfortunately .. by Eloquence · · Score: 2
      Thanks for the insights! It's probably just a matter of deployment again, default installations should turn "hinting" off at low font sizes (this is reasonably obscure knowledge, so even developers can't be expected to have it as the screenshot shows). Of course, having all font/anti-aliasing settings accessible through a nice GUI, which would put reasonable constraints/warnings on user changes, would probably be best. Do you know how Windows currently sets these settings automatically? They seem to strike a very good balance, and I've never seen a flawed low size font rendering under Windows.

      I am not familiar with the patent in question -- good that it doesn't seem to concern anything essential!

    3. Re: Unfortunately .. by Sandmann · · Score: 1

      > Do you know how Windows currently sets these
      > settings automatically?

      I think there is a table in TrueType fonts that tells the sizes the font can be usefully antialiased. I'd guess Windows simply uses that, but I don't know for sure.

      Btw, may I recommend Microsoft's typography pages. There is a lot of useful information there.

  34. Instructions on install? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How do I install this? I run Linux Mozilla nightlies constantly, how can I use this patch? Dnld it and pop it in somewhere or ?

    CB

    1. Re:Instructions on install? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no, it's a patch.. you'll have to patch the source and recompile I imagine. I've heard that it isn't much fun to recompile mozilla though, you're probably better off just waiting for a binary nightly.

  35. [OT] Re:Topic: you .sig on transgaming by HoserHead · · Score: 1
    I'm also a transgaming customer. They have between 500-600 customers, maybe a few more, right now: the exact number isn't known, but they'll be releasing their subscriber numbers in around a month.

    They're really doing excellent work: I recommend that if anybody has Windows games, they go on over to Transgaming and subscribe. $5 a month is nothing for the quality of work they put in, and how good Wine is getting with their work. (And that's saying something, since it's $US 5, and I'm in Canada! I pay closer to $10/month!)

    Bottom line: WineX, their product, works well for some games now, and will work well for many more games later. Just subscribe, you know you want to.

    1. Re:[OT] Re:Topic: you .sig on transgaming by Odinson · · Score: 2
      I hope they script a page with at least monthly numbers. If it makes sense for me to join, I'll want others to as well.

      Recruiting others would be easier if I could say, we only need 19 thousand more people.

      In any case thanks.

    2. Re:[OT] Re:Topic: you .sig on transgaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SUNNYVALE, CA (ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)-October 17, 2001-Macrovision Corporation (Nasdaq:MVSN), worldwide leader in video and software copy protection and Digital Rights Management technologies, announced today that TransGaming Technologies Inc., creator of software portability solutions that allows high demand games to seamlessly operate on the Linux platform, has signed a license agreement to implement Macrovision's SafeDisc® LT copy protection solution. Fat fucking chance of me supporting that.

    3. Re:[OT] Re:Topic: you .sig on transgaming by mythr · · Score: 1

      So you'd rather have to rely on a crack to be able to play every game that already uses that? SafeDisc is used on a lot of the Windows games that are out there, and I know that I would prefer to be able to play them right out of the box.

  36. Yeah! by gregstoll · · Score: 1

    I agree - I've been subscribing for a few months, and it's worth it both for what they've produced and for keeping them alive so they can continue producing. :-)

  37. Sooo, How do we build this? by stevek · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm guessing what I need to do is get a fresh mozilla sourcebase from CVS (just updated to 0-9-8 branch), apply Blizzard's patch (change some paths), get keithp's "fonts" directory from his CVS, build that, then build mozilla..

    Anyone actually get it built?

    1. Re:Sooo, How do we build this? by stevek · · Score: 1

      Okay, notes so far:

      First, for keithp's code, you'll need pretty recent versions of automake/autoconf to build. RH72's, for example, are not good enough, but RawHide RPMS are.

      Then, grab the "fonts" directory from his CVS, make fontconfig first (it seems easiest to install it, from here, because it only makes a shared lib, and keeps it in a .lib directory), then Xft.

      Now, I just changed blizzard's homedir to mine in my patched mozilla sources, and am building away..

      GIFs^H^H^H^H Binaries at 11 (I hope)..

    2. Re:Sooo, How do we build this? by stevek · · Score: 1

      Finally.. Some people have asked how I was doing, so I figured I'd post my results here.

      I finally got it built, and mostly working. Wasn't too hard, really, just took forever. An Optimized build didn't work, so I had to settle for a slow debug build.

      If anyone's interested in giving it a try, you'll probably need to get keithp's latest libraries. The "dist" directory from my build is available here, and a screenshot comparing my normal mozilla to this new AA mozilla is here.

      It seems to look for a file fonts.conf in /etc; you can make that a symlink to your XftConfig file, if you have one on your system; HOWEVER, doing so will make the startup take much longer, as it is pretty slow in scanning all the fonts. If you don't have the file, everything will default to some serif font like times.

      As you can see from the screenshot, there's still a lot of work to do here visually (or maybe that's just configuration), and probably also a lot of work on performance.

  38. Blizzard did this? by Communomancer · · Score: 1

    What are they doing with this stuff? I really think they should be finishing up Warcraft III.

    :P

    --
    "UNIX" is never having to say you're sorry.
  39. Re:So what you're telling me is... by Archie+Steel · · Score: 1

    With the exception of "good memory management", those are bugs, not features. You have to make extreme performance sacrifices to get them natively.

    Not true, you only get a performance hit running multiple consoles if you run multiple instances of X simultaneously, and even then it's not that dramatic with modern computers. As far as remote management goes.

    Other than that, they're useless. And multiple desktop support is particularly useless. Download a shareware app to do it if you REALLY must have it.

    On the contrary, I find them quite useful, especially when running a lot of apps. I especially like those who show me a thumbnail of what's in the window. As for multiple desktops under Windows, I did try a shareware or two, but I found them to be slow, buggy and not very well integrated.

    As for memory management, I suppose you missed where Linux FINALLY got decent VM support recently? And it's still not up to the standards of Windows.

    Yeah, right...The basic memory management in Linux has been superior to that of Windows until MS came out with Win2K...

    As for anti-aliased fonts, take a look at how KDE and Gnome implement them. It's unbelievably crude, and not implemented at the low-level font rendering where it should be. Basically, they send pre-fab graphic images to the X server. Yeah, that's elegant. There are a lot of things to like about Linux, but GUIs are not one of them.

    Guess what, I take a look at Gnome everyday now for six months, and I much prefer the GUI to that of Win2K (and I won't even talk about WinXP). I'm looking at Windows AA fonts right now (I'm at work) and I can't tell you there ain't much of a difference in quality with what I have at home.

    Come on, Anonymous Coward, it's obvious you're another one of those MS employees who get paid to come spread your FUD all over the place! (Though I'd be curious to hear what are the lot of things to like about Linux that you mention...

    --

    Reminder: find a new sig
  40. Re:So what you're telling me is... by jedidiah · · Score: 2

    "extreme performance sacrifices"?

    That really funny. In my experience, X has always been faster than WinXX on comparable hardware. This is even true if you add in bloated desktops like KDE or GNOME. OTOH, WinXX doesn't have the inherent flexibility to allow for the seamless use of alternate desktops. (so much for "standards")

    Let's not even get into any version of WinXX where the comparison is remotely fair. Add on reasonable robustness and Windows starts to get really slow and bloated.

    Linux has always had VM support to equal or rival any version of windows.

    Besides, individual fonts are much more important than the underlying "font technology".

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  41. Re:AA? Goog grief... by Reid · · Score: 1

    I found out one of the following lines (not sure if one is old syntax or what) in your mozilla prefs.js file will prevent it from rendering fonts below a certain size:

    user_pref("font.min-size.variable.x-western", 10);
    user_pref("font.minimum-size.x-western", 10);

    Very convenient for those annoying 2-point sites!

  42. *Linux is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Linux is not only dying, it's already dead.
    There is so much technology that is just not
    worth bringing into the Linux reinvention of
    the wheel.
    Windows and FreeBSD has won---the LinuxHeads
    just don't realize it yet.

  43. Now if they would just add crash-recovery by sethdelackner · · Score: 1
    I know, as a programmer I should just do this myself, but I'm a little swamped programming right now.

    Mozilla absolutely needs a crash-recovery feature ala Opera. It will always crash at some point, so why not just track all open Mozilla windows and cache the current (non-ssl) page. When the program starts, default to the same set of pages.

    1. Re:Now if they would just add crash-recovery by leeward · · Score: 1

      Huh? I've been using Mozilla for almost a year now. In that time, it has crashed maybe 3 or 4 times. And I really can't remember the last time, but it has been awhile.

    2. Re:Now if they would just add crash-recovery by SmileyBen · · Score: 2

      Whilst I agree with other comments that point out that Mozilla really is pretty crash-proof already, you might like to follow the Total Recall project on mozdev...

    3. Re:Now if they would just add crash-recovery by perlyking · · Score: 1

      There is one if you dig around the development section of the mozilla site. I don't use mozilla really at the moment but it might be useful to you.

      --
      no sig.
  44. Re:AA? Goog grief... by cymen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    user_pref("font.minimum-size.x-western", "10");

    of course most cool award goes to:
    user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true);
    (no popups onload from javascript but clicked popups still work)

    also good:
    user_pref("image.animation_mode", "once");
    user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 128);
    user_pref("network.huser_pref("mail.quoted_graph ic al", false);
    user_pref("mail.display_glyph", true);
    user_pref("mail.quoteasblock", true);
    user_pref("mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed", true);
    user_pref("mailnews.display.disable_format_flowe d_ support", true);
    user_pref("mail.display_struct", true);
    user_pref("mail.send_struct", false);ttp.max-connections-per-server", 48);
    user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connectio ns -per-proxy", 24);
    user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connectio ns -per-server", 12);

    On *nix go to ~/.mozilla/default/something_random/ and edit prefs.js - note, copy it to prefs.js.new, edit it, close mozilla, copy it over prefs.js, restart mozilla, tada (if you edit it while moz is open it'll kill your new prefs.js version because it writes it out on exit or something).

    Under Windows go to \Documents and Settings\ to your directory (make sure you have "show all files" in the folder prefs) and you'll find it. Or use that search feature :).

  45. Re:AA? Goog grief... by cymen · · Score: 1

    Doh! Don't put the quotes on the font size as it doesn't work. I copied this from a saved text file instead of my prefs.js. So:

    user_pref("font.minimum-size.x-western", 10);

  46. NanoX port of Mozilla by Jase_Woolley · · Score: 1

    Looks good. Here is a link to a screenshot of the
    nanox port of Mozilla (Done by Tuxia Labs Aust)
    that shows antialias font support. The original
    announcement on the nanox mailing list was dated
    6th Dec 2001.

    See http://nxzilla.tuxia.org/antialias.png

  47. Re:So what you're telling me is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    On the contrary, I find them quite useful, especially when running a lot of apps. I especially like those who show me a thumbnail of what's in the window. As for multiple desktops under Windows, I did try a shareware or two, but I found them to be slow, buggy and not very well integrated.



    Absolutely - it's the single biggest interface feature Windows lacks. How else are you supposed to organise the 20+ windows you have open in order to do productive work? The dozen or so xterm windows, the gvim/emacs/editor of choice windows, the browser and windows...



    For that reason, I simply don't find the Windows GUI usable for anything beyond the basics.

  48. Re:Pixel shape by spitzak · · Score: 2
    Actually the deal is that LCD screens have three rectangles for the pixels, a red one, green one, and blue one, next to each other.

    Normal screens do draw a round dot but there is the phosphor mask in front of that which are the pattern you see, diffraction by the screen makes the dots themselves overlap. On modern screens each pixel is then a blurry overlapping circle cut out of a pattern of vertical stripes of red, green, and blue. There is probably a way to take advantage of this for improved antialiasing but there seems to be no control over the exact registration of this pattern with the dot location, unlike the LCD.

  49. Re: X11 calls by spitzak · · Score: 3, Informative
    Xft does not cause old X11 programs to suddenly be antialiased. What the "native X11 calls" means is that Xft works (in that it produces readable output) if it talks to an X server that lacks the Xrender extension or that lacks the fonts.

    This won't help the end-user much, but it is a huge deal because it removes the main impediment stopping all programs from immediatly switching to xft.

    Normally when somebody makes an "extension" to an existing interface they write it so you cannot use the "extension" without also updating what you are talking to. This means that anybody writing a program using the new interface either has to say "you have to update your drivers" which is user-unfriendly, or they have to put in a big mess of code to "detect" the extension and then have to write two interfaces, one using the extension and one not. The real result is almost nobody uses the extension because it it too much of a pain to write to.

    X is horrid with these things. Shared memory images (an interface now 15 years old) required you to detect whether the server did it and write totally different code for non-shared. The result is that the majority of programs don't use shared memory images. If they had written the detection and emulation into it, I'm sure *EVERY* program would use shared images today.

    Congrats to Keith Packard for figuring this out!

    Now lets see the same thing done for the rest of XRender, so we can get anti-aliased lines and shapes without having to write everything twice.

  50. Problem with AA in X by Tom7 · · Score: 2

    The problem with AA fonts in X, to me, is that they anti-alias all fonts, even the tiny ones that are hand-hinted to look good when pixels are scarce. Verdana 10 pt looks shitty when it is anti-aliased, for instance.

    However, for large fonts, I don't think there is much question that anti-aliasing really helps. The X guys should do the same thing that Windows does and only anti-alias fonts after a certain size. (Or at least make it configurable on a font-by-font and size-by-size basis.)

    (XP's cleartype on LCDs is a different story; I'm not sure how I feel about that at small sizes yet.)

  51. Not with FreeType 2.0 by yerricde · · Score: 1

    BUT you need not only a good font renderer, but also fonts that are hinted correctly.

    Not with FreeType 2.0 based font servers. They hint fonts on the fly because Apple owns a United States patent on the TrueType hinting virtual machine.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  52. Moderate down? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    >>Luckily I never load Render & I never intend to

    First of all, the poster can't mean Render because it is not a font server.

    Second just because a person uses xft doesn't mean that their fonts are anti-aliased. It's configureable.

    Someone should moderate the post down because it's clearly mis-informed. Spreading bad information like this is irresponcible and harmful.

  53. AA LCD/sub-pixel fonts in the GIMP ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anyone know if the GIMP can use this ? I'm currently trying Linux in vmware, which doesn't seem to support the X Render extension.
    AA Fonts in the GIMP look OK, but there doesn't seem to be a way of using LCD mode - so I guess GIMP is currently doing it's own AA ?

  54. Finally! by crivens · · Score: 1

    It's about time! I have gdkxft working to give me anit-aliased menus and icons in GTK apps, and it makes a huge difference. Unfortunately the text that is rendered by Mozilla (actually I'm using Galeon) isn't AA-ed, and I wish it was!!! That's probably why I use Opera as much as possible.

  55. Re:AA? Goog grief... by BlueGecko · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'd really refrain from editing the prefs.js file directly. Instead, just create a file in the same directory called user.js and store your custom preferences there. user.js is parsed after prefs.js , and is not modified by the GUI when you alter preferences, so if you mess up it's much easier to fix. (And, conversely, you're guaranteed that the GUI won't mess it up for you.)

  56. Good work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    ...editors, in terms of posting an article with almost no clue as to what it's about. (Yes, I knew what it was, so that's not what I'm complaining about, but I bet a lot of people reading it didn't get it.)

    Honestly, it isn't hard to throw in a parenthetical one-liner that says something like "Boffo is a program to build spreadsheet databses of the contents of zip files", or whatever is appropriate.

    1. Re:Good work... by inkless1 · · Score: 1

      No kidding. I've used Linux. I've coded. I've compiled. I'm familiar with X, etc. etc.

      I have no idea what the hell they're talking about, why it means anything to anybody or why they are pimping some couple hours worth of work.

      Once again, brilliant reporting!

      inky

  57. The bullets (right)in the screenshots sucks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It should take a few hours only to fix this one

  58. Why doesn't X just do the right thing with fonts? by kcbrown · · Score: 3, Interesting
    This bit about having to render fonts using a completely different mechanism than what's already provided by X is complete nonsense, IMHO. Why doesn't X font rendering simply do the right thing?

    I can understand that X fonts originally were simple bitmaps that got rendered directly to the screen. But the X server knows what kind of visual is being rendered to, so I don't see why it can't render in a more sophisticated manner when drawing to a visual with at least 16 bits worth of color depth.

    Were the original designers of the font rendering mechanism so braindead as to specify that all fonts forevermore would be bitmaps??? What the hell for???

    As for the X font protocol, that's easy: design an upgraded protocol that the X server can also deal with, that's used to transmit font information along with transparency information. Or use a separate channel for the transparency information and keep the bitmap protocol the way it is.

    But either way, font rendering belongs in the server, and having the client do it is complete nonsense.

    I mean, the GC is an opaque data type, as is the Font, right? So what's to prevent you from having a mask with a depth greater than 1, which is created when you use XSetFont() with a font that has alpha information?

    Help! I don't understand!!

    --
    Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
  59. Too bad Recall doesn't work right now by sethdelackner · · Score: 1
    I got all excited after several of you pointed out that the Recall plugin exists, but no one cared to mention that it is broken by Mozilla versions 0.95 and up, due to the inclusion of the Tabbed Browsing feature, as discussed in this bug report.

    Since I don't want to give up either tabbed browsing or crash recovery, back to Opera for now.

    1. Re:Too bad Recall doesn't work right now by SmileyBen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sure - but wait for the APIs to stabilize and everything to get sorted by 1.0, and then mozdev-type projects will properly take off!

  60. Re:AA? Goog grief... by shnarez · · Score: 0

    Nope, sorry, doesn't work. As a test, I tried the no-pop-ups-on-load with this site: http://astalavista.box.sk/ The end result? Four (4) new windows in addition to the actual page. So... what am I missing? Yes, I closed Mozilla, edited the file, and restarted. What now?

  61. Re:AA? Goog grief... by cymen · · Score: 1

    Ah! I did not know that about user.js. That sounds much nicer than playing with prefs.js for all the reasons you have outlined.

    Thanks!

  62. Microsoft patented it by neves · · Score: 1

    It looks like Micro$oft patented it. Can you use it in an open source software without being processed?

    1. Re:Microsoft patented it by spectecjr · · Score: 2

      It looks like Micro$oft patented it [uspto.gov]. Can you use it in an open source software without being processed?

      Given that MS have stated over and over to both other people and their own employees that they only use patents defensively -- eg. if someone sues them for patent infringement, they'll dig through their patent list and attack that company back with all the ones that they have infringed.

      Of course, there's a certain amount of risk to just ignoring it. You could always license the patent. *shrugs*

      Simon

      --
      Coming soon - pyrogyra
    2. Re:Microsoft patented it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They did pro-actively go after the ASF implementation in VirtualDub on patent grounds. (http://www.advogato.org/article/101.html)

    3. Re:Microsoft patented it by spectecjr · · Score: 1

      Today I received a polite phone call from a fellow at Microsoft who works in the Windows Media group. He informed me that Microsoft has intellectual property rights on the ASF format and told me that, although I had reverse engineered it, the implementation was still illegal since it infringed on Microsoft patents

      Hmmm... sounds like a developer getting above their station, rather than any kind of official legal position. Personally, I'd have asked to speak to their lawyers.

      Si

      --
      Coming soon - pyrogyra
  63. Its the pdf blur! by ahde · · Score: 2

    While it may be a closer approximation of what it will look like on print, its just an illusion. Anti-aliasing *is* blurring. While unantialiased(?!) fonts may be uglier, they are easier on the eyes.

  64. Re:AA? Goog grief... by cymen · · Score: 2

    Did you open up the file again and double check it's still set? I went to the link and I didn't get any popups - I did have Mozilla itself popup and ask if I wanted to get the java plugin (not installed). Perhaps this java thingy they have on their site opens the windows?

    Anyway, see the other reply about users.js or whatever it's called. If you are already using that maybe try adding it to prefs.js and see what happens.

  65. Re:Why doesn't X just do the right thing with font by mapnjd · · Score: 0

    You said, "Were the original designers of the font rendering mechanism so braindead as to specify that all fonts forevermore would be bitmaps??? What the hell for???"

    Well, bear in mind that X started as a project in 1984, and neither IBM nor Digital had a workstation product with a bitmap display available at the time... So designing for the one-after-next technological jump would have involved a lot of precognition.

    Saying that, one of the design goals of XLFD was to be extensible, and a solution similar to yours seems feasible to me at least/

    --
    Bus error in your favour. Collect 200kB
  66. And for XFree 3.3.6? Will this be merged on Moz? by protomala · · Score: 1

    I still have XFree 3.3.6 because my Trident 3D 975 dosen't work well on XFree4 (still haven't tested 4.2 because there are no rpms for redhat 7.1), so, basically I don't have Xft, even having some true types using an old Xfree3 hack for this. In this case, this mozilla patch will not show fonts on my system right? So... this thing should never be merged on Mozilla, right? Or I am missing something?

  67. I've had this working in xlib port for a while now by timecop · · Score: 0

    I hacked xft support into xlib mozilla port about 4 months ago, but aa fonts are so ugly, I decided not to cleanup the patch. SO how the fuck is this news?

  68. Re:Why doesn't X just do the right thing with font by Zog · · Score: 1

    > that's easy: design an upgraded protocol

    I think you've just summed up the situation. It's generally not so easy - so many things depend on X to work like X and interoperability with different versions of X (Free86 v3.x, v4.x, Sun's stuff, etc), it's basically asking for the world's biggest headache ever.

  69. Re:AA? Goog grief... by shnarez · · Score: 0

    Dude! This is beautiful!! Using prefs.js it didn't work, but now, in user.js it works like a charm! Sweet! No more windows popping up like crazy? Now I can tell everyone why Mozilla rocks! :)
    Thanks a lot.

  70. Re:AA? Goog grief... by cymen · · Score: 1

    I agree. Recently I was tempted to buy Opera for Linux but now Mozilla just rocks (tabbed browsing, no popups, etc). The other thing that made me stick with Mozilla is that the IMAP mail client also works extremely well.

    Only downsides with Mozilla that I see are:
    1) javascript is dead slow
    2) java on some sites doesn't like to work with the java plugin or is damn slow (bad dom in browser? or bad java vm?)
    3) can't delete IMAP folders in mail client (remove them from view)
    4) newsgroups aren't sorted alphabetically (I bet some mozilla jack ass thinks this is the "right way to do things" just like not having a home button on the main menu is the "right thing to do").

    But anyway, I can't overlook those downsides because I suspect most of them will be fixed soon...

  71. Re:AA? Goog grief... by shnarez · · Score: 0
    I don't use java in Mozilla - I refuse to install the java plugin. :)
    Javascript slow? Really? Can't tell, I haven't noticed. And I don't use IMAP. :)

    But... I can tell you what *really* annoys me: the newsgroup server I use requires authentication. Mozilla doesn't have options for user/pass in server properties. The thing is, it's push authentication - the client has to send info, server never asks for it. If client doesn't present credentials, server doesn't show you any groups! It's as good as a useless server. The bug claimed to have been fixed, but it's not! I have no clue what's wrong over there, other than coding it up myself, which I am tempted to attempt, but it's a LOT of code to understand.

    Why this is annoying is simply because Outlook Express handles it just fine. I'm guessing there are other newsreaders which would be fine, maybe even Evolution et al, I was just hoping Mozilla would do it all for me -- I don't feel like installing the whole Ximian desktop and I can't seem to connect to ftp.ximian.com to try to steal individual packages...

  72. Re:AA? Goog grief... by cymen · · Score: 1

    Hrm... You're right about javascript. I don't know what I was thinking - it is fast enough for me at every site I use. Maybe I was reading performance comparisions between IE 6.0 javascript and Mozilla. I don't know why I even mentioned it though because it hasn't affected me personally.

    Argh... The "space in textarea" buggy behavoir is annoying! If you are at the end of the line and you enter a space Mozilla doesn't want to go down to the next line. So you enter another space and then another then backspace, yadda yadda. I'm used to it now but it is annoying. Now to find the bug in bugzilla and vote for it :).