Re: A little bit of research on font smoothing in X

[Peter Bortas <peter idonex se>]

"Dan Kaminsky" <effugas@best.com> writes:

> I *may* have a solution.  If Times New Roman is requested from the font
> server at point size 12, font smoothing is impossible--a monochrome graphic
> has been delivered.  However, if point size 24 is requested, and then
> quickly downsampled bilinearly or with a 3x3blur+nearest neighbor and
> combined with the point size 12 font metrics, an antialiasable font will
> have been created.
> 
> The system isn't perfect, however.  The X-Server would have to be smart
> enough to know to downsample a 24 point font when 12 point metrics have been
> provided, and then to implement the minimal level of alpha levels.  I can
> say this--Xfree86 gets this, EVERYONE will follow.

It's actually possible to do this now. You can preload the relevant
X-server calls to copy the background, request a font at double size,
resize it to get some alpha-smoothing and then copy the result back to
screen. I've seen it done by one of my colleagues at work. The result
was something that, although looking good, crawled on the Sparc4's
we were using back then.

-- 
Peter Bortas                   http://peter.bortas.org
Idonex AB                      http://www.idonex.com
Roxen Web-server                http://www.roxen.com