pango/true type font rendering

[Malcolm <rannirl-gnome otherkin net>]

I hope this is the right place to ask some (hopefully not too
dumb) questions...

I am currently trying to use pango to display ttf's into a simple
bitmap (256 colour for now) for use in an embedded app I am working
on. (It seems to provide a lot of the facilities I am looking for
without having to mess with ft2 directly).

However, I am having a few problems with it. Currently the
largest one is that the rendering quality is abysmal. Even at very
large point sizes, I get a lot of visible artifacts, at smaller
ones (anything below about 16pt on a 75dpi ft2 context) it becomes
completely illegible.

The example (pango-viewer) works fine and renders clearly readable
and clean text, so my install seems to be sane.

What I am doing:

creating a 256 greyscale FT_bitmap
getting a 75dpi ft2 context
building a layout with an appropriate font and some sample text
using pango_ft2_render_layout to render the text into the bitmap.
assuming the render uses a linear greyscale.
(actual test code available if it will help).

Is there something obvious that I am missing here? Or a better way
of acheiving what I am trying to do?

As far as I can tell, there is no colour support for ttfs, they are
greyscale rendered and coloring is up to the app level. (Though there
are color tags in the markup). Have I missed something there too?


Thanks.



-- 
 "The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."
- Ambassador Kosh, Babylon 5.

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