[Interest] Configuring Qt's built-in freetype ?

[Allan Sandfeld Jensen]

On Donnerstag, 26. August 2021 13:36:42 CEST Jean-Michaël Celerier wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> for consistency, I am shipping my app with freetype on all platforms.
> This looks "correct", definitely better than using macOS or Win32's font
> rendering, but ! Qt's built-in freetype does not look as good than my Linux
> system's finely-tuned freetype configuration which prompted some
> investigation.
> 
> It's very visible for instance in the menu bar:
> * Top one is my system freetype, notice how the fonts are crispy and
> beautiful.
> * Below one is using Qt's -qt-freetype: notice how the straight lines, like
> for the "t" in settings or the vertical bars in H are blurry.
> [image: here.png]
> 
> If you zoom you'll notice that the one below is missing sub-pixel AA:
> 
> [image: here-small.png]
> Thus my question: is there a way (even if that implies rebuilding Qt) to
> pass configuration options to freetype ? Surely that must be possible as
> it's able to do the correct thing with my distro (arch btw)'s Qt / freetype
> / fontconfig combo.
> 

Looks like your distro did something that enabled subpixel rendering. Maybe 
the old patented hinting algorithms?

You might get more consistent results if you use slight hinting.

Best regards
Allan