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On text layout and dancing characters
by Phase II on Monday 08/Jan/2007, @18:39
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With Scribe, the new text layouting engine, these issues should be fixed with KOffice 2, and most text in the first screenshot looks good so far with regard to this.
Still, i found some issues which still show some spacing issues:
- second paragraph: the first "text" looks like " t ext"; in the second "text" the "xt" looks quite condensed; "technical looks like "t echnical".
- the paragraph below the red arrow: the dot after "dynamically" is moved into the word. Looks like wanted kerning (compare with the other dots and the comma after "library", second paragraph)
- Most obvious: both of the rotated paragraphs look quite much much like the old dancing characters: almost all characters are somehow tilted and are a tad off of the ground line, moved a bit up and down. Didn't pick any words, should be visible with all of them. Looks more abvious on the two-line, stronger rotated one.
What's the reason for this? Is this what you mean by "not complete", so does this get addressed with time, so it's not like this can't be fixed like in KOffice 1.x?
I know it's a work in progress and it's only stacking up right now and still rough around the edges; still I wanted to point it out, as I thought this was already gone with the new layout engine and to make sure these issues don't get overlooked. |
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Re: On text layout and dancing characters
by ac on Monday 08/Jan/2007, @18:45
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Yeah, I'm concerned as well. Text appearance has always been my major problem with KDE apps, and everything I've read about Scribe indicates that this will fix all of those problems.
...so screenshots that still have these problems make me nervous. This'll be fixed in the final version, right guys? Anyone?
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Re: On text layout and dancing characters
by superstoned on Tuesday 09/Jan/2007, @01:27
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let's hope so. at least it got better already, and this is so much a work in progress i find it hard to believe they won't spend time on it. even if you do daily SVN updates, the progress on Koffice is amazing - they easily change over 60 files each day, frequently adding more than 10 or 20 files... it's a very active KDE module.
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Re: On text layout and dancing characters
by Gawron on Tuesday 09/Jan/2007, @02:29
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Ops... it really looks bad, just the same type of problems that were plaguing 1.x. Hmmmm, I really, really hope that this is due to not using more advanced text rendering features that *will* be turned on later during development (anybody can confirm / decline ?). BTW - it seems to me that with such text rendering KOffice can be only treated as a toy, not a real tool ;-)
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Re: On text layout and dancing characters
by Thomas Zander on Tuesday 09/Jan/2007, @02:44
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Hi,
I'm personally already quite impressed with the way that things look a magnitude better than KOffice1.x
I do grant you that there are several slight problems. (see http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=139130 for instance)
Not all issues have been solved even in the bugreport issue, but they are solvable. And we aim to solve all of them in time for the release.
This is a coordinated effort between the KWord + Qt + Pango guys.
See http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/HarfBuzz
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Re: On text layout and dancing characters
by cirehawk on Tuesday 09/Jan/2007, @09:25
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I followed your link, and it seems to be saying that the remaining rendering problems aren't due to issues with KOffice 2.0 code but rather issuess with the fonts that were used. I'm I correct in this understanding? If so, does this mean that only fonts that have been optimised for KDE/KOffice use will display correctly? That could be an issue.
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Re: On text layout and dancing characters
by Morty on Wednesday 10/Jan/2007, @00:59
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Correct it's issues with the font used. But it's not about beeing optimized for KDE/KOffice, it's about fonts having good/correct hinting. The bad font's will render just as crappy all places that use FreeType.
Anyway I think KOffice should default to a better font than the one used in these screenshots. Using that particular(crappy) font gives a bad impression of KOffice. It's about first impressions and using a better font will help a lot.
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Re: On text layout and dancing characters
by renoX on Wednesday 10/Jan/2007, @02:20
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Agreed!
My first reaction on all these screenshot is 'ugly', and I have real difficulties to 'forget' the poor font kerning.
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Hinting?
by Selene on Wednesday 10/Jan/2007, @05:14
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I just wonder, instead of what happened with the kerning: where did the hinting of the fonts go?
The UI has nicely hinted letters (Vera Sans most likely, and using the hinting instructions in the font), but for some reason it produces awful fuzzy blobs in the document itself, even though it seems that the same font is used there. If this is really Vera Sans there, then either the font rendering in the document is broken or the person who made the screenshots has some weird settings.
I should install kde4 and koffice2 myself once to see how it looks like, the screenshots posted here don't really tell enough to see what's going wrong.
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Re: Hinting?
by Thomas Zander on Wednesday 10/Jan/2007, @07:09
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This is a pre-pre-pre alpha release, guys.
Please take it like that and don't burn something that actually is quite is step up from the previous release because its not perfect yet.
Celebrate progress, be patient for perfection.
Well, unless you want to submit patches ;)
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Re: Hinting?
by cirehawk on Wednesday 10/Jan/2007, @12:08
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Oh I wasn't burning, I was trying to understand your comment. I am excited about the upcoming 2.0 version of KOffice.
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Re: Hinting?
by renoX on Thursday 11/Jan/2007, @06:23
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It isn't burning either, but if the issue is just with some fonts as said above, then you'd better use fonts which render correctly to really show-off your work: even when trying, it's hard to overcome the 'ugly font rendering' first impression to appreciate your work..
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Re: Hinting?
by Thomas Zander on Thursday 11/Jan/2007, @06:46
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> then you'd better use fonts which render correctly to really
> show-off your work
You are right. I'll correct that right here and now.
I've been working with type years ago. Must have gotten rusty.
The one attached to this post better?
200701kword_with_gentium.png
58KB (59985 bytes)
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Re: Hinting?
by renoX on Friday 12/Jan/2007, @04:18
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Not really, this font is really weird: the 'u' is bigger than the 'm'..
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Re: Hinting?
by mactalla on Friday 12/Jan/2007, @06:32
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I wouldn't say "not really" I'd say "yes!" Because it *is* better. It's not perfect, as you noted the 'u' is taller. Assuming that's not intended by the font, then it's less than perfect, but without the kerning issues.
Thanks Thomas and all the other KOffice devs, we really do appreciate your hard work!
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Re: Hinting?
by ruben on Friday 09/Feb/2007, @19:28
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This font doesn't look *that* good. 'b' and 's' seem to have more space around them than some other letters.
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