Re: On text layout and dancing characters

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Re: On text layout and dancing characters
by Thomas Zander on Tuesday 09/Jan/2007, @02:44

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

Related Links

·   Articles on KDE Public Relations and Marketing
·   Also by Thomas Zander
·   Contact author

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Re: On text layout and dancing characters
by cirehawk on Tuesday 09/Jan/2007, @09:25

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

> 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

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

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

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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