Qt 2.3 released: I can see clearly now

Trolltech has announced the release of Qt 2.3.0, the much-anticipated version of Qt that supports anti-aliased fonts (assuming your X server is up-to-date). "KDE 2.1 automatically takes advantage of Qt's support of anti-aliased fonts. The result is one of the nicest looking user interfaces in the world." Along with anti-aliasing, Qt 2.3.0 offers True Type and Type 1 font support for printing, and a few other improvements. The release was accompanied by an amusing soundtrack. Finally, of note to those of you struggling with fonts, is the Qt font HOWTO, made available by Lars Knoll.

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Comments

by Janne Ojaniemi (not verified)

I'm having severe problems running KDE2.1 I have SuSE 7.0 PRofessionak with following modifications:

Kernel has been updated to 2.4.2
Xfree has been updated to 4.0.2

I downloaded Suse 7.0 RPM's. I installed QT 2.2.4 correctly, and I installed KDE packages in correct order using Yast. But when I try to run KDE2.1 I get following error-messages:

ksplash: error in loading shared libraries: /opt/kde2/lib/libkdeui.so.3: undefined symbol: sizeHint__C7QDialog

kdeinit: error in loading shared libraries: /opt/kde2/lib/libkdecore.so.3: undefined symbol: startsWith__C7QStringRC7QString

knotify: error in loading shared libraries: /opt/kde2/lib/libkdeui.so.3: undefined symbol: sizeHint__C7QDialog

ktip: error in loading shared libraries: /opt/kde2/lib/libkdeui.so.3: undefined symbol: event__9QLineEditP6QEvent

Session management error: networkIdsList argument is NULL

ksmserver: error in loading shared libraries: /opt/kde2/lib/libkdecore.so.3: undefined symbol: qt_set_locale_codec__FP10QTextCodec

I have re-installed QT twice, but no help, I have installed KDE-packages several times with and without Yast. I upgraded to QT 2.3, but it doesn't help =(!

I'm starting to get desperate!

by Randy Hron (not verified)

I had a similar problem with RedHat 7.0, but I
found the fix. This is RedHat, but there is
probably a very similar thing happening on your
SuSE system.

Cause: installed KDE 2.x from different sources,
I.E. kde.org and redhat. They put the shared libs
in slightly different places, and you are seeing
some of the older libs.
.
RedHat fix: Notice the lib names in your error.
The qt-2.2.4 stuff should be in /usr/lib/qt-2.2.4.
Remove the kde libs in /usr/lib with the same names as /usr/lib/qt-2.2.4.

One way to see what shared libs kde is going to use is to run "ldd $(which ksplash)"
See if libkdecore.so.3 is coming from an unexpected place.

Good luck!

by Janne Ojaniemi (not verified)

It worked! I jut copied everything in /usr/local/qt/lib to /usr/lib and /usr/lib/qt.

But. I also noticed that I'm missing the AA'd fonts in Control Panel, even though I have installed & compiled QT 2.3 correctly. I downloaded latest RPM's from Suse's FTP-site. Is the AA-checkbox visible on KDE.org rpm's?

by Janne Ojaniemi (not verified)

It worked! I jut copied everything in /usr/local/qt/lib to /usr/lib and /usr/lib/qt.

But. I also noticed that I'm missing the AA'd fonts in Control Panel, even though I have installed & compiled QT 2.3 correctly. I downloaded latest RPM's from Suse's FTP-site. Is the AA-checkbox visible on KDE.org rpm's?

Did you download and install liblcms.rpm and libmng.rpm?
For some reason they are not in the same directory as the other rpms for i386.
You have download them from SuSE.

by Janne Ojaniemi (not verified)

Yes, I downloaded and installed liblcms and libmng, but it didn't help.

I downloaded all KDE2.1 RPM from kde.org, so they are not from different sources. It seems that I'm just about the only one to have problems with SuSE rpm's. What am I doing wrong?

I bet that there's some minor mistake somewhere. But to be honest, I'm at a loss :(!

by Kevin Pearson (not verified)

I got QT to display anti-aliased fonts (Wow!), but I can't get KDE to startup displaying aa fonts. During startup I see the following messages:

kio (KLauncher): setLaunchEnv KDE_MULTIHEAD=false
kdeinit: Got SETENV 'KDE_MULTIHEAD=false' from klauncher.
kio (KLauncher): setLaunchEnv QT_XFT=0
kdeinit: Got SETENV 'QT_XFT=0' from klauncher.

Anyone know how I can get KDE to turn QT_XFT to true?

by KDE User (not verified)

KDE has an option to turn on AA in the Control Center. Check Look & Feel under Style under Use Anti-Aliasing for fonts and icons.

by Kevin Pearson (not verified)

I've looked an I can't find an option for AA anywhere. I'm using kde 2.1 under RedHat 7.0.

I've attached a screen shot of my control center.

by Maarten ter Huurne (not verified)

Very odd, I'm running KDE 2.1 compiled from sources and it does have the AA on/off option. See attached screenshot.

by KDE User (not verified)

That is a very nice theme, what is it called?

by Maarten ter Huurne (not verified)

I'm glad you like it. It's a theme I've been working on for a while, but it's not released yet. People interested can send me an e-mail or check my KDE page once in a while (http://www.stack.nl/~mth/kde/).

by Craig black (not verified)

I don't have it either i'm useing the mandrake 7.2 rpms. What are you useing?

Craig

by KDE User (not verified)

It looks like KDE determines at compile-time whether your Qt supports AA or not. If it doesn't, then the code to handle AA is not compiled in. The good news is that you can just get the source code for kcontrol and reconfigure then recompile/reinstall from the kdebase/kcontrol/display directory. Or complain to the person who made your packages.

by Kevin Pearson (not verified)

Thanks....

I just looked at the code. And it looks like the GUI to control this behavior is conditionally compiled. But I also found that I can add the following to my kcmdisplayrc:

[KDE]
AntiAliasing=true

By adding this, I can now view AA with KDE.

by Nadeem Hasan (not verified)

Add the following to your /etc/profile or /etc/profile.local or ~/.profile:

export QT_XFT=true

by Kevin Pearson (not verified)

I added it to my /etc/profile.d/qt.sh file. But KDE seems to be setting QT_XFT back to 0.

by Erik Hill (not verified)

I got it to work! Yeah! Anti-aliased fonts. I'm running on a laptop (Toshiba 2805-S202, which, by the way, is a GREAT Linux laptop, and, no, I don't work for Toshiba) and I was wondering, how can one set the anti-aliasing to do sub-pixel rendering instead? I've heard rumors that this was possible. Has anyone tried it?

In the meanwhile, I copied all my Windows fonts (Windows has great fonts. I knew it had to be useful for something...)

Erik

by Shawn Gordoon (not verified)

the guy who discovered that is just a few miles away from me, and if you've ever seen the example for Windows, it is truly stunning. I asked about this in the kde-devel list and was told they already had the ability to do it (if I understood correctly), but I'll tell you what, if you can get that working with KDE and go to do a demo on a laptop, people will just be stunned.

by Jason Katz-Brown (not verified)

hmm what is sub-pixel rendering?

Thanks

by Nadeem Hasan (not verified)

Add this to your ~/.Xdefaults:

Xft.rgba: rgb

by Erik Hill (not verified)

It works GREAT! Just beautiful. Thank you.

Wow. Sub-pixel rendering under Linux, with every single piece of text I see being rendered correctly. Now all we need is:

#1 Better hinting under FreeType
#2 Better open fonts
#3 A nice dialog to set this all up under the control panel, in the fonts panel.

I don't know how to make fonts, but I could code the GUI, but I assume someone else has already thought of this and is coding it, or has coded it. Meanwhile, I've been thinking about anti-aliased icons, which should be easier, because they can be just rendered statically, as in, not on the fly.

Erik

THE RELEASE SONG IS GREAT !!!!

For 2.4 TrollTech should do a parody of the "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" song. Ah, I can see it now : "All your widgets are open sourced by us"

by Georg Oberwinkler (not verified)

It seems, that Nvidias Drivers don't yet support AA. Any other experiences?

Georg

0.9-7 will (or at least the developer of the NVIDIA driver once claimed)

If you need AA right now, use XFree's 'nv'.

9.7 should be out shortly. They told me last week that it would be out in a week or so. maybe we'll get the drivers this week I hope.

Craig

by Georg Oberwinkler (not verified)

Duh,

thanks for this reply, I was just searching for alternatives to my Geforce2 MX, since http://trolls.troll.no/ ~lars/fonts/qt-fonts-HOWTO.html is writing that Nvidia doesn't support them yet.

Another week of waiting

Georg

by Herwin Jan (not verified)

Hi,

I have a dualHead G450 with 2 monitors. Monitor 1 gives anti-alias fonts ok, but on screen 2 i don't see any fonts..

can somebody help me ?

tanx

by Sam Rowe (not verified)

The RENDER extension wasn't Xinerama-ified until recently. Grab the CVS or wait for 4.1.0

by Herwin Jan (not verified)

I did yesterday, now the text is show, but with strange pixels around it, so it is not 100% working ;-(

but i will wait ;-)

tanx

by Tomasz Jarzynka (not verified)

Need KDE (which packages) to be recompiled in order for the antialiasing to work?

by Maarten ter Huurne (not verified)

Recompiling KDE is not necessary. Read the comments above to activate the "use AA" config option if you have KDE 2.1.

You do have to recompile Qt and XFree86. I found out today that just having the RENDER extension in your X server is not enough, /usr/X11R6/lib/libXft.so.1.0 must be linked to FreeType2 for anti-aliasing to work (use "ldd" to check). The XFree86 release notes tell you how to compile XFree86 so that Xft is linked to FreeType2.

by Tomasz Jarzynka (not verified)

Need KDE (which packages) to be recompiled in order for the antialiasing to work?

I have absolutely know idea how I'm going to get this to work...

I have the sources for QT 2.3, XF 4.0.3 and KDE 2.1 and I'm running NVidia release 0.9-769 (xdpyinfo shows RENDER).

Compiled XFree86, QT (with Xft support) and KDE 2.1...

Now, drkonqi gives me "floating point exception" and none of my KDE apps work!

If I ssh from a remote machine, KDE apps run fine!

xterm -fa arial works fine!

AAAARGH! Help!

Jan Gutter

"-and those damned stupid barbarians with their
damned stupid swords will win after all..."
-- Larry Niven (The Magic Goes Away)

by danile (not verified)

ciao dani ti mando stà prova di trx come sempre x testare
la nuova installazione d i susevrrmar