[Bug 83040] fonts aren't properly hinted in KDE applications

[Bogdan Butnaru]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: kdebase

I'm not sure where to put this, I though I'd place it in "kde" and see
if anyone can suggest a better spot.

I use Ubuntu Feisty (all repositories up to and including multiverse; I
installed Dapper and updated from there), with the Gnome interface, on a
Dell Latitude D620 laptop. (I'll fill in with more details if asked.)

The only KDE thing I use is Amarok. My problems all started when I
noticed that the fonts in Amarok got rendered uglier than those in the
other applications. As far as I can tell, they were (and still are)
rendered with anti-aliasing (grayscale, I think) without hinting.

(I had fonts set-up to my taste, using the default Gnome applet, when I
installed Ubuntu, with full hinting and sub-pixel AA. It works just
right in Gnome apps, and it used to work OK in Amarok.)

I don't know what triggered the change, it was probably an update of
some Qt thing. I didn't notice this right away, so I'm not sure.

I tried looking for info on the forums -- because I'm not really
familiar with KDE. A few guys tried to help me by suggesting I install
kcontrol and use it to change KDE's font settings. (That's what I wanted
to do, I just didn't know the name of the package.) I tried that, and I
had some issues with kcontrol -- see bug #80444 -- but I got around
those.

OK, so now I tried looking through kcontrol's font settings. For once,
sub-pixel anti-aliasing and hinting were already turned on, but it
doesn't seem to work at all. I tried all sorts of disable-antialiasing /
restart / re-enable / restart with all combinations of
hinting/antialiasing/subpixel antialiasing, and now (although I'm in
exactly the same settings as before) the rendering does seem a bit
changed, but it still doesn't look like hinting is correctly displayed.

I'll attach a few screen-shots right away. Take a look at bug #80444,
there's a screenshot there of how it used to look.

** Affects: kdebase (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: Unconfirmed

-- 
fonts aren't properly hinted in KDE applications
https://launchpad.net/bugs/83040