I've recently moved from Ubuntu to OpenSolaris b127 on my main desktop and find myself missing Ubuntu's perfectly smooth font rendering. I know b127 made some major font configuration changes, but I've been able to get pretty close to what I'm used to by disabling auto-hinting and enabling full hinting. Even still, Ubuntu's rendering is more smooth. See:
http://thestaticvoid.com/dump/ubuntu-osol-text-rendering.png Of course, this won't look right to anyone without an RGB LCD monitor. The difference is very subtle, but noticeable, for example, when surfing the web. Look at the edges of the "V" and "w" in "View" to see what I mean. My understanding is that Ubuntu made some changes to FreeType and Cairo back in the Gutsy days [1]. I think they started compiling FreeType with the FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING option, but I'm not sure. Does anyone know how I can achieve a similar effect with OpenSolaris, preferably without recompiling FreeType? Thanks, James [1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2007-September/024369.html
