Default font settings in Ubuntu

[Alex Jones]

Hi List

I propose two changes to the default font settings in Ubuntu.

     1. Disable hinting so that fonts maintain their original shape
     2. Enable colourised anti-aliasing, with David Turner's patches
        applied (pre-made packages available at
        <http://diego.aureal.com.pe/fonts/> courtesy of Diego Escalante)

After an infinite amount of fiddling with my monitor's settings, the
best result was just to set them to default and use the filtered
unhinted fonts.

Many people complain that using unhinted fonts makes them look blurry
and fat. I suggest to them that given 10 minutes getting used to
unhinted, hinted fonts look eroded, out of shape, and unreasonably
harsh. Any affinity towards the shape of the hinted (distorted) fonts
could be resolved by finding a font with the actual shapes they want. In
many people's opinion, Bitstream Vera Sans is a beautiful font with
beautiful shapes, shapes which are entirely inconsistent with hinting
enabled at small sizes.

Please take a look at two screenshots of an email I have linked for
your analysis.

      * RGB Unhinted:
        <http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/5867/filteredunhintedsm0.png> 
      * Greyscale Hinted:
        <http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/8472/greyscalehintedfq8.png> 

Thanks for reading!
-- 
Alex Jones <alex at weej.com>