At my local test site, Signwriter is rendering given text very fine. But the same configuration - Signwriter 6.x-2.x dev, Drupal 6.12, identical truetype font - is producing poor results on a hosted server. The only relevant difference I can see is that between freetype version 2.2.1 (hosted server) and 2.3.4 (local server). If you have a look at the attachment, you will see that apparently it's not anti-aliasing that is missing in Sample 1 (hosted), but the font looks sort of clumsy compared to Sample 2 (local). Can the lower freetype version be the cause of the lower quality? Or perhaps something completely different?

CommentFileSizeAuthor
#1 badrendering.png5.29 KBsullix
sample.png12.87 KBkla2t

Comments

sullix’s picture

sullix commented
Version: 6.x-2.x-dev » 6.x-1.1
StatusFileSize
new badrendering.png5.29 KB

I have the same problem but with 6.x-1.1 version of Signwriter (and Drupal 6.12).
The dev is on a Debian whereas the production website will be installed on a RedHat (CentOS 5.3). So, for testing, a copy of the dev has been moved on RedHat... and there, all works perfectly but menu's item rendered with Signwriter have now a bad quality and the offset is different (see the attached file).

Configuration information

Versions of Freetype are nearly the same:

  • CentOS: freetype.i386 2.3.7-3.fc10
  • Debian: libfreetype6 2.3.7-2+lenny1

For PHP and GD:

  • CentOS: php.i386 (and php-gd.i386) 5.2.10-1.el5.remi
  • Debian: php5-common (and php5-gd) 5.2.6.dfsg.1-1+lenny3
agileware’s picture

agileware commented
Version: 6.x-1.1 » 6.x-2.x-dev

Changing version back to 6.x-2.x as it is the most current version with the problem.

kla2t’s picture

kla2t commented

Apparently there is no 6.x-2.x release, only the 6.x-2.x-dev version. If you mean 6.x-1.1: I tried this version, too, but the results look identical.
Any further hints? Thanks in advance!

agileware’s picture

agileware commented

The problem has not been fixed in any version yet. I was just changing the issue's version field to 6.x-2.x because that is where it will be fixed when it is fixed.

rantenki’s picture

rantenki commented

This might be a side effect of hinting patents on font rendering engines. Has redhat turned off some features in their font rendering libraries?

Please see http://beranger.org/index.php?article=2787&page=3k for more info.

marcusf’s picture

marcusf commented
Title: Poor rendering quality on hosted server - due to freetype version? » Postscript font rendering
Category: support » feature
Issue tags: +signwriter ttf ps postscript truetype

Signwriter uses truetype font rendering, is there any way to update signwriter to use postscript rendering?
(imagepstext)

Quality problems or poor font rendering problems would be solved.
f.e. caused by truetype version on server