Hacker News Reader

Comment by pazimzadeh | Hacker News Reader

The problem with open-source OS's is that they can't take advantage of things like attractive fonts for the user interface.

There has got to be a better open-source font than what Haiku is currently using (http://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/deskbar.html).

View on HN

This is no longer true -- there are a few quality typefaces made by professional designers available for open source projects, for example DejaVu, Droid, Arimo/Tinos, PT Sans, Ubuntu. Even Mac OS X uses an open source font for a part of their interface (Menlo, based on DejaVu Sans Mono).

timc is right, what you see is unattractive font rendering (no subpixel rendering, full hinting). For the state of the art of font rendering in open source projects, look at Ubuntu or Infinality.

Those fonts definitely have sub-pixel hinting - easy to spot if you zoom in on any of the pics - the font is just not a very good UI font.

I don't see it - http://i.imgur.com/mZV1K.png

The font seem to be DejaVu Sans, and it's pretty good with proper rendering: http://i.imgur.com/ixI70.png

I looked for an image with a white background http://i.imgur.com/9aTz2.jpg

Yep, this is it. Still full hinting, though.

Really? The blues and oranges tell me its sub-pixel rendering.

Yes, it's subpixel rendering on your screenshot. Hinting is "full" as opposed to "medium" or "slight": http://www.clearevo.com/blog/files/AfterFullHint.png

Ah yes, I see what you mean, sorry!

> what you see is unattractive font rendering (no subpixel rendering

Haiku actually has ClearType support in the source, but it is not enabled at compile-time by default because it's patented.

I think the problem with the font rendering in this screenshot is the hinting. When you hint the fonts too strongly they lose their character and the diagonals' width becomes inconsistent with the straight lines' width, as you can see in the lowercase 'w', for example. If this uses the FreeType library, you can set the font hinting to 'Slight' or 'Medium' and fonts look a lot better.

http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/index.h...

The hinting looks fine and freetype2 is currently capable of emulating everything OSX or Windows does. The fonts look like (I'm no expert here) they are from the Liberation family that Red Hat created, and I'd agree that they are somewhat utilitarian and ugly.

I don't think it's so much the font as the font rendering. Not sure because I need to get a Haiku system up and running, but Windows, OSX and now Linux have spent a lot of time getting the rendering working with tricks like clear fix.

Interestingly much higher resolution displays will probably help to offset the need for rendering tricks

If this is the (only/main) problem of the open-source OS's, I'd think they're doing pretty good.

"The problem with open-source OS's is that they can't take advantage of things like attractive fonts..." My thoughts while reading this: haha good one, yeah make fun of the non-open source stuff... oh wait, this guy is serious

I'm not making fun, and I don't dislike open-source software. The typeface is ugly.

So, it's not like they can't take advantage as much as most of its developers don't care about type.

Except that in this case they do, and have had numerous discussions about default fonts and wanting to not step on patent issues over things like ClearType (for RGB subpixel rendering).

I don't know if you still remember, but a couple posts up, someone implied open-source products couldn't take advantage of good typography.

I don't think it's fair of you to imply that I lack the mental capacity to remember that: I recall it just fine. However, it's quite immaterial. I was responding to your statement that they don't care, which is not to say that they couldn't. They clearly care - this, and nothing more, did I intend to point out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com