[Bug 32947] New: Broken font rendering with many fonts (including Microsoft core fonts) in wine 1.5

[wine-bugs at winehq.org]

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32947

             Bug #: 32947
           Summary: Broken font rendering with many fonts (including
                    Microsoft core fonts) in wine 1.5
           Product: Wine
           Version: 1.5.22
          Platform: x86
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: gdi32
        AssignedTo: wine-bugs at winehq.org
        ReportedBy: constantine.gavrilov at gmail.com
    Classification: Unclassified


This is a long standing issue with 1.5 versions. Several bugs have been opened
and closed but they usually do not get to the core issue.

One of the issues (that is listed as closed) is 29250.


Here is the beef of the matter.

Many true type fonts including core Microsoft fonts (Arial, Times New Roman,
Courier New, Tahoma, Verdana) and all built-in true type fonts shipped with
Wine (Tahoma, ms-sans-serif, etc.) will use subpixel rendering only at
unrealistically big sizes (>= 16), and event then the quality is awful.

Other fonts (typically from Dejavu or Vera families) will  render just fine and
will use subpixel rendering at default sizes.

Asking wine to log font decisions shows that wine has decided to disable
antialiasing for "problematic" fonts because of the info it got from GASP
table.

I would like to stress that this is not a problem of fontconfig settings or
fontconfig or wine font substitutions. Nor it is a problem of wrong DPI.

Native linux applications display just fine, and wine will display similar to
Linux if Dejavu or Vera fonts are forced.

Additionally, ClientSideGraphics=N (or =Y) has nothing to do with this problem
either. Under both settings, the fonts look similar and the decisions based on
the GASP table are the same. This setting does not affect the decision to
antialias or not, it affects the quality with ClientSideGraphics=N giving
better results that are also consistent with the Linux desktop.

This feature (using the GASP tables the way they are used) is actually a
misfeature because:
* shipped wine fonts are not usable for dialogs and menus
* native Windows fonts cannot be used because they will not use subpixel
rendering but they are still recommended in documentation.

I understand that someone desired to get a closer picture to Windows, but what
we have is unusable now. As far as I can see, Windows will antialias these
fonts just fine (at least starting from size 12), and even when ClearType is
not used for size 10, the font is still very crisp and readable.

Bottom line, when wine decides to skip antialias for most fonts, the result is
very very ugly. I would even say it is not possible to use.

I also would like to claim that fontconfig uses subpixel rendering for these
fonts just fine (native Linux applications look great) and I would say the
results are better (at least definitely not worse) compared to Windows
rendering for cases when it decides to skip antialiasing because the size is
small.

Can we have a configuration setting to opt out of GASP table decisions?

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