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Message #05869
[Bug 703191] Re: BGR-ordered subpixel font rendering appears broken/nonfunctional in Gnome/GTK+
I can confirm the same behavior on an HP TouchPad, Ubuntu 11.04 armel
port (armv7l). I'm running LXDE, and only gtk apps are affected. Firefox
renders fonts correctly, and so do the KDE apps.
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/703191
Title:
BGR-ordered subpixel font rendering appears broken/nonfunctional in
Gnome/GTK+
Status in “gtk+2.0” package in Ubuntu:
Confirmed
Bug description:
I'm filing this bug against gtk+, but frankly I don't know exactly
what package is the culprit. It's occurring somewhere between the
Gnome "Appearance" preference panel and freetype, I suppose.
In summary, subpixel-antialiased font rendering to a Blue-Green-Red
(BGR) ordered display panel is broken in Maverick (10.10, Gnome).
There is NO DIFFERENCE between text rendered using the "RGB" setting
and the "BGR" setting. It is blurry and fringy on my BGR panel in
both cases, contrary to my experiences over the last few years with
previous releases, under which I always had sharp results.
I'm running Ubuntu 10.10, 64-bit, on a generic PC with an Nvidia
7900GS card, using the latest proprietary Nvidia driver. The monitor
is a Dell 1800FP, one of the few BGR panels out there, unfortunately,
and it is connected via DVI.
There is no change whatsoever when toggling between the two horizontal
subpixel options in the "Appearance" settings panel
(System->Preferences->Appearance->Fonts->Details). No matter how
closely I look, not a single pixel changes. I can see small changes
(as expected) when I go back and forth between "RGB" and "VRGB," for
example, but "RGB"<->"BGR" appears to do absolutely nothing.
I can verify that what I'm seeing (with either "RGB" or "BGR"
selected) is, in fact, RGB-ordered subpixel rendering. If I take a
screenshot and mirror it horizontally, which essentially turns RGB
into BGR, what I see is very nice, clear text on my screen.
Unmirrored, it's ugly and fringy.
I have tried various versions of the Nvidia driver, and it doesn't
help. Nor does using an unaccelerated driver. Nor does the status of
compiz desktop effects, on vs. off.
I have had excellent font rendering in the past, up through and
including Lucid (10.04).
In Firefox, for some reason, the systemwide RGB/BGR setting *does*
work. If I select "BGR" in the Gnome appearance preferences and
refresh a web page, it looks GREAT! Re-select "RGB," refresh, and it's
ugly again. All other text on the screen in Gnome/GTK applications
remains unchanged.
And Qt-based applications also work correctly, according to the
settings I have in ~/.fonts.conf. Those applications have great-
looking text.
So there's something weird going on. This preference isn't being
respected by my desktop or the Gnome/GTK applications I use, and it
has worked perfectly in the past. My Google searches for others
experiencing this problem have come up empty.
In attempting to troubleshoot this problem, I tried numerous different
LiveCD images to see whether they worked. (I booted them in a kvm
virtual machine, and carefully inspected their on-screen output.)
Here's the summary:
Ubuntu 10.10: BROKEN - no BGR font rendering (both 32-bit and 64-bit
versions tested)
Xubuntu 10.10: BROKEN - no BGR font rendering
Ubuntu 11.04 alpha: BROKEN - no BGR font rendering
Ubuntu 10.04.1: WORKS FINE!
Kubuntu 10.10: WORKS FINE!
Obviously, in each case, I had to change the default rendering options
through settings.
So apparently BGR font rendering is OK in KDE/Qt, and broken in GTK-
based releases, both Gnome and XFCE. And the bug seems to be carrying
over into Natty, at least early in its cycle.
I look forward to seeing this regression corrected.
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: libgtk2.0-0 2.22.0-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-24.42-generic 2.6.35.8
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-24-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Jan 14 22:14:58 2011
ProcEnviron:
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gtk+2.0
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