gtk-font-hack

The gtk-font-hack is a patch against the GDK (distributed with the GTK). It smooths fonts in GTK and GNOME programs. As its name suggests, it is a hack and really font smoothing should be done in other ways. The patch will therefore not be included in the GDK distribution for the foreseeable future.

It works by drawing text on an off-screen buffer and then drawing it quarter size (half length) on to the screen. The result is that fonts appear to have been anti-aliased (badly) and a quarter of their normal size. Even unscalable fonts are smoothed. It would probably be more accurate to call the process "smudging".

If you use this program, contact me. I shall not continue development unless someone offers to help or it seems a bunch of people want me to. I haven't the time otherwise.

Issues to be fixed

Hopefully no memory leaks.
Could be speeded up immensely. At the moment absolutely nothing has been optimized.
Will probably only work on 24 bit displays. I'm not sure how to do the color blending properly.
Do 16-bit characters come out right?

Version 0.2-gtk-1.2.6

Beta (i.e. doesn't work properly but doesn't core dump on me any more).

I should appreciate help!

Changes

Code tidying and initial preparation for integration into GDK distribution.
Fixed a couple of major bugs.

Known bugs

Please report bugs.

Selecting text makes a mess of it sometimes, with extra space intruding all over the place.
Some programs start eating all the CPU (e.g. gfontsel most times when the Font Information tab is clicked), apparently trying to get sizes for things. Can't reproduce this bug any more.
For some reason fonts are not smudged in gnome-o-terminal programs (e.g. gnome-terminal, gnome-genius), though the size allowed for them is halved. Must check up on this widget.
The right part of GHex's left display window with the hex in it is missing inexplicably.
Text draw functions mess with the GC they are given, which is obviously not a good idea, but it doesn't seem to do any harm.
When the GTK draws the same text twice in the same place without clearing, the edges are darkened. I guess this is done in too many places to fix quickly.

Please report bugs.

If you use this program, contact me. I shall not continue development unless someone offers to help or it seems a bunch of people want me to. I haven't the time otherwise.

Recipe

Download
Get GTK sources. Might not work on versions other than 1.2.6, but I'd guess it probably will on quite a range.

Untar and patch (you might need GNU patch)

% tar zxf /incoming/gtk-1.2.6.tar.gz
% cd gtk-1.2.6
% patch -p1 < /incoming/gtk-font-hack-0.2-gtk-1.2.6.diff

configure; make, as usual.
You can try it out without installing, by
```
export LD_PRELOAD=$(PATH_TO_GTK_SOURCE)/gtk+-1.2.6/gdk/.libs/libgdk-1.2.so
```
and then running your GTK/GNOME programs as usual (obviously from this same terminal).
You should double the point size of the fonts in your gtkrc, to get the same size displayed. Ditto for any other fonts you might use.

Version 0.1-gtk-1.2.6

Alpha (i.e. doesn't work properly).

I should appreciate help!

Known bugs

Please report bugs.

Selecting text makes a mess of it, with extra space intruding all over the place.
Some programs start eating all the CPU (e.g. gfontsel most times when the Font Information tab is clicked), apparently trying to get sizes for things.
gless's display is completely messed up.

Please report bugs.

Recipe

Download
Get GTK sources. Might not work on versions other than 1.2.6, but I'd guess it probably will on quite a range.

Untar and patch (you might need GNU patch)

% tar zxf /incoming/gtk-1.2.6.tar.gz
% cd gtk-1.2.6
% patch -p1 < /incoming/gtk-font-hack-0.1-gtk-1.2.6.diff

configure; make, as usual.
You can try it out without installing, by
```
export LD_PRELOAD=$(PATH_TO_GTK_SOURCE)/gtk+-1.2.6/gdk/.libs/libgdk-1.2.so.0.5.1
```
and then running your GTK/GNOME programs as usual (obviously from this same terminal).
You should double the point size of the fonts in your gtkrc, to get the same size displayed. Ditto for any other fonts you might use.