[Typo3-debian] Ugly fonts, hinting trouble?

[bas at extranet.kompas-media.nl]

> To be more precise, tell us,
> - what PHP/IM/GM packages do you use?
> - what's your Image Processing configuration and did any of the
> install-tool tests fail?
>
> Maybe this is a startingpoint for you: Did you check your GDlib/IM
> setting in the TYPO3-install-tool? There are some configuration examples
> for Debian servers in the wiki:
> http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/Running_GIF_enabled_packages_on_Debian_Woody
> But I don't know if these are the actual settings for Sarge.
>
> --
> cheers,
> Steffen


Hello Steffen,
Thanks for your reply. I'll certainly look into the wiki page more closely
when I get home from work today ;-)

However I can tell you that I'm running PHP version 4.3.10-15 (from
packages including php4-gd) and ImageMagick 4.2.9 (statically linked
binaries).

None of the TYPO3 install tests fail (all get green tick-marks). The only
problem is ugly font rendering. It seems like some glyphs overlap others
and charachters with a lot of curves in them, like the S, show a lot of
blotchy artefacts in the round areas. No matter what I do, the fonts get
anti-aliased or that's what I think is happening. They look slightly
blurry around the edges. I can't even turn that off so my guess it that
this has to do with anti-aliasing conflicting with the bytecode
interpreter or the autohinter in Freetype (which I got from libfreetype6
and overwrote with a freshly compiled version from the FreeType source).
The recompiled version gives to different result than the official Debian
version..