Bug 237305

Summary:	better koffice font rendering
Product:	kword	Reporter:	Victor Gavrish <loonyphoenix>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Thomas Zander <zander>
Status:	RESOLVED UPSTREAM
Severity:	wishlist
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Arch Linux
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:

Description Victor Gavrish 2010-05-11 23:11:26 UTC

Version:           2.2 RC1 (using KDE 4.4.3)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Archlinux Packages

Koffice currently renders fonts abysmally. Look at this picture:

http://habreffect.ru/files/7d9/4e2deaef0/koffice-fonts.png

I propose that Koffice try to implement this version of font rasterization, which produces really good results, especially for a WYSIWYG text processor:

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

It's a very interesting article, and, seeing as it's three years old now, I can't see why no one implemented it anywhere, since the algorithms described are even patent-free.

This is what Koffice should aim to achieve:

http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/text_ft_antigrain.png

And here is a sample program, which implies that this was possible even three years ago:

http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/truetype_test_02_ft.zip

You need wine to run it, or alternatively the author states it can be compiled for Linux with a bit of tweaking.

Comment 1 Thomas Zander 2010-05-11 23:14:54 UTC

KOffice doesn't do the font rendering, so there is nothing we can do.

Comment 2 Victor Gavrish 2010-05-11 23:16:44 UTC

Hm, well, can you reassign this bug to whatever does the font rendering? Qt or Kdelibs or whatever?

Comment 3 Victor Gavrish 2010-05-11 23:27:53 UTC

Okay, reported a Qt bug:

http://bugreports.qt.nokia.com/browse/QTBUG-10615

Comment 4 Victor Gavrish 2010-05-12 10:52:16 UTC

This is what I got from the Qt developers:

"Qt's text rendering is mainly for UI purposes and we cannot attempt to compete with typographical grade text applications, so I'm closing this task as out of scope."

I'm wondering how much an office suite can do with a backend for text rendering that doesn't consider itself typographical grade. I think Koffice developers should look into using something other than Qt itself to render the text, since, according to Qt developers, the toolkit is obviously not meant for any kind of complex text rendering.