SUMMARY Despite setting Okular for maximum font quality (default setting has only "Enable Text Antialias" and "Enable Graphics Antialias", but BY DEFAULT "Enable Text Hinting" IS MISSING. Regardless of the settings while comparing to the text rendering of e.g. muPDF-GL, Okular loses. muPDF rendering is a little sharper. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Fix your distro font rendering by installing patched cariro, patched freetype, set all for max quiality of font rendering (color filering and a few others+ Professional fonts - e.g. IBM Plex Serif Medium. Just to be on the safe side. 2. Install muPD-GL 3. Compare both renderings. Okular could still be better regardelss of the fact that you had to manually tick the settings "enable text hinting". EXPECTED RESULT: Get text rendering in Okular on par with its competitors. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Linux/KDE Plasma: Arch (available in About System) KDE Plasma Version: 5.20.5 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.78.0 Qt Version: 5.12.2
Okular doesn't do any pdf rendering. > Fix your distro font rendering by installing patched cariro, patched freetype Makes me think you're breaking too many things by trying patching, but anyhow, not an okular issue.