[Fontconfig] [PATCH] don't artificially embolden fixed-width fonts

[Raimund Steger]

forgot to add the list...

On Wed, February 11, 2015 02:37, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Wed, 2015-02-11 at 02:26 +0100, Raimund Steger wrote:
>> Adam Williamson wrote:
>> > [...]
>
>>  Still I see the problem if people don't want it, since it's at
>> position 90 and a target=font rule, meaning people cannot really
>> remove it in their user config. That's really somewhat unfortunate.
>> (Why
>> is that file even at that position?)
>
> Yeah, that's annoying. Even if you're in a position to add a rule to
> the systemwide config, I think you can't *entirely* override it,
> because the rule is basically destructive - once it's assigned weight
> 'bold', you can no longer do the same match! You can have a rule like
> this:

I suppose you could match on the 'embolden' flag then, knowing it could
only have been added by the earlier system config file, and reverse that
and the 'weight' property.

But you're probably right, your patch is probably the smoother experience
for most users, and people or distributions who still want emboldened
monospace can always add that in their config.


> [...]
> expert - so excuse me if this is a dumb question, but would it be at
> all plausible to implement some kind of generic non-widening synthetic
> bold in freetype which it could use for fixed-width fonts, presumably
> one that just tries to thicken the lines? If so I guess that'd be the
> least impactful way to approach the problem. I definitely don't have
> the knowledge for it, though.

I haven't tried the Infinality patch you mentioned yet (or actually, I
don't remember, maybe I have, but in this case I paid no attention to
emboldened fonts) but it does sound interesting. I don't know what the
prospects of it being merged into upstream are though, so maybe the change
to 90-synthetic.conf is the easier route...

Raimund


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