[cairo] Discussion: LCD Filtering API

[Owen Taylor]

On Thu, 2009-01-29 at 01:39 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> Hi Lance,
> 
> I agree with most of your positions.  However, my long term plan is to move
> glyph rasterization away from FreeType and into cairo, and that includes
> subpixel rendering.  I think the API should wait till that happens.  In that
> case Carl's remaining issues will be moot as we can do the same filtering on
> all platforms and it will not be FreeType-specific anymore.

One thing to be concerned about is that matching the system rendering.
Whether text looks good is not just a matter of whether it looks good in
isolation, but whether it matches other text on the screen in contrast
and other characteristics.

For example, if you take some text rendered on the Mac, and drop it onto
a Windows desktop, the typical reaction will be that it is fuzzy. Taking
text the other way may produce complaints about letter shapes or color
fringing.

- Owen