openoffice 2.x has a serious problem with font rendering in Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10, and 8.04

Yes I see bad font rendering on the menus and font selection drop down menus. I have left feisty with its default settings, (nothing has been changed). I have attached a screen shot to show the font rendering compared with gedit.

Where I have typed "test font" in the screen shot the font rendering seems fine, both gedit and OO used the Bitsream Vera Sans font type in this case.

However I have found this can be fixed by doing the following explained in this screenshot link:-

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=2262565&postcount=4

I have also attached the screenshot here for reference.

Yes, that's a workaround, but it's a feisty-only problem. I just installed OOo 2.2 RC3 on my Edgy machine and it's hasn't no problems with font rendering.

Tested on Feisty and was able to reproduce. Fonts look half bold, half normal when disabling anti-aliased fonts.

To reproduce:

Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org-view > Disable font anti-aliasing

Expected Result:

Choppy font, yet rendered similar.

Actual Result:

Fonts look like some letters are bold and others are not.

I cannot confirm this.

I tried this on Dapper 2.2 backport and I didn't see the same improper rendering.

> I tried this on Dapper 2.2 backport and I didn't see
> the same improper rendering.

yes, other/older freetype

Confirmed.

As a new default user, with any font or anti aliasing setting the text is blurred (no hinting) and looks partially bold.

As my user however (upgraded from edgy) this only occurs either without anti aliasing or when using the default "Times" font. All other programs also suffer from this.

Also there is never any subpixel hinting like the rest of GNOME, but thats a different problem altogether.

Does anyone having this problem get warnings on the console (e.g. gnome-terminal), when starting oowriter from there?

I believe that this problem has been corrected in Ubuntu 7.10 OpenOffice 2.3.0. When disabling anti-aliased fonts on my system OOo looks uniformly ugly and doesn't have weird bolded areas like mentioned in the initial report. Can you please test with the new version and let me know if it corrects your problem?

Thanks,

Chris Cheney

I'm not sure if this problem is related, but I didn't see the need for a new report.

I've been having a lack of sub-pixel hinting on the fonts in OpenOffice (both 2.2 and 2.3) on Ubuntu (both Feisty, and now, Gutsy) ever since I can remember. Basically, I managed to pinpoint the problem to Qt apps only, as Gtk renders my selection in the Appearance>Fonts tab (Subpixel, Slight, RGB; now updated in Gutsy. In Feisty I used the patches provided by David Turner) correctly.

As you can see from the screenshot, all my Gtk apps look smooth, while OpenOffice and all Qt apps look evidently aliased, or poorly anti-aliased.

This has been driving me mad for months now.

Any ideas how I can fix this from Gnome (besides installing the core KDE packages or KDE itself)?

If my issue is somehow unrelated to this problem, please let me know so I can open a new bug report.

Thanks!

Still not fixed on Gutsy with OpenOffice 2.3.0 on a fresh install ... Here is a screenshot.

Still present in Hardy Alpha 2!!!

This is how OOo looks in Hardy Alpha 2 (with global subpixel on) :-(

Installing the .deb for version 2.3 available from openoffice.org changes the look of fonts dramatically .
Is this just a compile-tile fix?

Sorry for mess-up in posting the previous message. The was a "before" picture with Openoffice 2.2 as distributed by Ubuntu 7.10 repositories. This is how the same document would look in the OO 2.3 compiled by OOo. The jagged fonts and the ugly kerning in small type are gone.

OK I got some pretty interesting news on this one.

I played with the Fonts tab in gnome-appearance-properties. I was using the "Best shapes" option there, resulting in good fonts everywhere but in openoffice (please see the screenshot I attached in a previous post).

However, if I use the "Subpixel smoothing" setting, fonts in openoffice are back to normal !! I mean, they are not "bold" anymore. Alas, they are in grayscale, no subpixel smoothing. This is odd.

So to sum up things quickly :

- regular grayscale smoothing "best shapes" in the settings --> ugly fonts in openoffice
- subpixel smoothing in the settings --> regular grayscale smoothing in openoffice
- regular grayscale smoothing "best contrast" in the settings --> regular grayscale smoothing in openoffice

So there is a workaround for this bug. But it's still a bug ...

Oh, and I will just add that I don't have any .fonts.conf file in my $HOME (in case ...)

To add to what Jaile said, you can get Best Shapes to operate in Openoffice while having subpixel smoothing in the rest of your apps. Before starting Openoffice, change from Subpixel Smoothing to Best shapes under Appearance Preferences>Fonts. Once Openoffice is loaded, switch back to Subpixel Smoothing. The rest of your apps will have subpixel smoothing, but Openoffce will keep the nicer looking fonts from Best Shapes, even in new openoffice windows.

Thus one could develop a very easy temporary fix for this by simple having openoffice switch to best shapes on load, and switch back after load is complete. I can't imagine that would be too hard to add, and would fix a serious problem

I'd suggest this is a more serious than the bug importance rating presently indicates. I'd imagine most people using Ubuntu use a word processor on a fairly regular basis, and most people use LCD monitors, making the subpixel smoothing option the best choice in many cases. Thus since the majority of Ubuntu users are affected by a bug that seriously affects the usability of a primary application (staring at the ugliest font rendering I've ever seen for hours on end DOES affect usability considerably), I'd suggest raising this to High at the least.

Also, the title of the bug should be changed, as Openoffice is now at 2.3 and Ubuntu is at 7.10 or 8.04 depending. People should be aware this is an active bug, but the title does not indicate it.

I confirm this issue, Gutsy and Hardy alpha 5.

I also confirm this issue(Gutsy). Unfortunately, the switching to best shapes smoothing, opening OO and then switching back doesn't work for me.

Edited title because the problem still persists, as sugested.

I am still confused as I don't think I am seeing the problem other people are, at least on Ubuntu hardy openoffice.org 1:2.4.0~rc2-1ubuntu3. So maybe this issue is fixed? I have attached a screenshot of openoffice with antialiasing turned off in its options section.

I think the problem is that several things are discussed here, what is never a good idea to get a bug fixed. The original problem seems to be resolved now for a while, what you, Chris, have shown in the screenshot attached once again.

The latest activity on this report seems to be related to other problems with font-rendering in ooo, that is the way hinting is done, that is the partial fontconfig-support and especially the lack of subpixel-rendering (e.g. comments 14 and 20 are dealing with this). These issues are discussed in a lot of other reports in launchpad and are not trivial to fix.