Font smudging finally: gtk-font-hack

[John Fremlin <vii altern org>]

Despite the doubters, I've finally got round to writing a functional
prototype. It has had absolutely no optimization, but produces
acceptable results acceptably fast.

Two locations:
http://altern.org/vii/programs/linux/gtk-font-hack/
http://www3.cybercites.com/v/vii/programs/linux/gtk-font-hack/

(Am uploading now, hopefully).

The Blurb
---------

The gtk-font-hack is a patch against the GDK. It smooths fonts in GTK
and GNOME programs. As its name suggests, it is a hack and really font
smoothing should be done in other ways.

It works by drawing text on an off-screen buffer and then drawing it
quarter size (half length) on to the screen. The result is that fonts
appear to have been anti-aliased (badly) and a quarter of their normal
size. Even unscalable fonts are smoothed. It would probably be more
accurate to call the process "smudging".

I should appreciate help!
   
  Known bugs
  
     * Selecting text makes a mess of it, with extra space intruding all
       over the place.
     * Some programs start eating all the CPU (e.g. gfontsel most times
       when the Font Information tab is clicked), apparently trying to
       get sizes for things.
     * gless's display is completely messed up.
       
   
  Issues to be fixed
  
     * Hopefully no memory leaks.
     * Could be speeded up immensely. At the moment absolutely nothing
       has been optimized.
     * Will probably only work on 24 bit displays. I'm not sure how to do
       the color blending properly.
     * Do 16-bit characters come out right?

-- 

	john fremlin vii
	http://altern.org/vii