Hi Max, On Tue, Jul 15, 2025 at 02:35 (-0600), Max Chernoff via ntg-context wrote:
On Mon, 2025-07-14 at 12:47 -0300, Jim wrote:
It does (far) better font rendering than any of the other Linux programs (excluding web browsers) that I know about. The day someone figures out how to add sub-pixel rendering to any of the other Linux PDF readers might be the day they will be comparable in quality.
If you're using Gnome, open "Gnome Tweaks" (you might have to install it first), then select both "Fonts > Rendering > Hinting = Full" and "Fonts > Rendering > Antialiasing = Subpixel (for LCD screens)", and then reboot. If you're using Wayland and fractional scaling, adding the following file might also help:
# ~/.config/environment.d/wayland.conf MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland GDK_BACKEND=wayland,x11,* CLUTTER_BACKEND=wayland SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland ECORE_EVAS_ENGINE=wayland_egl ELM_ENGINE=wayland_egl QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=1 QT_ENABLE_HIGHDPI_SCALING=1
Thanks for the information. I am using neither gnome now wayland, but the non-PDF-reader programs I just examined (urxvt, emacs, firefox, xclock, fvwm3, ...) all cheerfully do sub-pixel rendering with the setup I have on my system (Slackware64 15.0). However, the PDF viewers on my system (evince, kpdf, okular, mupdf) resolutely refuse to do sub-pixel rendering. Now, it is possible that for some reason the PDF readers need a font config setting (or multiple settings) that turn on SPR for them, even though various and sundry other programs do SPR. Might I ask you (a) To confirm that your PDF reader does, indeed, do SPR? (I.e., not just everything else on your system.) and (b) Specifically, what PDF reader are you using that does do SPR? Cheers. Jim