[PLUG] Gnome-terminal 3, xterm, fonts, Pango, Harfbuzz

[Keith Lofstrom]

A month ago, I complained about foggy, aliased small fonts
in Gnome-3 gnome-terminal.  Pictures:

http://wiki.keithl.com/Gnome3rendering

Last night I tried using ancient xterm instead; xterm
renders the characters properly, presumably using an
entirely different rendering chain than gnome-terminal.  

I also learned that Gnome2 rendered characters with Pango
in the Gnome ToolKit, and that Gnome3 renders characters
with Harfbuzz.  There is still a library of Pango "stubs",
but those use Harfbuzz calls for the actual rendering.

I don't have time to find and fix the problem right now
(my object-oriented coding skills are approximately zero),
but Harfbuzz bugs might explain the inferior behavior.

Perhaps there is a Harfbuzz expert reading this, who can
do some A/B tests and achieve fame and glory by fixing
this problem.  If I fix it, I'll break something else.

ESR's Law: Many eyes make all bugs shallow.
KHL's Corrollary: Many programmers make all bugs.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com