Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 13769
Antialiasing Not Supported with Xinerama
Last modified: 2013-08-07 14:44:28 UTC
The referenced OOo page says "Antialiasing is not used when OpenOffice.org detects the X Rendering extension (Render) together with a Xinerama extension." Why not? I would very much like to use OOo in a multiheaded, Xinerama configuration but can't stand looking at the jagged fonts that appear without anti-aliasing. P.S. Thanks for all your efforts!
*** Issue 13770 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
I've looked at the OO1.02 sources as packaged with Redhat 9, and the problem is in vcl/unx/source/gdi/gcach_xpeer.cxx (line 136), where X render support is dropped when Xinerama is active, presumably because it might cause problems with certain drivers. As I'm using RH9 currently using both extensions without problems I guess it's time to remove this (ugly) hack. (this sort of things really shouldn't be hard-coded, especially not in a project which takes so much time and effort to build...)
Antialiasing is supported for 24bit and 32bit depths even without Xinerama. Xinerama + Xrender caused a lot of problems at least for XFree <=4.2.0 on Matrox cards. Because of the improved display performance I'd love to default to enabling it again, but I would need a blacklist of problematic X11 server + graphic cards to do this. Slow font rendering is bad, but garbled font rendering is not acceptable. Maybe there should be a field test and a new environment variable like "GOOD_XRENDER_AND_XINERAMA"
Then just block render+xinerama on XFree 4.1 and earlier. I understand you don't want garbled text, but without render support the openoffice supplied by redhat produces nearly unreadable fonts; I'm not sure that's what you want to achieve. I'm currently running RH9 on a Matrox/nVidia xinerama combo and it's working fine. Btw. is it possible to just rebuild the vcl library instead of the full office suite?
The font quality is the same for antialiased fonts for both Xlib and Xrender, so if you increase the bit depth on the display to 24 or 32bit it will look good. HDU->KR: Remember the discussion we had about reenabling Xrender when Xinerama is there? Has there been a decision?
This is very important to me, as it is making it difficult for me to switch over to Linux from That Other Operating System for my day-to-day work. (It's *awful* to go back to a single screen after using Win2K dual-head for over a year...) Would it be practical for me to custom-compile OOo to get things working until an official fix is in? Do you think the environment variable idea could be implemented in the next official release? I'm using XFree86 4.3.0 with RH9. I would be happy to test builds as requested. Heck, I'll even offer a $20 tip (via PayPal) to the person who gets me a fix...
Herbert, as I said, I am pretty much in favour for reenabling Xrender support on Xinerama. AFAIR you said, the only reason that it has been disabled was a bug in a XFree4.1 matrox driver. I asked Michael Bemmer, what he thinks about reenabling it and putting a comment regarding the Matrox drivers into the readme. I convinced him, that we should reenable Xrender support also for Xinerama mode. So, Herbert, please enable Xrender support for Xinerama and take care that we put something regarding XFree4.1 and Matrox and Xinerama into the readme. Thanks in advance :-).
Herbert, please clarify with Christof, if can put this on OOo1.1RC.
Ok. Enabling render when render version >= 0.2 even when xinerama is enabled starting from CWS VCL09.
Changed in CWS vcl09. The only visible difference is the improved speed, especially when scrolling a lot of text etc. Please verify.
=> set to 'resolved fixed'
Many thanks to Klaasjan Brand, who sent me modified SRPMs that I built and installed. Anti-aliased fonts now work fine on my RH9 setup (XF86 4.3, Kernel 2.4.20-13.9) with two side-by-side 1024x768 screens: * SiS300/305 PCI/AGP VGA Display Adapter * SiS300/305 PCI/AGP VGA Display Adapter P.S. - Yes, I sent him the twenty bucks. :-)
Set to verified.
Closed.