Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2004 7:10 am Post subject: openoffice looks strange
Hi, just downloaded the technology preview and managed to install it after a couple of attempts. I am running Panther 10.3.4.
Is it just me, or is the display strange? Its very hard to read any of the menu items - the fonts are very blurred, both in the apps and in the main window.
Is this anti-aliasing problem or something? I downloaded a few extra fonts like Times New Roman I think through the admin interface.
Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 12:37 am Post subject: Re: openoffice looks strange
Anonymous wrote:
Hi, just downloaded the technology preview and managed to install it after a couple of attempts. I am running Panther 10.3.4.
Is it just me, or is the display strange? Its very hard to read any of the menu items - the fonts are very blurred, both in the apps and in the main window.
Which TechPreview (latest is 4)?
I am going to assume you are using Apple's X11.app.
If you search some of the online forum archives, you find many people had problems with older versions of OpenOffice.org and X11.app and "sparkly" fonts. I don't know if that is still an issue for the Tech Preview, but the solution for the "sparkly" fonts problem is quite simple - in the X11.app Preferences, Output tab panel, choose Millions of Colors from the popup menu (you should only need this if your Monitor is not in Millions of Colors).
I think we need to establish if your problem is a subjective problem - everything looks fine to me on my machine, but then again I don't care much about font readability (he says as he struggles with fuzzy green text in this forum )
Perhaps posting a screen dump of the problem on a publically accessible web site would be helpful.
Tell us more about your hardware/software setup - such as display monitor and settings. I assume fonts in your normal Mac OS X applications look fine.
I have a clamshell iBook and Panther installed. You were correct - I had thousands of colours in my System Prefs. I went to X11 and changed the setting to millions of colours and I can now read what is on the screen perfectly.
Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 10:42 pm Post subject: Re: openoffice looks strange
Terry Teague wrote:
the solution for the "sparkly" fonts problem is quite simple - in the X11.app Preferences, Output tab panel, choose Millions of Colors
Wonderful. Thank you. Although I'm not the original poster, this did solve the problem.
Terry Teague wrote:
I think we need to establish if your problem is a subjective problem - everything looks fine to me on my machine,
If you really want a screen shot, I can provide it. But believe me, OOo was basically unusable before your fix. I've put up with some pretty poor font rendering in my day (having used X-windows since the late 1980s), this was something very "special". Now OOo is very usable.
Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 12:41 am Post subject: Re: openoffice looks strange
Anonymous wrote:
Terry Teague wrote:
the solution for the "sparkly" fonts problem is quite simple - in the X11.app Preferences, Output tab panel, choose Millions of Colors
Wonderful. Thank you. Although I'm not the original poster, this did solve the problem.
Terry Teague wrote:
I think we need to establish if your problem is a subjective problem - everything looks fine to me on my machine,
If you really want a screen shot, I can provide it. But believe me, OOo was basically unusable before your fix. I've put up with some pretty poor font rendering in my day (having used X-windows since the late 1980s), this was something very "special". Now OOo is very usable.
Thanks
No, I don't need a screen shot after the fact Sometimes it is hard to tell from user's descriptions, particularly in the case of subjective things like font display, what the user is really seeing/complaining about.
Anyway, since this discussion of this problem comes up frequently for new users, I might implement something in the next version of "Start OpenOffice.org" to detect the problem, warn the user, and offer to change the setting for the user.
For those of you playing along at home :
Code:
defaults read com.apple.X11 depth
If it says "-1", the "Colors" preference is set to "From Display". For "Millions" of colors, you want the depth value to be "24".
Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2004 1:47 pm Post subject: Problem solved
I was expecting to post a message about my own font woes here, but the posting here solved my problem too. I wouldn't have called my fonts "sparkly" but there was obviously a problem with the anti-aliasing that affected not just the document fonts but the whole user interface as well. In my case, around the edges of the fonts were red specks, and in the case of greyed-out fonts, for example non-available items in the drop down menus, the red speckles made it practically unreadable.
Setting X11 preferences to "millions of colors" solved the problem marvelously. Interestingly, in my case, X11 came from Apple configured for "from display" for that setting.
I am *so* happy with OOo on Mac OSX now. Cheers for the cross-platform solution, and thanks to the folks on this BB for the tips.
Posted: Sat Nov 20, 2004 3:29 pm Post subject: words on screen appears fuzzy
Hi. I'm having a similar problem. Last month, my white ibook (dual USB) had a screen (inverter something) problem and went it to Apple for repairs. Upon its return, I noticed that the words in OpenOffice appeared fuzzy. All other apps seem okay; just OpenOffice. I just tried changing the Finder and X11 settings to "millions" but the problem still remains.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2004 9:38 am Post subject:
Changing the color depth in X11 should only require you to change X11. If you want to still run your computer in "thousands of colors" mode or are limited due to resolution, you should still make sure that you set X11 to "millions". It won't actually use millions, I don't think, but that is the only setting under which the FreeType antialiasing will work. It assumes 32 bit color depth or something like that.
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