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Patches
A patch is a file that modifies the source code of a given piece of software, in order to alter the behaviour of said program. This page will deal with patches that were not accepted by the upstream due to a myriad of reasons, although most are ideological.
Browsers
Chromium
See Notable patches.
Font rendering
Fontconfig-ultimate
The fontconfig-ultimate patchset aims to massively improve font rendering by patching Cairo, Fontconfig, and Freetype, as well as by using the infinality patchset.
It also comes with a myriad of bash scripts that can be used to tune your font rendering further to your liking. You will probably need more fonts.
Cairo
- Changes the default lcdfilter of the FreeType rendering backend of cairo from FT_LCD_FILTER_LEGACY to FT_LCD_FILTER_DEFAULT;
- Forces Cairo to respect fontconfig;
- Adds gradient support;
- Stops Cairo from tessellating empty boxes.
Fontconfig
- Includes the fontconfig-infinality-ultimate patches to configure the infinality compliant directories.
Freetype
- Infinality-ultimate patchset to massively improve font rendering with a finely tuned lcdfilter, heavier fonts, proper subpixel rendering, and more;
- Adds ability to control stem darkening.
Giddie's Poppler
The Poppler-qt4-cairo-backend patchset enables subpixel rendering of fonts via Cairo in Poppler's Qt4 wrapper (used by Okular, for instance).
This patchset will:
- Add the Cairo backend to Qt4;
- Set the default Qt4 backend to Cairo;
- Force subpixel rendering in the backend.
To chime in and get the lead developer to merge it upstream, check the official bug report here.
Bugs
- Overly intense fringes.
- Solution: patching Cairo with the cairo-make-lcdfilter-default.patch will fix this.
- Scaling of raster graphics defaults to nearest-neighbor.
- Partial solution: https://github.com/giddie/poppler-qt4-cairo-backend/issues/6.
Zhou13's Poppler subpixel support
This patchset patches Evince, Cairo, and Poppler, in order to add subpixel support to non-Qt4 PDF frontends (like Evince) using Cairo's Poppler backend.
Cairo
- Changes the default lcdfilter of the FreeType rendering backend of cairo from FT_LCD_FILTER_LEGACY to FT_LCD_FILTER_DEFAULT;
- Forces Cairo to respect fontconfig.
Evince
- Checks whether current page supports subpixel rendering and, if it does, enables it in the Poppler backend.
Poppler
- Removes the FT_LOAD_NO_HINTING when trying to load fonts to the Cairo backend so the frontend can set the hint style;
- Provides a new function that checks whether a PDF page could be subpixel-rendered.