23.0.60; Bold screen fonts have been unbolded

23.0.60; Bold screen fonts have been unbolded

[David Kastrup]

Please write in English if possible, because the Emacs maintainers
usually do not have translators to read other languages for them.

Your bug report will be posted to the emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org mailing list.

Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

This is pretty weird: I don't replace my Emacs that often, so I am not
sure when this started: some place in the last months.  The effect I see
is that bold (and strong-colored) fonts don't appear bold or
strong-colored but with normal stroke width and somewhat dulled.

The crazy thing is that while I drag the frame around on the desktop
(which I would have thought used image copy operations), the fonts
appear properly fattened and colored.  When the movement stops, they
immediately (without releasing the mouse button or anything else) become
normal weight and thin-colored again.

Does the version info provide a clue?  Do others see this effect as
well?  For what it's worth: I have an ATI graphics card in the laptop
and that has produced some other artifacts at times, so there is a
possibility of a driver problem, but I somewhat doubt it.

In GNU Emacs 23.0.60.5 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.12.0)
 of 2008-04-10 on lisa
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.10300000
configured using `configure  '--prefix=/usr/local/emacs-21' '--without-toolkit-scroll-bars''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Group

Minor modes in effect:
  gnus-undo-mode: t
  TeX-PDF-mode: t
  server-mode: t
  desktop-save-mode: t
  tooltip-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  global-auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

-- 
David Kastrup

Re: 23.0.60; Bold screen fonts have been unbolded

[Jason Rumney]

David Kastrup wrote:
> This is pretty weird: I don't replace my Emacs that often, so I am not
> sure when this started: some place in the last months.  The effect I see
> is that bold (and strong-colored) fonts don't appear bold or
> strong-colored but with normal stroke width and somewhat dulled.
>   

Is this the first version you've installed that has had the new font 
backend enabled?

There appear to be various problems with italic and bold variations in 
the new font backend.  The momentary proper display while dragging the 
window may be because of a bug where the old font code is called in some 
circumstances.

Re: 23.0.60; Bold screen fonts have been unbolded

[Paul R]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

>
> This is pretty weird: I don't replace my Emacs that often, so I am not
> sure when this started: some place in the last months.  The effect I see
> is that bold (and strong-colored) fonts don't appear bold or
> strong-colored but with normal stroke width and somewhat dulled.
>
> The crazy thing is that while I drag the frame around on the desktop
> (which I would have thought used image copy operations), the fonts
> appear properly fattened and colored.  When the movement stops, they
> immediately (without releasing the mouse button or anything else) become
> normal weight and thin-colored again.
>
> Does the version info provide a clue?  Do others see this effect as
> well?  For what it's worth: I have an ATI graphics card in the laptop
> and that has produced some other artifacts at times, so there is a
> possibility of a driver problem, but I somewhat doubt it.
>

I do not experience this problem on my setup :
 - 10 days old emacs build with new font backend
 - Gnu/Linux (current ubuntu stable)
 - X Window System Version 1.3.0, Release Date: 19 April 2007
 - VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]
 - Driver          "radeon"  (the libre one)
 - starting with :  emacs -fn "Dejavu Sans Mono-14"


-- 
      Paul

Re: 23.0.60; Bold screen fonts have been unbolded

[David Kastrup]

Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
>> This is pretty weird: I don't replace my Emacs that often, so I am not
>> sure when this started: some place in the last months.  The effect I see
>> is that bold (and strong-colored) fonts don't appear bold or
>> strong-colored but with normal stroke width and somewhat dulled.
>>   
>
> Is this the first version you've installed that has had the new font
> backend enabled?

Possible.  I am sorry that I have not tracked this more closely.

> There appear to be various problems with italic and bold variations in
> the new font backend.  The momentary proper display while dragging the
> window may be because of a bug where the old font code is called in
> some circumstances.

Interesting.

-- 
David Kastrup

Re: 23.0.60; Bold screen fonts have been unbolded

[Jason Rumney]

David Kastrup wrote:
> Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org> writes:
>
>   
>> There appear to be various problems with italic and bold variations in
>> the new font backend.  The momentary proper display while dragging the
>> window may be because of a bug where the old font code is called in
>> some circumstances.
>>     
>
> Interesting.
>   

To clarify, I was speculating on a possible explanation for that wierd 
behaviour, though I did notice the old font code being called for 
blinking the block cursor a few months ago on Windows.