With DejaVu Sans Mono-11, text lines in Emacs are 1 pixel taller than in
gedit or gnome-terminal, also, bold faces are 1 pixel taller than
regular, so if the theme uses bold faces, texts will jump up and down
while editing. The line height problem also happens with Consolas font,
but the bold faces problem doesn't.

Since it clearly has something to do with font height, I digged into the
source and found the related code. Apply this patch, and the problem is
gone:

diff --git a/src/xftfont.c b/src/xftfont.c
index 956231e..d0f9a68 100644
--- a/src/xftfont.c
+++ b/src/xftfont.c
@@ -395,16 +395,16 @@ xftfont_open (struct frame *f, Lisp_Object entity,
int pixel_size)

   font->ascent = xftfont->ascent;
   font->descent = xftfont->descent;
-  if (pixel_size >= 5)
-    {
-      /* The above condition is a dirty workaround because
-     XftTextExtents8 behaves strangely for some fonts
-     (e.g. "Dejavu Sans Mono") when pixel_size is less than 5. */
-      if (font->ascent < extents.y)
-    font->ascent = extents.y;
-      if (font->descent < extents.height - extents.y)
-    font->descent = extents.height - extents.y;
-    }
+  /* if (pixel_size >= 5) */
+  /*   { */
+  /*     /\* The above condition is a dirty workaround because */
+  /*        XftTextExtents8 behaves strangely for some fonts */
+  /*        (e.g. "Dejavu Sans Mono") when pixel_size is less than 5. *\/
*/
+  /*     if (font->ascent < extents.y) */
+  /*       font->ascent = extents.y; */
+  /*     if (font->descent < extents.height - extents.y) */
+  /*       font->descent = extents.height - extents.y; */
+  /*   } */
   font->height = font->ascent + font->descent;

   if (XINT (AREF (entity, FONT_SIZE_INDEX)) == 0)


As the comment says, this piece of code is a dirty workaround, and
apparently it is causing some new problems.



In GNU Emacs 25.1.50.36 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.16.7)
 of 2016-01-15 built on katana
Repository revision: 4580671f5e2a68885e0fca93eeaf9daaeebe82b3
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11702000
System Description:    Ubuntu 15.10

Configured features:
XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG IMAGEMAGICK SOUND GPM DBUS GCONF GSETTINGS
NOTIFY ACL LIBSELINUX GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE M17N_FLT LIBOTF XFT ZLIB
TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11

Important settings:
  value of $LC_COLLATE: C
  value of $LC_CTYPE: zh_CN.UTF-8
  value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: @im=fcitx
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix

Major mode: Lisp Interaction

Minor modes in effect:
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  electric-indent-mode: t
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  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Recent messages:
For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a.
Making completion list...

Load-path shadows:
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Features:
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format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable
backquote dbusbind inotify dynamic-setting system-font-setting
font-render-setting move-toolbar gtk x-toolkit x multi-tty
make-network-process emacs)

Memory information:
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 (symbols 48 19157 0)
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 (strings 32 12817 4884)
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