Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!

Real font smoothing in OpenOffice Apps
If you use OpenOffice, then you will have noticed that fonts look bad -- not nearly as nice as they do in OS X apps. The following hint will solve that. It assumes that you have installed OpenOffice 1.1.2. Credits go to Marc Liyanage for the how-to, as well as the compiled freetype library.

Read the rest of the hint for the solution...

  1. Copy the text below, and paste it into TextEdit, then save the file as OOfreetype.sh in your home directory.
    #!/bin/sh
    set -e
    
    echo Creating folder libfreetype in /Users/Shared
    cd /Users/Shared
    mkdir libfreetype
    cd libfreetype
    
    echo Downloading replacement library...
    curl -O 'http://www2.entropy.ch/download/libfreetype-6.3.3-entropy.tar.gz'
    
    echo Unpacking library...
    tar xzf libfreetype-6.3.3-entropy.tar.gz
    rm libfreetype-6.3.3-entropy.tar.gz
    chmod a+rX .
    
    echo Updating OpenOffice
    install_name_tool -change /usr/X11R6/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib 
      /Users/Shared/libfreetype/libfreetype.6.dylib 
      /Applications/OpenOffice.org1.1.2/program/libvcl645mxp.dylib
    echo Done.
    
  2. Open Terminal, and type the following:
    % sudo sh ~/OOfreetype.sh
    
    If you see no error messages, and the message Done. at the end, then all worked fine.
The problem is that the Freetype library, which X11 apps use to do font smoothing, is far from perfect. Marc Liyanage described a solution. See his website for a description of the issue and his posting on the Apple Discussion Forums.

Uninstall: If you want to undo the change, open a Terminal window and type:

% sudo install_name_tool -change /Users/Shared/libfreetype/libfreetype.6.dylib \
  /usr/X11R6/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib \
  /Applications/OpenOffice.org1.1.2/program/libvcl645mxp.dylib
You can type this on one single line, but then you'll have to omit the backslashes.
    •    
  • Currently 2.00 / 5
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  (3 votes cast)
 
[11,272 views]  

Real font smoothing in OpenOffice | 13 comments | Create New Account
Click here to return to the 'Real font smoothing in OpenOffice' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Real font smoothing in OpenOffice
Authored by: PancakeMan on Jul 21, '04 01:07:25PM
I tried this and at "Unpacking library..." I got errors:
gzip: stdin: not in gzip format
tar: End of archive volume 1 reached
tar: Sorry, unable to determine archive format.
(This is on 10.2.8.)

[ Reply to This | # ]
Real font smoothing in OpenOffice
Authored by: ms_t_rie on Jul 21, '04 02:31:54PM

I got the same error on 10.3, and after some digging, I discovered that the problem does like with the .gz file. I went through the article, and found the .tar file that was used in it, so I downloaded that one instead.
Unpacking that one and using the contents of that worked fine.

http://www2.entropy.ch/download/libfreetype-2.1.9-davidchesterpatch.tar.gz

change the references to the other .gz file to the above instead and the script should work (I also found I had to join the 3 lines for the last real command in the script, when I just copied and pasted what was there, the command was invalid as displayed)

Once the script was repaired to use the valid archive and fix the actual install command, it ran and Open Office looks SO much better now!



[ Reply to This | # ]
Real font smoothing in OpenOffice
Authored by: obsidian849 on Jul 21, '04 02:41:30PM

Pancakeman,
I just checked the lib down load site for this tip. It is currently down. That may explain the error. Check to see if its up before trying again.
Rich

---
-- All This With Out Seat Belts --



[ Reply to This | # ]
Real font smoothing in OpenOffice
Authored by: robmorton on Jul 21, '04 04:25:03PM

I got the same thing so I went to the website http://www2.entropy.ch/ to verify that it was up. It says it is down for maintenance. I figure I will try it again later, but you do have to remove the directory in /Users/Shared/libfreetype prior to running the script again. This may not be the issue, but could be the issue.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Real font smoothing in OpenOffice
Authored by: tersono on Jul 21, '04 04:13:09PM

Better yet, try NeoOffice/J, which works natively under OS X/aqua and thus gives nice anti-aliased text.

personally I've found it to be both faster and more stable than running OO under X11



[ Reply to This | # ]
Real font smoothing in OpenOffice
Authored by: lamon on Jul 22, '04 09:36:12AM
Actually, if you are using OOo 1.1.2 under X11, it is much faster that Neo/J, which is currently based on the 1.0.3 version (which was slow). In addition, it works better with Office documents. A version of Neo/J based on OOo 1.1.2 is currently in the works and I hope will be much faster. More information on trinity

[ Reply to This | # ]
Real font smoothing in OpenOffice
Authored by: snyderp on Jul 21, '04 04:40:59PM

Hmm. I tried this, but It has turned all of OpenOffice's fonts fuzzy. And not just slightly fuzzy, but almost impossible to read fuzzy. As if you wrote the font with the MSPaint spray paint tool. Stranger still, when I revert to the original freetype libs, the fonts are still fuzzy, just less so. I didn't have this problem before I tried this hint. Any suggestions?



[ Reply to This | # ]
Real font smoothing in OpenOffice
Authored by: snyderp on Jul 21, '04 04:42:29PM

Also, I should add that other X11 programs, such as gimp app, do not have this problem, and have nicer looking fonts after doing this hint. It seems to be an openoffice specific issue.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Real font smoothing in OpenOffice
Authored by: zeusr on Jul 21, '04 08:55:15PM

This is a known issue with OOo. The two things I've heard that work are 1) changing to millions of colour in Finder, and have X11 take on the Finder's colour depth and 2) change the default X11 colour depth to millions of colours (takes effect on next X11 launch).

There's another fix involving font substitutions, but I'm just too damn lazy for that! ;-)



[ Reply to This | # ]
Real font smoothing in OpenOffice
Authored by: snyderp on Jul 22, '04 02:57:54PM

Yep, that did it. Thanks for the help!



[ Reply to This | # ]
Real font smoothing in OpenOffice
Authored by: maddys_daddy on Jul 24, '04 07:06:46PM

Bah. Don't know if it was a direct result of this hint, but www2.entropy.ch (the source of the required libs) is temporarily down. Have to try later, I guess.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Real font smoothing in OpenOffice
Authored by: n2drums on Jul 29, '04 02:59:59PM
Google Cache of Article
No images, but the how-to text is there... :-)

[ Reply to This | # ]
Real font smoothing in OpenOffice
Authored by: jforbes on Jul 28, '04 01:28:50AM

I tried this hint and got the message " no such file or directory". What did I miss?



[ Reply to This | # ]