How to configure AA fonts…

Piotr Szotkowski (Shot) sent me a mail explaining how when you use the gnome font dialogs, you are simply configuring ~/.fonts.conf and that config combined with /etc/fonts/local.conf governs how fontconfig does its rendering.

Piotr also says:

I personally hate when the smaller sizes are antialiased (but like when the smallest and bigger ones are), so I have the additional:
&lt;match target="font"&gt;
 &lt;test compare="more" name="pixelsize" qual="any"&gt;
  &lt;double&gt;9&lt;/double&gt;
 &lt;/test&gt;
 &lt;test compare="less" name="pixelsize" qual="any"&gt;
  &lt;double&gt;15&lt;/double&gt;
 &lt;/test&gt;
 &lt;edit mode="assign" name="antialias"&gt;
  &lt;bool&gt;false&lt;/bool&gt;
 &lt;/edit&gt;
&lt;/match&gt;
which brings fontconfig about on par to pre-ClearType Windows rendering. Windows additionally antialiases all of the bold fonts, which can be acheved with:
<match target=“font”>

 <test name=“weight”>

 <const>bold</const>

 <const>black</const>

 </test>

 <edit name=“antialias” mode=“assign”>

 <bool>true</bool>

 </edit>

</match>

Erich Schubert says [here](http://blog.drinsama.de/erich/en/linux/debian/2005022701-aafonts) that he doesn’t see how you can get AA wrong if you’re careful to choose the right fonts. All I have to say on that point is that AA is a very personal thing (as Norbert, myself and Piotr have demonstrated) and different people find different levels and combinations of settings to be how they prefer their fonts to look.