Per-monitor font hinting

Question

I have two displays out of which one is rotated to be vertical. Is there a way to set font hinting to be VRGB on vertical display and RGB for horizontal display?

Answer 1

Yes, you can set font hinting differently for each display in Xorg, the display server used by most Linux distributions.

To set font hinting for each display, you need to modify the Xorg configuration file (usually located at /etc/X11/xorg.conf or /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/).

1. Identify the name of each display:

xrandr | grep ' connected'

2. Create a new file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ with the name of your choice, e.g. 10-font-hinting.conf.

3. In this file, add the following sections, one for each display, and replace <display_name> with the name of each display:

For the horizontal display:

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "<display_name>-horizontal"
    Option "DPI" "96 x 96"
    Option "SubPixelOrder" "RGB"
EndSection
Section "Device"
    Identifier "<display_name>-horizontal"
    Option "RenderAccel" "True"
    Option "Hinting" "True"
    Option "Antialiasing" "True"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
    Identifier "<display_name>-horizontal"
    Device "<display_name>-horizontal"
    Monitor "<display_name>-horizontal"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth 24
        Modes "1920x1080"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

For the vertical display:

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "<display_name>-vertical"
    Option "DPI" "96 x 96"
    Option "SubPixelOrder" "VRGB"
EndSection
Section "Device"
    Identifier "<display_name>-vertical"
    Option "RenderAccel" "True"
    Option "Hinting" "True"
    Option "Antialiasing" "True"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
    Identifier "<display_name>-vertical"
    Device "<display_name>-vertical"
    Monitor "<display_name>-vertical"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth 24
        Modes "1080x1920"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

4. Save the file and restart Xorg or reboot the system.