Don't Be Confused Disable Rainbow Text!

Now I just bounced around and did some testing, so for either black text or white text, the "subpixel" rendering will create the rainbow text effect.

Here's a picture that shows what text actually looks like with the rainbow effect turned on, and another that shows what it looks like with it off. It's difficult to notice, so clearly, without zooming in onto the text, so we can see the individual pixels for each letter in a word, and it makes a very big difference when reading, that is subtle, or subliminal, difficult to notice, but highly confusing or prohibitive. Simply turn the setting off, and voila! Improve reading comprehension by 100% instantly.

(slight edit, the webrender subpixel setting in abrowser should be for webpages specifically I think, and the settings menus in abrowser, use a different setting(possibly inheriting the desktops font settings))

Cmon guys not even our pixels are safe anymore : D

This is still a major, critical, severe issue most people are totally unaware of.

If anyone on trisquel.info wants to help, they can identify how to turn off the confusing disabling rainbow (multi-colored) text effect in other desktop environments, and applications on Trisquel.

I've noted at the top, that for the Mate desktop environment, we can disable the confusing rainbow text by changing the font smoothing setting to disabled or grayscale.

Now, for xfce the setting is under the appearance, and font settings, and is called "Sub-pixel order," so to disable the confusing rainbow text there, we can simply turn off that setting. (changing it to "none")

Then, other Trisquel users will use the other cd's, and desktop environments listed on it's download page https://trisquel.info/en/download so we still need to learn how to disable the confusing rainbow text in lxde for the trisquel mini cd, kde, for the triskel cd, and "sugar toast" for the "sugar" learning, environment.

Also any other applications we can identify that do not inherit the underlying desktops settings for font rendering, or that override the underlying desktops settings for font rendering, need investigation for a complete resolution.

Now since no one has replied to help deal with this issue, I have started installing new desktop environments to learn how to resolve the issue for other Trisquel users benefit.

Like this

# install lxde
sudo apt install lxde

# install sugar
sudo apt install sugar -y && sudo apt install -f

# install kde (doesn't fall under "kde" but the name "triskel")
sudo apt install triskel

But after installing the new desktop environments I noticed, the dreaded rainbow text had returned, and started writing these notes about it

After turning off sub-pixel rendering in appearance->font settings in xfce, later on (after restarting multiple times) the rainbow colored text returned! Which reminded me, that another way of disabling the confusing multi-colored text is to disable anti-aliasing. The subtext for the "anti-aliasing" setting in that same settings menu says "anti-aliasing or font smoothing" so apparently it's also known as font smoothing.

After disabling anti-aliasing then the rainbow colored text disappeared again! Originally turning off sub pixel rendering made text appear completely either black/white, now after restarting the computer multiple times, the rainbow color reappeared again, and disabling anti-aliasing as well, then reloading applications finally disabled the rainbow text a second time.

Now my belief is, that after simply restarting the computer several times, the rainbow text returned by virtue of the anti-aliasing setting being enabled? Does that make sense. Turning off sub-pixel rendering disabled the rainbow text, but then it came back again, so then I turned off anti-aliasing, and the rainbow text disappeared again.

(on a side note in order to deal with the low quality text that goes along with disabling anti-aliasing, users will want to use a medium/bold font for their desktop, and on abrowser, a bold type font that is easy to read with anti-aliasing disabled is called "Quicksand")

OK, The Final Ultimate Guide For Trisquel Users To Properly Render Text In Black/White Without Confusing Multi-Colors.

##### For Mate

system -> preferences -> look and feel -> appearance -> fonts

details -> smoothing: none

##### For LXDE

preferences -> customize look and feel -> font

anti-aliasing: disable
sub-pixel geometry: none

##### For KDE

settings -> system settings -> appearance -> fonts

anti-aliasing: disable

##### For Sugar desktop environment

there is no gui setting I could identify to disable anti-aliasing and the confusing rainbow text rendering

but presumeably it may be possible for users investigating the configuration files for fonts on the sugar desktop environment

https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Font_configuration

#### For XFCE

settings -> appearance -> fonts

anti-aliasing: disable
sub-pixel order: none

##### For Abrowser

url box -> about:config

gfx.webrender.enable-subpixel-aa: false
gfx.font_rendering.ahem_antialias_none: enabled

##### Last Note

Disabling anti-aliasing for text, will finally cause text to be rendered in only black/white pixels, which makes it highly legible, compared to multi-colored pixels, but as a consequence text will appear more fragmented/skeletal, without the graphical technique. So to fix the text finally, a good workaround is to install a medium weight font, or simply to select a bold font to use for the various applications, one that is available by default in abrowser for example is called: "Quicksand"

Choose a medium-weight or a bold font, and Voila! We can see! And read clearly, also your computer will be faster without the processing overhead incurred by anti-aliasing which produces the dreaded multi-colored rainbow text.

I like the font the way it is set up in Triskel 11 (aramo). Disabling anti-aliasing did not improve anything for me.

I really don't know anything about RGB fonts. It seems to be set, but I don't have trouble with it. Turning RGB to none seems to make the font less smooth.

Thanks for the insights.

I use similar colours in a terminal (whitish text on black background). I sometimes feel like I see some kind of shadow text above the white text, but no rainbow colours, rather some kind of very dark green. However, it it not always visible, it is really dim and it does not affect my reading.

I don't have binocular vision and I don't see exactly the same with my left eye and with my right eye, then I may be used to ignoring a number of visual defects. Also, I use progressive glasses, which makes it so that most of the display in front of me is not in focus.

I tried reading with antialiasing off, I prefer with antialiasing on. I guess different people have different vision, then they can chose what feels best for them.

It's certainly an issue most people aren't aware they possess, and it's deceptive, like a graphical bug that's deeply embedded in our every day usage of computers.

It isn't clear exactly which graphics hardware/drivers the issue is evident in, but I think in my experience I have seen it manifest with free/non-free nvidia drivers, as well as with intel graphics cards.

Also the issue isn't simple to reproduce, for example after disabling the rainbow text I tried to reenable it, to show the effect in action, and how it is prohibitive when reading drawing confusing illegible text everywhere, that slows down the natural process of reading, but after reenabling antialiasing and subpixel-aa and even restarting the computer multiple times the effect refuses to reappear. I believe from my experience it will reappear after using the computer for several hours, despite my font settings.

It's sort of like a ghost in the machine issue, that is hard to diagnose precisely.

But I did manage to capture it with two pictures the other day, and so you can see clearly, how one set of text rendered is completely multi-colored, and another is simply either black or white. That's the ideal scenario obviously, so while we are using the computer, after several hours, and the rainbow text appears mysteriously out of nowhere, it is highly prohibitive and confusing, but is so subtle that it goes without notice(for basically everybody using computers)

Nobody knows it's there, but we can clearly see it. Here are the pictures I took again to prove it. Sadly in my experience developers in many cases are actually unresponsive, so users are left to their own devices to solve these issues.