I am using KDE3 in openSUSE 10.3 64-bit. The latest Firefox 3.5 was just pushed down to replace 3.0. There is a font rendering issue with Firefox 3.5. In KDE3 I find that hinting=medium looks best, but for gnome apps the equivalent look is hinting=slight for some reason.

From searching around, it turns out that Firefox 3.5 looks to /home/[user]/.fonts.conf for its rendering information unlike Firefox 3.0 which used gnome settings from gnome-appearance-properties. The relevant lines in .fonts.conf are:

<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
<const>hintslight</const>
</edit>
</match>

however, for all other KDE3 apps I want:
<const>hintmedium</const>

If I use KDE3 Control Center and set hinting to medium .fonts.conf is modified to "hintmedium" but then Firefox 3.5 fonts look too "thin" to me, and if I modify .fonts.conf to "hintslight" Firefox 3.5 fonts look fine but KDE fonts look a little suboptimal. The problem is that both Firefox 3.5 and KDE3 are looking to the same .fonts.conf but rendering slightly differently.

Does anyone know of a way to give Firefox 3.5 a separate .fonts.conf configuration by inserting some sort of conditional branching inside .fonts.conf or perhaps having Firefox 3.5 or KDE3 look to different .fonts.conf files. Thanks.