21–30 of 86 posts
No. No stop. I install MacType, which hacks windows's font rendering and replaces it with freetype, SPECIFICALLY so I can /avoid/ cleartype's ugly rendering on windows. I don't want it to invade my linux/mac as well!
MacType ...something something retracted statement please add a delete button... icon?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with that assessment (although I think OS X font render has problems as well). I'm a bit worried because now Infinality is removed from the code base by default, so I suspect I'm going to have to stick to customer builds to get the font rendering that I prefer. I suffer from ocular migraines and as hard as it is to believe (even for me), the way fonts are rendered makes a difference. I will literally go blind…
Have you tried a retina display? I find that the higher DPI panel reduces my eye strain.
Thankfully I just get the "blindness" and not the headaches at least.
What? As someone who hates Windows' Font rendering, why would you want this? The OS X font rendering is awesome, on Linux, Infinality can be tweaked to look even better, but windows? It's hideous, inconsistent and terrible to change...
I agree with that assessment (although I think OS X font render has problems as well). I'm a bit worried because now Infinality is removed from the code base by default, so I suspect I'm going to have to stick to customer builds to get the font rendering that I prefer. I suffer from ocular migraines and as hard as it is to believe (even for me), the way fonts are rendered makes a difference. I will literally go blind…
"Switching to the new mode might take some getting used to though, so if you think your fonts are suddenly fat, fuzzy or weird, give your brain some time to adjust." This is true, and IMO it's the reason font rendering is much less important than people think. When I got a new pair of glasses I disabled font anti-aliasing to make the edges as sharp as possible. I did this so I could more quickly learn to focus my eye…
> The most legible font is the one you're used to. Yes, and in my case on Linux I switched off hinting a long time ago (but retained anti-aliasing) We even did it on our network at work by default as users liked the fonts when they were more "Mac like". Personally I have never understood the whole font hinting thing. It seems rather unscientific and the result is that fonts look fundamentally different at slight size…
Hinting exists because displays don't have infinite resolution. Mac-style rendering has always acted like displays have paper-like resolutions, and respects a font's letter shapes more, favoring the original designer's intended font appearance on paper. Windows-style rendering has always acknowledged that displays have pixels, and that smearing fonts across pixels can decrease readability on average-DPI displays. Linux font rendering has historically offered a choice between the two, but typically defaulted to Windows-style rendering.
Direct link to the announcement: http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/freetype-devel/2016-07/... (includes images with the old/new renderings)
"Switching to the new mode might take some getting used to though, so if you think your fonts are suddenly fat, fuzzy or weird, give your brain some time to adjust." This is true, and IMO it's the reason font rendering is much less important than people think. When I got a new pair of glasses I disabled font anti-aliasing to make the edges as sharp as possible. I did this so I could more quickly learn to focus my eye…
Maybe for you, but don't assume that is true for everybody. It took many months of trying various font rendering configurations (Infinality in ClearType-ish and OSX-ish modes as well as custom modes) before I settled on my current[1] configuration. I'm very familiar with having to spend some time adjusting to different modes, but in my opinion, this the differences in rendering greatly overshadowed the differences from seeing an unusual/new setup.
Perception of text on a screen is affected - at a minimum - by the rendering technique (AA, subpixel-AA, hinting, contrast of the font, contrast of the display, eyesight of the viewer, and the ambient lighting in the room. Maybe in your situation the subtleties of font rendering are not that important. On my monitor, I find [1] to be a lot easier to read than any of the examples (both before and after) that were linked in the announcement.
> very little value
I'm sure most people are fine with sensible defaults, but please, try to remember that "value" is often subjective. People even disagree about which criteria represent high value.
[1] http://i.imgur.com/wMWmNKt.png?1 (esp. the 12px row)
(No, you don't want to see my messy custom fontconfig configuration that overrides a LOT of fo0nts choices and forces them into the handful of fonts that I find easier to read. Yes, that took another few months of experimentation.)
edit:
> vector fonts were a mistake
That depends a lot on what you are doing with them. While I was talking about vector fonts, the amazing font
-xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso10646-1
If you doubt the benefit of a high-quality rendering of a (appropriately hinted) vector font, try loading [2] and [3] (source: a very enlightening article[4]) in separate tabs and switching between them (so the images are in the same position). Image [2] uses modern techniques to render each line 0.1px further right, accumulating 3px over 30 lines. The other image [3] rounds the x offset to the pixel grid. Modern rasterizing techniques can align font rendering to 1/256th of a pixel!
[2] http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/sample_...
[3] http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/sample_...
[4] http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/index.h...
