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Text Rendering Hates You

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Re: Text Rendering Hates You

#141

Post by toast0 »

dahart wrote: post #139
toast0 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"LCD" antialiasing worked fine on trinitron CRTs which had a well defined RGB alignment. Calling it LCD alignment is more confusing.

Sure, that’s fair. Maybe LCD is a bad suggestion. It’s not like I’ll be able to change it, but just for fun, is there a better term that isn’t confusing? Because subpixel and especially greyscale seem pretty confusing.

I agree that greyscale anti-aliasing doesn't seem like the right term at all.

Perhaps, subpixel addressed anti-aliasing vs whole-pixel addressed anti-aliasing.

Re: Text Rendering Hates You

#142

Post by wodenokoto »

reaperducer wrote: post #117
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This for sure. I love my iMac 27” 5k simply because how text looks on it so much better than even a 28” 4K. 220 DPI is a magical number

Want a bit of pixel shock? Find someone with an original iPhone. I fired mine up a few weeks ago and simply couldn't believe that we used to use screens that low resolution and blurry. My eyes have become spoiled.

And that screen was fairly high-res for its time!

Re: Text Rendering Hates You

#143

Post by frou_dh »

reaperducer wrote: post #117
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This for sure. I love my iMac 27” 5k simply because how text looks on it so much better than even a 28” 4K. 220 DPI is a magical number

Want a bit of pixel shock? Find someone with an original iPhone. I fired mine up a few weeks ago and simply couldn't believe that we used to use screens that low resolution and blurry. My eyes have become spoiled.

That is illustrated very well by the second row here: https://www.paintcodeapp.com/news/ultimate-guide-to-iphone-r...

Re: Text Rendering Hates You

#144

Post by littlestymaar »

bsder wrote: post #126
earthboundkid wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is pretty bad unless you are a total orthography history nerd. For example, people routinely mispronounce the name of the President of China. (It’s closer to Shi than Zi.) Why? Because English has a strong preference for retaining native spellings even when the other language has a completely incompatible set of pronunciation rules. With Chinese this is extra silly because pinyin is only one of a million ways…

> For example, people routinely mispronounce the name of the President of China. (It’s closer to Shi than Zi.) Why? Because English has a strong preference for retaining native spellings even when the other language has a completely incompatible set of pronunciation rules. This is objecting to the .01%--I find it hard to take seriously. English has the really good feature that there is a phonic correspondence between…

> English has the really good feature that there is a phonic correspondence between spelling and pronunciation

It's absolutely not the case and it's actually one of the most mocked feature of English on the internet. The pronunciation of the name of “Sean Bean” is a good example. As a non native speaker, I have had a lot of pain learning the pronunciation of words I've only seen written.

In American English, you have at least one direction easy (from pronunciation to spelling) but not in British English. And going from spelling to pronunciation is really hard in both dialects.

Re: Text Rendering Hates You

#145

Post by NeedMoreTea »

littlestymaar wrote: post #144
bsder wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, people routinely mispronounce the name of the President of China. (It’s closer to Shi than Zi.) Why? Because English has a strong preference for retaining native spellings even when the other language has a completely incompatible set of pronunciation rules. This is objecting to the .01%--I find it hard to take seriously. English has the really good feature that there is a phonic correspondence between…

> English has the really good feature that there is a phonic correspondence between spelling and pronunciation It's absolutely not the case and it's actually one of the most mocked feature of English on the internet. The pronunciation of the name of “Sean Bean” is a good example. As a non native speaker, I have had a lot of pain learning the pronunciation of words I've only seen written. In American English, you have…

It's actually Sean. Pronounced shawn. Be thankful we didn't get more from Gaelic, where "Laoghaire" is pronounced leery. :)

Don't agree US English makes it easier, it's just differently idiosyncratic.

Extreme example - ghoti: Pronounced fish. The gh from tough, the o from women, the ti from nation. Works in American English. :p

If I hear in the US "cull err" and go to spell, I don't end up at color, hearing "sell fone" doesn't lead me to cell phone, etc.

Half the problems of English spelling are the three (four in US English, with Webster) significant attempts to simplify spelling over the centuries, and outsourcing some temporarily illegal printing to the Dutch.

Re: Text Rendering Hates You

#146

Post by littlestymaar »

thefringthing wrote: post #131
earthboundkid wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese is one of the few languages with a worse writing system than English. Hats off to them for it. I do miss the pre-war spellings though, where they wrote things based on 10c pronunciation, eg AU is pronounced OH (like in French). Tibetan is also in pretty desperate need of spelling reform. I’d love to hear replies about other terrible writing systems.

Tibetan and French usually come up on lists of worst correspondence between orthography and pronunciation. Irish is also pretty bad. (It makes sense once you learn how it works, then stops making sense once you hear people of different dialects actually pronounce words.)

French is terrible in one direction: pronunciation to spelling is a nightmare, as most sounds can be written in a least 3 ways. «un» «um», «in», «im», «ain», «aim» and «ein» are pronounced the same, so if you hear this sound, good luck figuring out how to spell it.

But the other way around isn't really bad: a spelling almost always have an unambiguous pronunciation. (There are exceptions but they are few and far between)

At least if you don't count ancient French, which is still prominent in places name's, and have a totally arbitrary pronunciation. As a little game for French speakers, try pronouncing the name of the city of «Meung sur Loire» ;).

Re: Text Rendering Hates You

#147

Post by littlestymaar »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #145
littlestymaar wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> English has the really good feature that there is a phonic correspondence between spelling and pronunciation It's absolutely not the case and it's actually one of the most mocked feature of English on the internet. The pronunciation of the name of “Sean Bean” is a good example. As a non native speaker, I have had a lot of pain learning the pronunciation of words I've only seen written. In American English, you have…

It's actually Sean. Pronounced shawn. Be thankful we didn't get more from Gaelic, where "Laoghaire" is pronounced leery. :) Don't agree US English makes it easier, it's just differently idiosyncratic. Extreme example - ghoti: Pronounced fish. The gh from tough, the o from women, the ti from nation. Works in American English. :p If I hear in the US "cull err" and go to spell, I don't end up at color, hearing "sell fon…

> It's actually Sean.

Indeed. Fixed, thanks

> Don't agree US English makes it easier, it's just differently idiosyncratic.

I found it easier when learning, but YMMV.

Re: Text Rendering Hates You

#148

Post by NeedMoreTea »

littlestymaar wrote: post #147
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually Sean. Pronounced shawn. Be thankful we didn't get more from Gaelic, where "Laoghaire" is pronounced leery. :) Don't agree US English makes it easier, it's just differently idiosyncratic. Extreme example - ghoti: Pronounced fish. The gh from tough, the o from women, the ti from nation. Works in American English. :p If I hear in the US "cull err" and go to spell, I don't end up at color, hearing "sell fon…

> It's actually Sean. Indeed. Fixed, thanks > Don't agree US English makes it easier, it's just differently idiosyncratic. I found it easier when learning, but YMMV.

I'll defer then, as you're the non-native speaker who learnt the hard way. :)

Just a lot I might have thought American English would take the opportunity to clean up, remain. Like all those silent h's from having printed the first English bibles in Holland. Ghost, aghast etc. There used to be a lot more - ghospel for one!

Re: Text Rendering Hates You

#149

Post by littlestymaar »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #148
littlestymaar wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's actually Sean. Indeed. Fixed, thanks > Don't agree US English makes it easier, it's just differently idiosyncratic. I found it easier when learning, but YMMV.

I'll defer then, as you're the non-native speaker who learnt the hard way. :) Just a lot I might have thought American English would take the opportunity to clean up, remain. Like all those silent h's from having printed the first English bibles in Holland. Ghost, aghast etc. There used to be a lot more - ghospel for one!

> you're the non-native speaker who learnt the hard way

Well, even native speakers need to learn it the hard way as a child! As far as I'm concerned, I really struggled with French spelling when I was younger ;).

> Like all those silent h's from having printed the first English bibles in Holland. Ghost, aghast etc.

That's a really cool story. Thanks!

Re: Text Rendering Hates You

#150

Post by bsder »

littlestymaar wrote: post #144
bsder wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, people routinely mispronounce the name of the President of China. (It’s closer to Shi than Zi.) Why? Because English has a strong preference for retaining native spellings even when the other language has a completely incompatible set of pronunciation rules. This is objecting to the .01%--I find it hard to take seriously. English has the really good feature that there is a phonic correspondence between…

> English has the really good feature that there is a phonic correspondence between spelling and pronunciation It's absolutely not the case and it's actually one of the most mocked feature of English on the internet. The pronunciation of the name of “Sean Bean” is a good example. As a non native speaker, I have had a lot of pain learning the pronunciation of words I've only seen written. In American English, you have…

> And going from spelling to pronunciation is really hard in both dialects.

But you can try. And it will kinda work.

If you pronounce "Sean Bean" as "seen bean" (most likely), "shawn bawn", or "say-an bay-an" (that's gonna require some thought for a native ...) people will scrunch their brow, think a bit, maybe chuckle, and have an idea who you are talking about--especially if they've been around you for a couple days.

English is remarkably error tolerant. You may not get it right, but you will get your point across.

With kanji you can't even try. This isn't about whether English is easy. It's about that fact that the simple act of going from pronunciation to kanji or kanji to pronunciation simply isn't possible at all.

(And choosing a formal name as an example is just asking for exceptions. Japanese, for example, has a whole class of kanji used basically for nothing except names--good luck pronouncing those ...)

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