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Font height differences between Windows and Mac (2019)

williamrchase.com

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Re: Font height differences between Windows and Mac (2019)

#31

Post by eschaton »

xianwen wrote: post #11
mnutt wrote: post #6

I struggled with this recently, upgrading qtwebkit from Qt5 to Qt6. Qt5 used platform-specific height values, while Qt6 now uses win height values, for consistent rendering across all platforms. It’s better in concept, the only issue is that the really big cross-platform browser _doesn’t_ so it turns into “why doesn’t this font rendering look like Chrome on Mac/linux?”

How do you solve the problem?

Use native frameworks on each platform for which you’re building an application, with a cross-platform non-UI core.

Re: Font height differences between Windows and Mac (2019)

#34

Post by hocuspocus »

orenlindsey wrote: post #9

Macs are king when it comes to font rendering. It was prioritized in the original Macintosh and Apple still has the most solid font engine to this day.

MacOS is literally the only major desktop OS where sub-pixel rendering was removed on purpose, despite the negative impact on everyone using <200 dpi monitors, i.e. most office workers at companies that won't spend $1500 on 5K monitors.

Re: Font height differences between Windows and Mac (2019)

#35

Post by hocuspocus »

rafabulsing wrote: post #18
ranger207 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked the Windows 10 emojis with the thick border...

I quite liked them as well. Made them very readable even in small sizes. But then again, I also loved the Android's old blob emojis[0]. Some specific ones were weird but mostly I really liked the amount of personality and movement they were able to express. But as far as I've been able to tell, most people seemed to hate them, for whatever reason. [0]: https://emojipedia.org/google/android-6.0.1

Most people I know really enjoyed the blobs too. I never bought Google's justification for the redesign, and I don't think they ever published hard data about it.

Re: Font height differences between Windows and Mac (2019)

#36

Post by TillE »

hocuspocus wrote: post #34
orenlindsey wrote: post #9

Macs are king when it comes to font rendering. It was prioritized in the original Macintosh and Apple still has the most solid font engine to this day.

MacOS is literally the only major desktop OS where sub-pixel rendering was removed on purpose, despite the negative impact on everyone using <200 dpi monitors, i.e. most office workers at companies that won't spend $1500 on 5K monitors.

Probably 90-95% of Macs sold come with a monitor, and they're all high-DPI now. Apple doesn't really care about optimizing for some giant 1080p monitor. An iMac is pretty cheap.

Re: Font height differences between Windows and Mac (2019)

#37

Post by Cyykratahk »

CSS now has the ability to override some font metrics, so you shouldn't need to edit the font files directly.

And these overrides can be applied to local fonts as well (generally used to ensure the metrics of the local fallback font matches the yet-to-be-downloaded web font, preventing a layout shift when the web font is swapped in)

ascent-override - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@font-face/...

descent-override - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@font-face/...

line-gap-override - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@font-face/...

size-adjust - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@font-face/...

Re: Font height differences between Windows and Mac (2019)

#38

Post by hocuspocus »

TillE wrote: post #36
hocuspocus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacOS is literally the only major desktop OS where sub-pixel rendering was removed on purpose, despite the negative impact on everyone using <200 dpi monitors, i.e. most office workers at companies that won't spend $1500 on 5K monitors.

Probably 90-95% of Macs sold come with a monitor, and they're all high-DPI now. Apple doesn't really care about optimizing for some giant 1080p monitor. An iMac is pretty cheap.

In my world, Macbooks are pretty popular in the corporate world. Sure my MBP 16" has a high DPI built-in display but I'm never going to get the budget for an Apple Studio Display. Offices are equipped with Dell/Lenovo/HP USB-C monitors that are between 100 and 150 dpi. I'm not talking about 20 year old pixel density here, but modern ultra-wide or UHD monitors.

There's a difference between not caring about low DPI anymore, and crippling font rendering on purpose.

Re: Font height differences between Windows and Mac (2019)

#39

Post by stephenr »

hocuspocus wrote: post #38
TillE wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably 90-95% of Macs sold come with a monitor, and they're all high-DPI now. Apple doesn't really care about optimizing for some giant 1080p monitor. An iMac is pretty cheap.

In my world, Macbooks are pretty popular in the corporate world. Sure my MBP 16" has a high DPI built-in display but I'm never going to get the budget for an Apple Studio Display. Offices are equipped with Dell/Lenovo/HP USB-C monitors that are between 100 and 150 dpi. I'm not talking about 20 year old pixel density here, but modern ultra-wide or UHD monitors. There's a difference between not caring about low DPI any…

> I'm not talking about 20 year old pixel density here, but modern ultra-wide or UHD monitors

Because the monitor industry largely got to 4K and said "eh that'll do", a lot of those "ultrawide" and UHD displays with large sizes literally do have twenty year old DPI.

Increasing physical panel size (usually) used to translate to higher resolution, but at some point the majority of manufacturers stopped doing this, so you get the same 4K resolution at ever stretched physical sizes, and ever decreasing DPI.

Re: Font height differences between Windows and Mac (2019)

#40

Post by makeitdouble »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #17
jareklupinski wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pic says thousand words emoji says about ten still an improvement

Problem is they don't say the same thing to everybody. Do eyes emoji mean you are looking at it, or you want me to look at it, or that you have seen it? They don't really say anything.

There's a blurriness, but it's still pretty workable. You won't ask someone to look at a problem by sticking eyes on it, that needs a lot more communication.

But you can look at an issue, see there 3 of your coworkers sticking an eyes emoji on it, and mention them when asking what they think it, get clarification if they've just seen and didn't care, are still digging deeper etc.

In a way, the imprecision is what gives the versatility, otherwise many emoji get a more limited, standardized meanings over time. Like a "done" sticker that will be enough to give a status on a request on a channel, a thumbs up on a proposition, or a green checkmark on things that explicitely needed to be checked.

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