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robbien · Jul 16, 2003, 08:56 AM

My font smoothing settings appear to be set on high. I can tell, because my certain fonts appear to be "ghosting" when they didn't do this before. Any idea on how to force the settings to change? I've already repaired the permissions on my disk. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

cpac · Jul 16, 2003, 10:25 AM

Originally posted by robbien:
My font smoothing settings appear to be set on high. I can tell, because my certain fonts appear to be "ghosting" when they didn't do this before. Any idea on how to force the settings to change? I've already repaired the permissions on my disk. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

You can't change them in your system preferences?

robbien · Jul 16, 2003, 12:19 PM

I can change the settings in the system preferences, but the results aren't visble on the screen. When I change minimum size font to which font smoothing is applied, I can see the changes take effect of my screen. However, when I change the font smoothing type (light, medium, strong) I don't see the change take place. It appears to be stuck on strong, unless there is something wrong with the display on my TiBook.

cpac · Jul 16, 2003, 01:13 PM

Originally posted by robbien:
I can change the settings in the system preferences, but the results aren't visble on the screen. When I change minimum size font to which font smoothing is applied, I can see the changes take effect of my screen. However, when I change the font smoothing type (light, medium, strong) I don't see the change take place. It appears to be stuck on strong, unless there is something wrong with the display on my TiBook.

Which program are you looking at fonts in? Some apps, (like Acrobat) have their own independent anti-aliasing going on.

It also occurrs to me that you may have to relaunch a program to get it to respect new system preferences for font smoothing, though I'm not sure on this (and I'm not with my Mac to try it out).

robbien · Jul 16, 2003, 01:19 PM

I notice it with all text in the finder.

cpac · Jul 16, 2003, 01:46 PM

Originally posted by robbien:
I notice it with all text in the finder.

Well that's only a single font really - and it might be hard to tell whether the font smoothing is changing there. Also, have you ever used Tinkertool or any haxies to mess with the Finder's font settings? If so, this could be the cause (a solution might be to trash your finder prefs).

I'd type something up in TextEdit, in a couple different fonts, and then change the font smoothing settings in the system preferences to see if you can notice a difference...

robbien · Jul 16, 2003, 01:53 PM

Originally posted by cpac:
Well that's only a single font really - and it might be hard to tell whether the font smoothing is changing there. Also, have you ever used Tinkertool or any haxies to mess with the Finder's font settings? If so, this could be the cause (a solution might be to trash your finder prefs).

I'd type something up in TextEdit, in a couple different fonts, and then change the font smoothing settings in the system preferences to see if you can notice a difference...

I've verified that text in other applications looks fine. I like the idea of trashing my finder preferences. How do I do this?

cpac · Jul 16, 2003, 02:12 PM

Originally posted by robbien:
I've verified that text in other applications looks fine. I like the idea of trashing my finder preferences. How do I do this?

I'm not at my Mac to double check their location, but I believe they're in ~/Library/Preferences/ (where ~ is your home folder) and they should be called something like com.apple.finder.plist

you could also just do a search for "finder" and see what files show up.

Also, you don't have to trash them, you just need to move them (that way you can move them back if it doesn't fix things or you loose other settings you really wanted.

cpac · Jul 16, 2003, 02:14 PM

oh also, there's a chance you might have to force quit the finder after you've removed the preferences (normal quitting via log-out might re-write the old preferences)

robbien · Jul 16, 2003, 06:47 PM

Well, deleting the plist file for the finder didn't do any good. Anybody have another suggestion?

robbien · Jul 16, 2003, 08:12 PM

The problem goes away when I switch from millions of colors to thousands of colors. Any idea why this might be the case?

cpac · Jul 16, 2003, 10:55 PM

Originally posted by robbien:
The problem goes away when I switch from millions of colors to thousands of colors. Any idea why this might be the case?

what "ghosting" are you seeing? it's not the white on black of the font on the text that appears on the desktop is it?

robbien · Jul 17, 2003, 10:46 AM

Originally posted by cpac:
what "ghosting" are you seeing? it's not the white on black of the font on the text that appears on the desktop is it?

No. It is the test that is in directory listings in the finder and in the menu bars of applications. It looks like a pinkish "bleeding of color" at the edges of black text.