[Spliff]

I have to agree with Allenzi.

I was browsing the computer dept. at London Drugs. They have Powerbooks next to the PC laptops (Sony and Toshiba).

I was completely shocked by how much crisper and smoother the fonts were on the PC laptops. OS X font-rendering on the Powerbooks looked jagged in comparison.

Two caveats:

1) The PC laptops were capable of much higher resolutions (1600x1200) than the Powerbooks.

2) The high-end Toshibas seemed to have some sort of glossy protective layer on the screens which reduced glare and made everything look shinier. I don't really know any other way of describing it. The Powerbook screens looked dull like they had a matte finish.

Fonts in Panther, however, do look nicer.

[thePurpleGiant]

And now 'Medium - best for flat panel'

Normal:



and zoomed in:

[nagromme]

Looks to me like OS X DOES display fonts just the way XP does--but that some people prefer the particular font seen in XP. Fair enough: different fonts do present a different appearance on-screen. The XP font has fewer curves and more straight lines, giving it a crisper feel. I do like that--but hate the style of the font. Maybe I'm just used to what I'm used to.

Neither XP nor OS X can match the sharpness of OS 9's method though. Accurate? No. But it sure was sharp. I'd be curious to see something like that implemented along WITH subpixel AA.

Re the colors: absolutely. That's how subpixel AA works. There IS some color fringing--and for pure SPAA, the fringing could be even more colored. You see grayish, muted colors because Apple (and MS) split the difference: around 50% (to oversimplify) between pure SPAA and the usual gray AA. That's a good compromise, removing the worst of the color effect. (Choose "Best for CRT" if the effect isn't to your taste. But SPAA IS sharper. Well worth some slight coloring, to me.)

Note that zooming in--or viewing on a CRT--doesn't give the same effect as viewing the characters native on an LCD. On an LCD at native size, you get a true higher resolution.

How does it work, and why the coloring? Here's a quick explanation:

Each pixel is divided into thirds (check with a magnifying glass): Red, Green, and Blue. Imagine a pixel being cut in half by part of a black letter "A". Now, normally you can't have anything cover just PART of a pixel. A pixel's a pixel! But with SPAA, that's just what happens. So the edge of the "A" covers up, say, just the green subpixel. That makes for more precise and sharp rendering--but leaves the rest of the pixel exposed shoing just the red and the blue. Result: a slight purple effect. Depending on how different characters cross the pixels, you'll get different colors resulting.

(CRT's have RGB elements too--but they don't line up precisely with the computer's pixels. Thus CRTs are blurrier and can't use SPAA.)

I understand SPAA pretty well, having made a rather complex Photoshop action that applies the effect to any image

See also here for more explanation and images:

http://grc.com/cttech.htm
http://grc.com/ctdialog.htm

Pretty clever!

[Apfhex]

I, for one, prefer the "Best for CRT" setting on my PowerBook. With the "Best for Flat Panel" setting, like ClearType on WinXP, I can really see the coloring, and find it harder to look at. I think it makes fonts a little uglier too.

I'm really curious what changes were made to the font smoothing in Panther. Seems as if no one here knows though?

[Rain]

Originally posted by Spliff:
I have to agree with Allenzi.

I was browsing the computer dept. at London Drugs. They have Powerbooks next to the PC laptops (Sony and Toshiba).

I was completely shocked by how much crisper and smoother the fonts were on the PC laptops. OS X font-rendering on the Powerbooks looked jagged in comparison.

Two caveats:

2) The high-end Toshibas seemed to have some sort of glossy protective layer on the screens which reduced glare and made everything look shinier. I don't really know any other way of describing it. The Powerbook screens looked dull like they had a matte finish.

Fonts in Panther, however, do look nicer.

I have a cheap old crappy Toshiba and the fonts are *much* better than the PB's. As of right now Windows is kickin Mac's butt in the font clarity department. I really hope Panther will fix this blurry problem.

[michael_on_mac]

Originally posted by nagromme:
Looks to me like OS X DOES display fonts just the way XP does--but that some people prefer the particular font seen in XP. Fair enough: different fonts do present a different appearance on-screen. The XP font has fewer curves and more straight lines, giving it a crisper feel. I do like that--but hate the style of the font. Maybe I'm just used to what I'm used to.

Nagromme, thanks for this concise explanation on both the characteristics of the fonts used and sub-pixel AA. Now it's perfectly clear to me that this feature leads to colored pixels.

The idea of SPAA is not completely crap, however. The human eye is generally better capable of recognizing contrast than color. This is also the reason why with television, the color information is available only mixed up (aliased) with the rest of the signal (at least with PAL).

The XP font in my example is "Tahoma 8pt", which is the standard UI font.

Michael.

[Allenzi35]

Thanks for all the blow ups to compare. I must really be font blow up color blind because I don't see a difference in color between XP and OS X. I do however see consistant fonts in XP and inconsistant fonts in OS X.

Example: "Writing in OS X." The blown up fonts in the post of OS X. Look at the two i's in "writing" and compare them to the one i in "in". There are three i's in "Writing in OS X" All three should be identical but they are not. Two are the same and one looks totally different.

Then go to the XP post and compare all the i's you see. The d's the l's the m's. They all are the same. Consistant. I never see the colors in OS X or XP. That's not the issue. The issue is how OS X will make one font letter in one word look different than the same font letter in the next word.

Can you all see what I'm talking about?

[Holy Zoo]

Originally posted by thePurpleGiant:
Okay and here is OS X on 'light' antialiasing:



then zoomed in:




Colours - I still see colours

Jeremy, what are you using to blow up pictures? They're coming out blurry. The above should look like this:

[Holy Zoo]

Originally posted by Allenzi35:
http://images.andale.com/f2/115/106/...47141_osx1.jpg

Allen - what model powerbook do you have, and what resolution are you running at?

I'm on a 15" TiBook, and just did a snapshot to compare to your image above, and your's does indeed look blurrier, and
to my eyes looks like you are running at a
non-native resolution:

[michael_on_mac]

Originally posted by Holy Zoo:
I'm on a 15" TiBook, and just did a snapshot to compare to your image above, and your's does indeed look blurrier, and
to my eyes looks like you are running at a
non-native resolution:

That should have no influence, as non-native resulution anti-aliasing is the job of the video card, not the OS. Screenshot shouldn't be affected by it.

But the lower one of the images posted does in fact show something very much like compression artifacts... and the font is larger.

Michael.

[Holy Zoo]

Originally posted by michael_on_mac:

But the lower one of the images posted does in fact show something very much like compression artifacts... and the font is larger.

Michael.

Good point. Question: why would the font be larger?

[Allenzi35]

Holy Zoo - It's a Ti 1GHz at native res.

How in the world do I post a picture in the thread like you guys do without making a link to some other website. Will someone PLEASE tell me. It is a PDF screenshot.

[michael_on_mac]

Originally posted by Allenzi35:
Holy Zoo - It's a Ti 1GHz at native res.

How in the world do I post a picture in the thread like you guys do without making a link to some other website. Will someone PLEASE tell me. It is a PDF screenshot.

Just use the IMG tag (example: reply to zoo's post)... please use an artifact-free compression for your images!

Michael.

[Allenzi35]

Originally posted by michael_on_mac:
Just use the IMG tag (example: reply to zoo's post)... please use an artifact-free compression for your images!

Michael.

When I try to reply, In the insert column it says: link email image list quote. All of them EXCEPT image work. It says HTML code is off. Does this matter?

[elvis2000]

Originally posted by nagromme:
Looks to me like OS X DOES display fonts just the way XP does

FWIW - you can completely turn it off in XP if you want to.

[Holy Zoo]

Originally posted by Allenzi35:
Holy Zoo - It's a Ti 1GHz at native res.

How in the world do I post a picture in the thread like you guys do without making a link to some other website. Will someone PLEASE tell me. It is a PDF screenshot.

Hi Allen,

So, we have the exact same machines.

Are you sure you're at 1280x854? If so our pictures should have been the same size. But they're not - your fonts are larger in the menu bar.

And - if I switch to 1152x768, then everything looks "fuzzy".

[Holy Zoo]

Originally posted by Allenzi35:
When I try to reply, In the insert column it says: link email image list quote. All of them EXCEPT image work. It says HTML code is off. Does this matter?

Dont' bother with the "link, email image list" buttons. Just type:

Code:
[img]  http://www.yaddayadda.com/image.jpg [/img]

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by thePurpleGiant:
Okay and here is OS X on 'light' antialiasing:

[snipped]

Colours - I still see colours

For LCD, I suggest you try the "Medium - Best for flat panel" setting. The other settings I find look best on a CRT.

And make sure you log out and then back in after changing the menu setting or you will NOT see any difference.

The sub-pixel font rendering has been redone in Panther, BTW.

[thePurpleGiant]

Originally posted by Holy Zoo:
Jeremy, what are you using to blow up pictures? They're coming out blurry. The above should look like this:
<snip>[/img]

You're right - sorry I used Preview, forgetting that it applies its own antialiasing when zooming in also! Just to confuse the issue of course