Quartz text anti-aliasing is crap [Archive]

fredi

Sep 27, 2002, 11:33 AM

Who here on this forum (or anywhere on this planet) really LIKES to look at blurry text all day long? An obvious attempt from Apple (crippleware) to ruin the Mac user's eyes. After a few months of forcing myself to use this OS, my optimism says yes, my eyeballs say no. So its back to the crash-a-mac OS 9.2. Sigh :(

dfiler

Sep 27, 2002, 11:54 AM

Me.

Why not just turn the smoothing off if you don't like it?

::maroma::

Sep 27, 2002, 11:57 AM

Yeah, turn it off an quit your crying.

stew

Sep 27, 2002, 12:03 PM

Originally posted by dfiler:
Why not just turn the smoothing off if you don't like it?
If it'd at least look halfway decent. Unfortunately, non-AA Quartz text looks much worse than non-AA Quickdraw (like in OS 9) text.

SMacTech

Sep 27, 2002, 12:17 PM

I have no problems with AA text. Maybe I should get glasses. To crash or ruin one's eyes, it's a tough choice.

stew

Sep 27, 2002, 12:26 PM

Originally posted by SMacTech:
I have no problems with AA text. Maybe I should get glasses. To crash or ruin one's eyes, it's a tough choice.
No, the problem is that unlike Windows' ClearType, Quartz' AA does not respect a screen's gamma value and therefore looks good on some screens and bad on others. It looks a lot better on my CRT, but I couldn't stand it on my iBook's LCD - it's a little better now with the SPR in 10.2.

dfiler

Sep 27, 2002, 12:59 PM

Originally posted by stew:

No, the problem is that unlike Windows' ClearType, Quartz' AA does not respect a screen's gamma value and therefore looks good on some screens and bad on others. It looks a lot better on my CRT, but I couldn't stand it on my iBook's LCD - it's a little better now with the SPR in 10.2.

Respect the screen's gamma value? Are you refering to colorsync display profiles or something else?

I'm actually quite interested in the subject. Text rendering has grown incredibly complicated in modern rendering engines and there is still much to perfect and improve. As I understand it, Apple is currently working on a number of text display APIs. Can anyone point me to further reading on the matter? (White-paper-esque info would be much prefered over journalist interpretations.)

Zimphire

Sep 27, 2002, 01:10 PM

All Windows bashing aside, ClearType cannot even be compared to Quartz in quality text rendering.

Sophus

Sep 27, 2002, 01:46 PM

Originally posted by fredi:
Who here on this forum (or anywhere on this planet) really LIKES to look at blurry text all day long? An obvious attempt from Apple (crippleware) to ruin the Mac user's eyes. After a few months of forcing myself to use this OS, my optimism says yes, my eyeballs say no. So its back to the crash-a-mac OS 9.2. Sigh :(

Well I for one was disappointed with the pre-jaguar antialiasing on my LCD (Dell 1702FP). I requested sub pixel rendering and I got it! I am very, very happy. Font smoothing on my LCD is now excellent.
I am a former PC user, and I liked the crisp fonts in XP. Fonts in OSX is now equally crisp, only much better looking. It has a more printed and natural look to it. So, I am one member of this forum that actually enjoys using the OS as well as looking at the smoothed fonts...

If you don't like it, turn it off...

Sophus

Boochie

Sep 27, 2002, 01:46 PM

It's so trivial to deactivate, what's the big deal? Open up a terminal window and type:

defaults write .GlobalPreferences AppleAntiAliasingThreshold 72

or any other sufficiently large number. Problem solved.

Originally posted by fredi:
Who here on this forum (or anywhere on this planet) really LIKES to look at blurry text all day long? An obvious attempt from Apple (crippleware) to ruin the Mac user's eyes. After a few months of forcing myself to use this OS, my optimism says yes, my eyeballs say no. So its back to the crash-a-mac OS 9.2. Sigh :(

Lew

Sep 27, 2002, 02:28 PM

Originally posted by stew:

No, the problem is that unlike Windows' ClearType, Quartz' AA does not respect a screen's gamma value and therefore looks good on some screens and bad on others. It looks a lot better on my CRT, but I couldn't stand it on my iBook's LCD - it's a little better now with the SPR in 10.2.

I found that the readability of OS X's text was improved greatly on my Pismo once I created a decent ColorSync profile with SuperCal (http://www.bergdesign.com/supercal). It allows for much finer calibration than the Apple-supplied calibrator. Give it a try, or try using the profile I created here (http://homepage.mac.com/lwernham/.Pictures/Pismo.icc) (Ctrl-click and select 'download to disk') and see the difference. :)

http://bergdesign.com/supercal/images/screenshot.png

Kaner

Sep 27, 2002, 05:38 PM

looks good to me you bi+ch

neverwind

Sep 27, 2002, 05:47 PM

looks good to me you bi+ch

WTF????:confused:

fat mac moron

Sep 27, 2002, 05:59 PM

Originally posted by Kaner:
looks good to me you bi+ch

I must be a moron (hence the user name) but that made me laugh.

Deal

Sep 27, 2002, 06:36 PM

hehe

Lew

Sep 27, 2002, 07:53 PM

Originally posted by Kaner:
looks good to me you bi+ch :confused:

::maroma::

Sep 27, 2002, 08:24 PM

Originally posted by GFive:
:confused:

I think he was talking to the thread starter.

Lew

Sep 27, 2002, 08:35 PM

Ah :D

OreoCookie

Sep 28, 2002, 11:15 AM

Turn it off and stop bitching. If you don't like it, don't use it.

peternj

Sep 28, 2002, 11:26 AM

Originally posted by Zimphire:
All Windows bashing aside, ClearType cannot even be compared to Quartz in quality text rendering.
I think it depends on what screen you're using. My Vaio notebook is brighter clearer and easier on the eye running xp because the fonts and icons are crystal clear.

But I have seen at the Applestore iMacs 15 inch or 17 that look very sharp.

My 2k box is not a clear as XP or OSX but my Titanium 677 displays better in 9.

I think where Apple scores better is that even when blurrd the fonts display the same at different angles where Cleartype casts a blue hue if you do not set the LCD at the correct angle.

I prefer the xp handling on a 12 inch screen and for some reason my vaio is brighter than my ibook 600.

I think OSX display has a little way to go before it can be declared a winner.

Guy Incognito

Sep 28, 2002, 03:17 PM

I just farted.

pliny

Sep 28, 2002, 03:35 PM

i think the antialiasing hurts my left eye and sometimes gives me a headache, esp on white backgrounds (omni, word blah blah). can't rememebr cause at least for today I'm back in 9.2.1 and really enjoying scrolling and browsing speed that puts my jaguar kitty to SHAME. :p

unfaded

Sep 28, 2002, 03:46 PM

sandman

Sep 28, 2002, 04:47 PM

A bit OT, but why is it that some apps can AA certain fonts, and others can't. For instance, Chimera and OW are both fully cocoe, yet the former does not AA these forums. Does OW use another form of AA than Quartz? When will this madness be made uniformed. If I had it my way any and all fonts would be anti-aliased OW style.

Developer

Sep 28, 2002, 05:14 PM

OmniWeb uses Cocoa for text layout/rendering, Chimera (resp. the Gecko engine) uses QuickDraw. QuickDraw doesn't anti-alias some fonts at smaller sizes if a bitmap representation is available.

The Chimera developers can "uniform the madness" by using ATSUI instead *). They did that once in one of the previews, but switched back to QuickDraw because it showed to be significantly faster.

*)
I think ATSUI has some more features than what is available via Cocoa, but it's used by Cocoa internally, so there's no noticeable difference.

King Bob On The Cob

Sep 28, 2002, 10:26 PM

Originally posted by Developer:
OmniWeb uses Cocoa for text layout/rendering, Chimera (resp. the Gecko engine) uses QuickDraw. QuickDraw doesn't anti-alias some fonts at smaller sizes if a bitmap representation is available.

The Chimera developers can "uniform the madness" by using ATSUI instead *). They did that once in one of the previews, but switched back to QuickDraw because it showed to be significantly faster.

*)
I think ATSUI has some more features than what is available via Cocoa, but it's used by Cocoa internally, so there's no noticeable difference.
It was Chimera 0.2 (I've found my backup copy and I just noticed that It actually renders exactly like OmniWeb except it does it correctly...)

krove

Sep 29, 2002, 02:22 AM

The real problem here is the resolution at which you people run your monitors. If you run @ 1024 x 768 or lower (also depends on the size of your display), I can guarantee that you will see blurry text! Increase the resolution (especially for larger monitors) to get the best out of Quartz AA.

10.2 also allows you to modify the level of AA. Text too small in the Finder? You can set the size of the text there to compensate for higher-resolution monitor settings.

To finish, let me just say I HATE whiners who refuse to find solutions to their problems. Instead, they seem to rather spread their infectious need to whine around the web.

Musti

Sep 29, 2002, 02:22 AM

Originally posted by GFive:

I found that the readability of OS X's text was improved greatly on my Pismo once I created a decent ColorSync profile with SuperCal (http://www.bergdesign.com/supercal). It allows for much finer calibration than the Apple-supplied calibrator. Give it a try, or try using the profile I created here (http://homepage.mac.com/lwernham/.Pictures/Pismo.icc) (Ctrl-click and select 'download to disk') and see the difference. :)

http://bergdesign.com/supercal/images/screenshot.png

Thanks for the pointer to the program and the profile...That's one good icc.

What a difference an .icc makes. Funny how a lot of people don't know or care about colour management, or simply whine before trying their options.

Nathan Adams

Sep 29, 2002, 05:36 AM

that's right
Chimera was formerly using ATSUI but changed to Quickdraw because they were having a couple of problems with letter spacing, and Quickdraw was faster.
When they made this change, they did say that they were planning on switching back to ATSUI and getting it up to speed with the quickdraw rendering around the 1.0 release (im not sure if that mean for the 1.0 release, or start on it once 1.0 is out)

Lew

Sep 29, 2002, 07:55 AM

Originally posted by Musti:

Thanks for the pointer to the program and the profile...That's one good icc.

What a difference an .icc makes. Funny how a lot of people don't know or care about colour management, or simply whine before trying their options.

True. Just for a laugh, I switched momentarily back to the Apple-supplied 'Color LCD' profile. I'd forgotten just how bad the font rendering looked with that one :D

It really makes a difference being able to fine-tune the profile, as opposed to the coarse-tuning of Apple ColorSync. I've also found that a SuperCal profile helps to bring out the detail in dark areas of the screen when watching movies on the laptop (having a little less saturation in the colours definitely helps, too. The blues especially are way too saturated for my liking in the Apple profiles).

mediahound

Sep 29, 2002, 04:31 PM

there's a freeware system pref. app called Tinker Tool. download it. it can turn off all the anti-aliasing nice!

Boochie

Sep 29, 2002, 09:09 PM

This aspect of Tinkertool only works properly under OS 10.1.5 and earlier. Raising the system threshold via the command-line instruction I mentioned earlier will work for any application that respects that setting (most but not all).

Originally posted by mediahound:
there's a freeware system pref. app called Tinker Tool. download it. it can turn off all the anti-aliasing nice!

cutterjohn

Oct 1, 2002, 05:28 AM

Originally posted by King Bob On The Cob:

It was Chimera 0.2 (I've found my backup copy and I just noticed that It actually renders exactly like OmniWeb except it does it correctly...)

dude don't let the omni apologists catch you saying that. they'll whine & pester you death, even if it is true. (Of course according to the semi hype, OW5 will cure all of this when it appears sometime around 2100 A.D., right after OW4.9.99.999.9999.99995.a9996 is hacked/kludged to load some little whiners web page at a blazing 1 bit/s, while breaking the 85% that used to render.)

Boochie

Oct 21, 2002, 09:23 AM

Thanks for the tip about SuperCal! I downloaded it after reading this quote a couple of weeks ago. I bought an Apple LCD monitor over the weekend. It looked pretty good out of the box, but something just wasn't quite right. I remembered this article and calibrated the monitor with SuperCal. A subtle yet very meaningful difference!

Originally posted by GFive:

I found that the readability of OS X's text was improved greatly on my Pismo once I created a decent ColorSync profile with SuperCal (http://www.bergdesign.com/supercal). It allows for much finer calibration than the Apple-supplied calibrator. Give it a try, or try using the profile I created here (http://homepage.mac.com/lwernham/.Pictures/Pismo.icc) (Ctrl-click and select 'download to disk') and see the difference. :)

clarkgoble

Oct 21, 2002, 01:22 PM

On XP, however, most programs don't seem to anti-alias. For instance using Omniweb (despite its CSS problems) on the web is a joy compared to IE on XP. It is literally night and day. Admittedly I have an Apple 17" LCD screen. So perhaps things are better optimized. But I'm constantly amazed at how good text looks on the Mac.

stew

Oct 21, 2002, 01:51 PM

Regular AA in XP isn't too spectacular, but ClearType is great IMHO. To me, some fonts look better in Quartz and some do in ClearType, but overall I'd say they look equally good.

Zimphire

Oct 21, 2002, 02:07 PM

I hate Cleartype, It isn't nearly as easy on the eyes as Quartz. It looks like a hack job, where Quartz looks smooth like a PDF.

eno

Oct 21, 2002, 02:21 PM

Originally posted by GFive:

I found that the readability of OS X's text was improved greatly on my Pismo once I created a decent ColorSync profile with SuperCal (http://www.bergdesign.com/supercal). It allows for much finer calibration than the Apple-supplied calibrator. Give it a try, or try using the profile I created here (http://homepage.mac.com/lwernham/.Pictures/Pismo.icc) (Ctrl-click and select 'download to disk') and see the difference. :)

Yes, I see the difference. Not sure whether I like it though. Things do seem a little crisper and clearer, but the display also seems a bit more "washed out", if you know what I mean....

Well I will try it for a few days and see what I think...

Worst part is I am trying to do web design on this damn Pismo... goodness knows what the sites I make look like to everyone else!

Lew

Oct 21, 2002, 04:05 PM

Originally posted by eno:

Yes, I see the difference. Not sure whether I like it though. Things do seem a little crisper and clearer, but the display also seems a bit more "washed out", if you know what I mean....

Funny thing is, I've been using that profile for so long now that the standard Apple profile looks over-saturated to me :D

eno

Oct 22, 2002, 07:19 AM

It's starting to grow on me. If this keeps up, soon I'll be humping that profile like Mini-me humps the "laser" in Spy Who Shagged Me.

Lew

Oct 22, 2002, 11:08 AM

Speaking of ColorSync profiles, does anyone know how I could set up the profile I'm using to be the default for the login screen?

Justin W. Williams

Oct 22, 2002, 11:27 AM

personally, AA looks great to me, but I don't have that fine of an eye for stuff like that. I just turned it on on the XP box, and I prefer OS X's implementation to cleartype anyday.

booboo

Oct 22, 2002, 05:51 PM

I have all sorts of display problems in Jag that i didn't have in 10.1.5 on my Apple 15" lcd.

Most notably wierd discolouring of certain font verticals, most noticeable on "l"s. Not only does text look fuzzy but it also looks distorted, like a wierd analogue monitor distortion where you see fringes of colour round what should be simply black on white.

Changing the Font smoothing options doesn't improve matters. Currently set on 'Best for LCD...'

Any ideas?

Lew

Oct 22, 2002, 05:53 PM

If a decent ColorSync profile doesn't help and you want it to look like 10.1 then set it to 'Best for CRT'

Northform

Oct 22, 2002, 06:14 PM

stew

Oct 22, 2002, 06:16 PM

Both ClearType and Quartz look a lot (and I mean a lot) better when calibrated. Use SuperCal on the Mac and this link (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/1.htm) for XP before you dump SPR too soon. It really makes a difference.

stew

Oct 22, 2002, 06:19 PM

Originally posted by Northform:
If you think ClearType is readable then you haven't used Windows. No one uses ClearType because of how bad it is (instead they go without AA).
:confused: I bought XP mainly because of Cleartype. It's readability is IMSO better than Quartz, but that could just be my PC's LCD being better than my iBook's.