Re: font fuzziness with Bitstream Vera

[Jim Gettys <Jim Gettys hp com>]

When we have our open source technology fully enabled, it is *better*
than Microsoft ClearType.  You won't get as crisp a display on Windows
as you can on Linux, when everything is enabled.

Vera's hinting turns out (for various reasons) to have been optimized
towards our technology, rather than Microsoft's ClearType or previous
rendering tehcnology.  

There were problems with Vera's predecessor Prima's hinting that our
technology uncovered (the hinting problem was being hidden by the poorer
Windows technology), and all of those hints were removed, and Vera
rehinted to display well on the open source freetype/xft technology.

So it is possible with different hinting to possibly do better on
Windows than Vera currently does, but might impact the quality seen
on open source platforms.  Trying to rehint the font to do well with
several different rendering technologies simultanously would have been
more expense that Bitstream could afford.

You know what way I recommended Bitstream go :-).

Also note that the freetype autohinter's behavior has been problematic
at times.  If you definitively want to see how well Vera can do, ensure
the TT hinter is enabled, and enable subpixel decimation.

Also, I note the latest firefox I got out of Debian unstable seems to be
linked agains an internal copy of freetype rather than the system
installed freetype, and is now fuzzy.  Grrrrrr..........


				- Jim

On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 09:44 -0500, Charlie Lowe wrote:
> Thanks, Jim :)
> 
> But I'm wondering under what conditions this might happen in Windows, 
> and less about how to fix it. Given that Bitstream Vera ships with 
> OpenOffice, it seems likely that a large number of users who are open 
> source and free software advocates that still end up using Windows in 
> certain instances, such as myself, might encounter the same display 
> problem. So I'm more interested in what situations this might affect the 
> user experience at drupal.org.
> 
> Jim Gettys wrote:
> 
> > The common cause of this (and why you see it on some Linux systems and
> > not others) is that Apple has a patent on certain byte codes in the
> > TrueType hinter, effective only in the U.S. and Great Britain.
> > 
> > Some Linux distributions ship with the freetype truetype hinter disabled
> > (enabling a "autohinter") and some with it enabled.
> > 
> > Results are much higher when the TT hinter is able to do its full work.
> > 
> > It is pretty easy to rebuild freetype to enable the full hinting
> > to be effective.
> > 
> > The best results also require subpixel decimation to be enabled
> > (on flatpanels) increasing the effective horizontal resolution.
> > 			Regards,
> > 			- Jim
> > On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 09:21 -0500, Charlie Lowe wrote:
> > 
> >>http://drupal.org/ just updated it's web design to use Bitstream Vera. 
> >>Some windows users are reporting fuzziness of the font in this thread:
> >>
> >>http://drupal.org/node/11695
> >>
> >>and here's a screenshot:
> >>
> >>http://www.clickbrain.com/images/drupalscreen.png
> >>
> >>I've also experienced it, too, on an ASUS GeForce 5700 with a Viewsonic 
> >>17" LCD. But it's intermittant.
> >>
> >>Anyone know why this is happening? Is it a display driver bug, as 
> >>suggested in this thread, and if so, under what conditions/hardware 
> >>configurations it is likely to be a problem?
> >>
> >>Charlie Lowe
> >>http://cyberdash.com/
> >>
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>Fonts mailing list
> >>Fonts gnome org
> >>http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/fonts
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
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